Albert Tatlock

There are some strange things happening here. Consider the case of Tales To Astonish # 13. Before the release of Guardians Of The Galaxy, # 13 was worth exactly the same as # 12 and #14. That changed almost overnight. Who decided that # 13 should go up in value? The story is a run-of the mill Lee/Kirby pre-superhero, Groot is a very minor character, and the supply is not out of line with the others of the period. What made fans decide that they could no longer live without a copy of TTA# 13? And who took advantage of it? As previously mentioned, greed and speculation are an intrinsic part of the dynamic here. Any way of finding out whether anyone involved in the production of GOTG hoarded TTA # 13? If not, they must be kicking themselves.

I was in the Corn Exchange in the '80s. The chances of picking up a bargain at a street market had fizzled out by then. The reference to the 60s and 70s were when it was still possible to unearth, say FF # 1-10 and early Spider-Man, etc, but by the 80s those days were just about over, although there was still fairly recent stuff (say 5 to 10 years old) that could be sold on. When Frank Dobson's Fantasy Advertiser started to be widely read, say 1967 onwards, the second-hand sources began to dry up, as dealers were buying up everything of value and issuing lists. Even new comics which were in short supply on the newsstands would reappear in FA at a hefty mark-up. Frank typically charged 3/6d for Marvels just a few months old. Still, if you kept your eyes open, it was possible that a one owner collection would suddenly appear on a local market, but you had to be quick off the mark.

But parking was a problem. No dedicated loading bay, yellow peril on prowl, pencil poised. You had to be quick in and quick out, not easy if you had any quantity of stock to load/unload. I got around it by arriving at crack of dawn, before restrictions kicked in. I think the comic shop concentrated on imports, probably from Titan. No back issues, I seem to remember, so not on my regular search list.

At the time I moved in, the Corn Exchange was a little neglected and in decline. Rents, as a consequence, were remarkably low for a city centre location, which was its major attraction for me. The neighbouring room was occupied by a translation agency, who offered me his slightly less conveniently situated room so he could have two adjacent rooms. Once he offered to help with moving my stock, and, crucially, cross my palm with silver, I agreed. However, I left not long after, but it was a very convenient facility for storage at the time. I toyed with the idea of taking a stall in the market area downstairs, but the core customers there were vinyl freaks and patchouli soaked members of alternative society, for whom my offerings would have been of little interest. There was a comic shop on the outside at the front, below ground level, whose name escapes me. but I cannot remember making a purchase there. Occasionally the trestle tables in the market area would throw up a few older silver age items, but nothing major that I saw. The best sources at the time were still the local markets. In the 1960s and early 1970s there was still a chance of picking up what today would be termed a Key, or even a Grail, terms which I believe I have never uttered aloud, old school as I am. The markets had a ridiculously high churn rate, you knew that next week there would be fresh stock, which was not always the case with the second-hand shops. Why sell off your surplus comics to a little side street establishment when you could visit the market, which was open Saturday and at least one other weekday, and had thousands of customers, and probably had other basic items that you needed anyway. So I kept up a routine of visiting as many markets as I could get to every Saturday, and any junk shops and so on that lay on my route. Those days will never come again, I know, the public is too savvy, but the memories I have are seared into my brain, I can still remember where I first saw many of the additions to my early collection, at usually 6, 4, or even 3 old pence.. Later, it is a blur, when I was buying the current issues as they hit the shops at the prevailing retail rates. When I get time, I have promised myself that will compile a register of the original sources of the 1960 to 1963 material that I assembled, and, in many cases, foolishly dispersed, before my fast approaching dotage overtakes me.

Here are a couple of shops from back in the day. Paramount was run by a chap called Les, a very knowledgeable bloke. It was called Atlantic Crossing at one time. His brother helped out on the till, even though he had prosthetic hands. House On The Borderland was run by one Dave Britton. He also had something to do with a shop on Peter Street, just along from the Free Trade Hall, and next door to the old St Peter's Tavern, where I watched the Rumble In The Jungle live as it took place. The landlord, Frank from Macclesfield locked the door at midnight or so, as was his wont, and we all went downstairs and carried on drinking. Dave had to break rocks or stitch mailbags for a while, as he had published something that the judge harrumphed about.

Yes, I am pretty sure you are right, 1974 is too early, but there were definitely a few by 1980, which is about the time I picked up that heap of stuff from t'old mill.

Don't remember him being there, just as well, I suppose, he would have had me doubling round the block for having the crease in my trousers out of line. I did rent a room on the first floor of the Corn Exchange in the 1980s, where I stored my stock of old T shirts, while I waited for someone to invent ebay. With hindsight I should have ransacked every market bookstall for miles around for comics and stashed them in there.

The car has a suffix H, so first registered in 1969/70. That bloke peering into the window will be in the old folks' home now, if he is not brown bread. Still, he was a snappy dresser in his day. His plastic shopping bag is probably full of personal grooming supplies. That's where reading second-hand comics can get you.

...and here it is

Short boxes and long boxes were an invention yet to be thought of. The places I am talking of stored their mags in bog standard cardboard receptacles, which had contained anything from bottles of bleach (by necessity at the sturdy end of the spectrum) to crisps and sweets (much flimsier). Anything, in fact, which was free. Sometimes they were just hauled up from a shelf under the counter, usually not visible, in case they took away display space from the more lucrative offerings of interest to the (ahem) more mature clientele. But Odyssey 7 was at the University, at least a mile from Victoria. The Hanging Ditch shop was much smaller, but was adjacent to the Cathedral, right next to Victoria Station and the Corn Exchange. The Corn Exchange, until it was forced to close after the 1996 bombing, had .a sort of market inside where comics could sometimes be found, but it catered more for other collectables, model railways, etc plus vintage clothing. The traders there came and went, it was a pretty eclectic sort of place, but never attracted any high end dealers who were to be found more in the nearby Royal Exchange, which was also within the radius of the blast and had to be abandoned because of water getting in.

I will unearth a few and check, but it might take me a while to burrow and delve that deep.

There were plenty of second-hand bookshops which also dealt in comics, but the comic specialists (I too remember House On The Borderland) were a little later. They had the effrontery to charge above cover price, and even so, they could not have stayed in business without associated stock lines, sci-fi, trade paperbacks and so on. I remember one in the arcade next to Victoria Station, now long since demolished and redeveloped, whose surly proprietor had latched onto the fact that his comic buying customers would still fork out cover price for old comics. Whatever it said on the cover was what he asked for and obtained, never a penny more or a penny less. He would not even budge when I showed him that the copy of FF # 8 he was demanding 9d for had the middle pages missing. I capitulated, and my coppers disappeared into his till.

But it could not have been serving that purpose in 1974 or later, as shillings and old pence had been abolished a few years previously. Maybe it is a prank of Mr Mxyzptlk, who is hooting with laughter from the 5th dimension as he watches us chasing our tails.

No original T & P stamp, but a diamond one, followed later (how much later we can only guess) by the ever-popular PBS defacement. How many times it subsequently changed hands I have no idea, I bought it fairly recently in an auction bundle.

No need to make a new stamp if there is an old one gathering dust at the back of the cupboard. But what was the diamond stamp used for when we still had shillings and pence? The traditional circular stamp appears on comics and magazines. Maybe the T & P reps were freelancers who handled other stuff besides comics, etc. Can it be found on packaging for toys, records, and so on?

Yawn, yawn, can't keep my eyes open , back tomorrow..........................

Dunno why the chap would go to the trouble of making up a stamp, they already had a cover price far in excess of what he was asking. I think that the 2 bob stamp would already have been there when my man got hold of them. I think that someone in Brunswick Mill was leaving, and chucked them out. My bloke spotted them, and told me they were his, and he could let me have them cheap. They were lying in the open air in an alcove in the yard, surrounded by cinders and all sorts. If I had not taken them, the rats would have.

I bought these maybe 5 years after the cover date. My feeling is that the stamps had been applied not long before I got them, but it could, of course, have been earlier.

Point taken, but the chap who bought them cheap, having been told about the cancellation stamp, would take it as a deterrent and not try it on. I think I have got one of these somewhere with a Popular stamp too, will try to dig it out.

It is just a code for those in the know. And we do not know when the earlier dated examples were sold on. The pre-decimal price is just a signal for those in the trade. They would know, but the punters would not. Maybe they were supposed to think, 'Hey, this should have been two bob, I'm getting a bargain'. But probably not, by this time, they would be being flogged off cheap, Joe Public would not have troubled his head about a little stamp in the corner of the cover, often one stamp among many.

Exactly.

Yes, we know about these, but how about the others? Only 1/6d DCs I know of are the 1960s annuals. Superman Annual # 1 was 1/3, but the later ones were 1/6, so no DCs had this diamond stamp price at the time of issue.

They were not priced in shillings so that they could be sold in shillings, a currency that no longer existed. They were so stamped, I believe, to indicate that they had been removed from the official distribution system. I, being not as daft as I look, paid next to nothing for them, I cannot remember at this remove of time, maybe a couple of grubby fivers changed hands. If the cover price was £50 per thousand for brand new stock, I don't think would have given more than a quarter of that, and probably less.,

But we do not know which of the price stamps was applied first. A 50 cent mag should have been priced originally at 2/6 to 3/6, if a 12 cent comic was on sale at 10d. Priced at only 6d, and failing to sell, where do you go from there? Get rid of it for whatever you can get, but mark it as unreturnable, maybe years later with an anachronistic price stamp. The problem we have is that we simply do not know when the diamond stamps were applied. My gut feeling is that they were put there as part of the last rites, just to make sure that no one was able to pull a fast one and feed them back into the SOR chain. The ones I found were certainly at death's door.

It is back in this thread, about page 30 or so.