Albert Tatlock

Here are a few Harveys, brought to these shores by Miller. A couple of the stamps are not too clear, but they are there if you look. The Audrey one is unstamped, but must be an import, firstly because it has a 6d second-hand seller applied scrawl, and secondly because Susan Smith of Boscombe, then aged 11 (she would now be 75, hope she is still in fine fettle), has filled in the coupon on the back cover. Susan, if you can spare a moment, please log into this chat board and tell us why you decided to purchase this particular item, with its cover date of July 1960, when you could, for the same amount of your pocket money, have come into possession of the Brave and Bold # 30 depicted just beneath. Was it because of the unsightly T & P applied 9d blodge on the cover, did that spoil it for you? Or maybe you were getting as much T & P product as you wanted from your Auntie Ethel, smuggled out of the stamping shed in her corsets. Do chip in, please, Susan (don't mind if we call you Sue, I hope?), we are dying to know.

That's a good 'un! This issue of ST was available as a UKPV, so how this copy found its way into circulation before the end of the 1960s is a Strange Tale indeed. Possibly sold on second-hand after a n-n-n- nineteen year old servant of Uncle Sam bought it in his PX at Lakenheath or wherever. 9d was the full shop price at the time, not a clue who applied that stamp. But there is also what looks like a hastily scribbled 3d, possibly a market stall price as the mag sank lower in the resale chain. Incidentally, this is one of quite a few pre-hero Marvels where it is evident that the cover artist (in this case Kirby) was not in cahoots with the illustrator of the inside pages (in this case Don Heck), as there is no resemblance between the two versions of the Thing (or the Thing On The Moon as depicted within). Others that spring to mind are Rro from JIM # 58 (Ditko/Heck), Bombu from JIM # 60 (Kirby and Kirby, one of whom did not consult the other) and more. Someone out there with time on their hands could probably reel off a full list. From memory, the monster threatening the human race on the cover was always scarier than his counterpart within. I got my first copy of ST #79 from a lad at the top of my street, who demanded, and got, 2 comics in exchange. 'What a mug', he must have chuckled into his sleeve, but I just had to add it to my small but treasured portfolio. The cover story was a let-down, not so the first interior Tale, Kirby's chiller about the Shadow Creatures, selected for re-publication in Marvel's first foray into the 25 cent Annual territory, Strange Tales Annual # 1. It cost me an arm and a leg (1/6d) when I first spied it in a local newsagent, but once again, I had not the capacity to resist its allure.

If they don't sell, list them again with 'HOT KEY' in the heading.

Some people clearly live in hope. For example, here are the current listings of a seller on ebay, https://www.ebay.co.uk/sch/i.html?_ssn=sher8648&store_name=cultcomicbooksinternational&_oac=1&_trksid=p4429486.m3561.l2562 202 listings, well over 100 'key issues'. Can't spot quite as many as that, myself, though.

Maybe they were having a paws for thought.

And the PC brigade decided to lean on Camp coffee, too. Out goes the old oppressive colonial trope at top, in comes the more progressive and enlightened one at bottom. You can be as Camp as you like these days, they can't touch you for it.

Yep, remember 'em well. Selling them these days would get you 6 months, though.

If the comics were never meant to be sold in the expired currency they were priced in, it hardly matters how slipshod the application was. I am still sticking to my guns and believe that the diamond stamps were the last rites, the final nail in their coffin, and represent the end of the road for their SOR status. Whoever had bought them, presumably at a hefty discount, hoped to sell enough of them to recoup the outlay before disposing of them to a waste paper merchant.

Not sure if this sticker has turned up before. 10d to 9d is a trifling discount, hardly likely to sway a prospective purchaser to put hand to pocket. And the one the guy is reading is still priced at the full 12 cents. which seems to have annoyed the creature.

Finally managed to dig out a few of my batch. I know there were others, including Flash, Shazam, Batman and Detective 100 pagers, Mister Miracle, The Shadow, Secret Origins and so on, maybe they are still with me, maybe I sold them in the distant past. The ones with circular stickers at top centre are from when I tried, and failed, to dispose of them at comic fairs. Why there are only DCs, and why they cover such a narrow date window is still a mystery to me. At the time I bought them, they were maybe 5 years out of date, so I would have expected a wider date range.

Another unsold and repriced Kid. And a different (to me, anyway) PBS stamp. How unusual is it?

Our shillings here in Blighty also continued in circulation until 1990, and the old 2 bob lingered until 1992. They circulated alongside the new 5 and 10 pence coins until they were withdrawn. So they could be spent throughout the 1970s and 1980s, although the goods they could buy were priced in decimal currency. Probably the Irish coinage followed the same pattern. Any of T & P's stock headed across the Irish Sea would have been stamped or stickered with a decimal price, I am sure. Here is how Pat, Mick or Seamus, or indeed Fred, Bert or Alf, would have paid for his fix.

Some of these appear to be in pretty decent shape, but all of mine had been in the wars (a long drawn-out series of war of attrition) by the time I came across them.

If a retailer, would they not bear the stamp or sticker of that outlet, even if clearly second-hand? My guess is that they were bought up as a cheap job lot, then sold on to market traders and the like. That there was still a bit of mileage in them is evidenced by this one a couple of pages back with a PBS stamp, plus the Hot Wheels one at the top of this page..

But we do not know on which date the diamond stamp was applied. Not close to the original date when it was stamped by T & P. I reckon. Many of the other diamond stamps are on post-decimal examples, so my guess is that this one had been remaindered for a few years when it was taken up by the mystery buyer who also bought a whole batch of other out of date stuff.

Cannot see rest of this chart, do you reckon you could post it all, so we know which of the little blighters are still dodging us.

It is mine now, all mine d'you hear, and will be treasured forever. It turned up in a bundle of nondescript stuff that has only just reached me. I said a while back that I had never come across this title (Flippity) or Porkchops. If I had I would just have riffled past in search of something more to my liking. My early collecting activity was quite narrowly focused. Then I took to thinking that Peter Porkchops sounded familiar, and just about convinced myself that I had seen one. But now I have come to the conclusion that I must have been fondly remembering the character as depicted in the in -house ads, as shown below. So the search goes on.

Quite likely that at least one will turn up, ditto Adventure # 265, which I had in the mid 1960s. Probably the best candidate for next earliest stamped copy to come to light is Unexpected # 43.

When blizzards sweep through Hell...............

If only, but..............

Another piece of the jigsaw........ And a couple that have surfaced before, but are still lesser-spotted.......

No cause for concern here, Blackhawk has previous experience to draw on. It's deja vu all over again. And both times he's lost his hat.

At the time TTA # 13 was published, Groot was a character of no significance. The same as TTA # 27. What if the first Ant Man appearance had featured a different scientist, not Henry Pym, but with roughly the same powers? Then TTA # 27 would be worth the same today as # 26 and # 28. The subject under discussion here has more to do with human psychology than the comic book industry. Why pay many times more for issue A of a title than issue B, when both are circulating in equal quantities? FOMO has not yet been mentioned, but it is surely a driver.

Here are a couple of pictures of the old and the new wings of the Showroom. Probably.

From an old copy of ICJ. Bryon is circulating his readership in an attempt to gather material to reproduce, it seems. £4 to borrow each item of interest. I am not sure how many he would need to sell to break even, not a lot, I suppose. More of a hobby than a business, I reckon.