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Albert Tatlock
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Posts posted by Albert Tatlock
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On 1/28/2024 at 11:12 PM, Malacoda said:Hold the phone. So you rented a room in this stately pile? Given the size of it, it's next to impossible it was the same room formerly used by the T&P rep, but you were in the same building. Dude!
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.
- Get Marwood & I, Malacoda, Kevin.J and 3 others
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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.
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On 1/27/2024 at 6:46 PM, Malacoda said:
Is that correct? Dark They Were opened in London in 1969, but to my knowledge the other London shops didn't open til later (FP in 1978 and Comic Showcase in the 80's). Futureshock opened in Glasgow in 1980. I think Forever People in Bristol was early 80's. In Manchester, House on the Borderland bookshop opened in 1972, but I don't know if it sold comics from the off. I think Orbit in Shudehill came later? Here's an advert for Book Chain from 1977. Don't know when it opened. I think you'd have to have done a lot of mileage round the country to have shifted a bulk of comics to the comic shops which were very few and very very far between. I'd love to know if the Manchester ones were around then and I'm sure I'm asking the right person
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.
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On 1/27/2024 at 8:13 PM, Malacoda said:
T&P did have a RSM based at the Corn Exchange Buildings on Fennel St
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.
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On 1/27/2024 at 8:43 PM, Albert Tatlock said:
...and here it is
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.
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On 1/27/2024 at 7:51 PM, Albert Tatlock said:
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.
...and here it is
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On 1/27/2024 at 8:13 PM, Malacoda said:
......T&P did have a RSM based at the Corn Exchange Buildings on Fennel St. Knowing my Manchester geography as I do (i.e. not even a little bit), I have read Odyssey 7 described as "up the road from Victoria Station and a short walk from the Corn Exchange" which puts it tantalisingly near both the T&P warehouse and your described establishment.....however, I get the impression that you're talking more about a dusty second hand bookshop with a box of comics under the counter than a dedicated comic shop with a sea of short boxes proudly stretching from wall to wall.
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.
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On 1/27/2024 at 6:46 PM, Malacoda said:
I'd love to know if the Manchester ones were around then and I'm sure I'm asking the right person.
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.
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On 1/27/2024 at 7:12 PM, Malacoda said:
Surely it's more likely that whatever purpose it had in the first place, it was still serving that purpose now?
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.
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On 1/25/2024 at 11:49 PM, Albert Tatlock said:
I think I have got one of these somewhere with a Popular stamp too, will try to dig it out.
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.
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On 1/25/2024 at 11:32 PM, Get Marwood & I said:
just get a 'No SOR' stamp made up?
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?
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Yawn, yawn, can't keep my eyes open , back tomorrow..........................
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On 1/25/2024 at 11:56 PM, Get Marwood & I said:
If the agreement was that T&P were selling him the comics cheap on a no SOR basis, what mechanism could he use to 'try it on'. He'd have to send his unsold books back with paperwork to show who he was (how else would they know who to refund?). T&P would match his return submission to their 'No SOR' agreement records. No stamp is required. Would any other official dealer launder them for him? Maybe, but I doubt it.
Yes please
Here's an alternative theory.
Some bloke nicks a ton of comics from T&P. There's a mix of recent returns, some older. He sticks a 2 shilling stamp that he found on all of them in an attempt to make them look more expensive than they are. He tries to flog them at markets and stuff. You got hold of a load of them. That explains why there are so few online today - it was a local one off thing. The diamond stamp that they used was an old one that someone used to use to sell magazines back in the 1960s....
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.
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On 1/25/2024 at 11:21 PM, Get Marwood & I said:
We do for some - your 1974 books must have had the stamp applied at that time. Couldn't be prior, as they hadn't been printed yet, couldn't be after, as that's when you bought them. No?
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.
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On 1/25/2024 at 11:43 PM, Get Marwood & I said:
That theory I like.
If it was someone's job to look at (potentially) thousands of comics each day to spot valid / invalid SOR items, surely the last thing you would use as an indicator would be a price stamp? Price stamps would all blur into one after the eight thousandth view. Now put a 'No SOR' stamp on it, that's going to stand out.
And if the person(s) who was sold all these "we can't sell these" comics by T&P wasn't an official outlet, would a SOR scenario even be an option? T&P wouldn't pay out as they'd have no official / agreed mechanism to do so with the client(s).
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.
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On 1/25/2024 at 11:32 PM, Get Marwood & I said:
Surely they'd avoid currency altogether and just get a 'No SOR' stamp made up?
How do you explain the earlier examples, and the magazines?
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.
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On 1/25/2024 at 11:28 PM, Get Marwood & I said:
So you're saying that T&P tried to sell those early 1970 Charltons at 6p, failed, had them retuned to them, and then sold them off to someone(s) else cheap. To guard against that someone(s) trying to do a SOR on them, they stuck a two shilling diamond stamp on them. So if they should be returned, they could say "Hey, I'm not having this - I see our two shilling safety guard we're not having it stamp".
Exactly.
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On 1/25/2024 at 11:21 PM, Get Marwood & I said:
We do for some - your 1974 books must have had the stamp applied at that time. Couldn't be prior, as they hadn't been printed yet, couldn't be after, as that's when you bought them. No?
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.
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On 1/25/2024 at 11:15 PM, Get Marwood & I said:
We may have covered this elsewhere in the thread, I've forgotten if we have, but the biggest head scratcher is why 6p priced comics end up with two shilling stamps on them.
The Royal Mint website says:
Little more than a week after D Day the United Kingdom was for practical purposes a decimal country. For the moment old pennies and threepenny bits could still be used but so successful was the change that within a couple of weeks they had all but disappeared. Indeed, the transitional period was brought to an end on 31 August 1971, months ahead of schedule, and it was possible to enquire, as many did, what all the fuss had been about.
If true, who would stamp comics at a price that no one would be able to pay?
@Albert Tatlock, I'm wondering whether I've got the wrong end of the stick. You say you bought a car load in the mid 70's. If they were priced in shillings, what price did you pay and why didn't you come up against that out of date currency block? Apologies if you've said this already. I couldn't find what I was looking for on page 30.
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.,
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On 1/25/2024 at 10:37 PM, Get Marwood & I said:
Some random thoughts, @Albert Tatlock that I'm not sure even go anywhere.
Here's an Iron Man #2.
It was distributed by T&P and you can find multiple copies on eBay with 4 or 5 numbered shilling stamps, correct for the time.
Then we have a copy with a T&P sticker, and then the diamond stamp.
.thumb.jpg.63b42e6d8188401d7f358b2c8bccacc5.jpg)
Why the copy has a 9d sticker is anyone's guess. But let's just say it was overstock that didn't sell at 9d, sitting around in a T&P warehouse. Under what circumstances would someone connected to T&P stick a two shilling price on it, using a square stamp so as to 'stop it coming back to them'?
T&P 6d 'triangle' sale price stamps tend to accompany our standard circular T&P price stamps:
On the Rod magazine, the diamond stamp is the original UK distribution price, presumably:
.thumb.jpg.011d0d3d89a5811efd6791c28ee2eba5.jpg)
The 6d sale price follows it. So on that occasion, the diamond stamp has no bearing other than to show the sale price (no 'don't be sending this back' element that I can see). The 6d sale price on that magazine is not the same as the T&P triangle one. So you can't say the sale price is T&P so the original must be.
So we have this diamond stamp on 1960s comics (e.g. Iron Man #2), 1970s comics (your Kamandi lot back on page 30) and magazines. We see them on Marvel, Charlton and DC. We see them as apparent original prices and implied later prices. The currency doesn't fit the timeline on the post decimal comics. We don't see many of them for sale online (well, I don't). You bought a ton of them.
What can you make of that? The only thing I feel confident about, is saying how few of them are in distribution today. I don't see them all the time on eBay. So whatever was going on, by whom, it feels small scale, possibly regional.
Just some thoughts, off the top of my head, using what images I've gathered to date to inform them.
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.
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On 1/25/2024 at 9:16 PM, Get Marwood & I said:
Have you mentioned this before? Where did you buy them from?
It is back in this thread, about page 30 or so.
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On 1/25/2024 at 9:10 PM, Get Marwood & I said:
It screams one off to me. Remind me, you bought c1,500 comics all with this stamp on them?
Maybe more, my car boot was full, so I had to use the back seat as well.
I still have a couple of hundred at least, all with wear and tear, they were in no fit state to be sold in regular outlets, as well as being about 5 years out of date.
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On 1/25/2024 at 8:59 PM, Get Marwood & I said:
I haven't seen those ducks for so long now. Those were the days.
My first thought, Albert, is that there simply aren't enough surviving examples of the 'diamond' stamp to suggest anything major. T&P numbers were huge. Surely, we'd see so many more of the stamps if your theory were true?
You all know I gather examples, to build pictures. The 'diamond' folder has very little in it which means I've seen very little of them. Indeed, they appear on more magazines than comics:
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I'm not saying you're wrong, just that in my experience, very low surviving numbers tend not to indicate systematic distribution arrangements. If it was T&P, and as you say, I think we'd see hundreds of them on eBay now.
Nice pictures though, of an era long gone.
*No modern Rod jokes please.
Possibly just a one-off, an experiment from a local agent that was not repeated.
All the ones I bought, possibly 1500 in total, were in a quite narrow date window, early to mid-1974.
What are the earliest and latest dates (comics only) that you have found on these?
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The Distribution of US Published Comics in the UK (1959~1982)
in Silver Age Comic Books
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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.