Albert Tatlock

Simple. It will have the earliest date on the cover or inside. Any farthing versions from Victorian times, I wonder?

Which intrepid explorer will track down the earliest T & P stamp. It will obviously be a number 1.

Ditto Dirk and the Legion. Printed 1 shilling, stamped 1/-. Number is to indicate end of shelf life.

The reprint, I mean. It is printed 2/6, and they have stamped it 2/6. The comics and magazine cover dates would not necessarily have been in sync, so the retailer would use the stamp number to tell when an item was close to getting out of date, irrespective of cover date. Same applies to US copies - all the time we see arrival dates added by retailer. These also indicate when to pull that item. And we also know that they are unsold US copies, because the dates are in the US (month followed by year) format, not the UK one.

But it has a 2/6 stamp on a 2/6 cover. Why stamp an already priced book? Surely a shelf life indicator to retailer.

T & P number stamp system already up and running for August 1959 imports.

Reckon you owe me half a mild in t'Rovers.

Almost certainly, as the October 1959 issues are stamped with 6 or 7. T & P would not have initiated a new numbering system just for comic books. More than likely they just slotted the newly arrived US additions to their roster into a pre-existing arrangement.

Thank you, Marwood, I did notice at the time that the numbers on the price stamp were creeping up month by month, but I had no idea what lay behind it. What we need, in order to set this on a firmer footing, is a long unbroken run of stamped pence copies, in a monthly title which was not in short supply and with a regular distribution pattern. Best candidates would be Action, Adventure or Detective. Many of mine are unstamped, from when I upgraded them long ago, but, when time permits. I will sort through and document what I can. From what I remember, the newsagents' deliveries were monthly, but that does not mean that the shipments were tied to any fixed date, that would have been at the mercy of the sailing dates available. The numbers 1 to 9 were unconnected with the calendar or the date of printing. They relate only, I believe, to the order in which they were processed on arrival at Castle T & P. That only 9 numbers are used could have an explanation as prosaic as a 1 digit stamp being cheaper than a 2 digit stamp.

All quiet on the T & P front? Can I creep out of my shell hole yet?

I reckon that the pre-October 1959 dated items arrived much later than their cover dates, being well out of date unsold US returns. Another example is the Private Strong issues, dated mid 1959 but in all probability not shipped until T & P's operation was up and running. I would say that the War At Sea arrived at the same time as the Feb 1960 DC shipment, the Timmy with the November 1959 and the Bunny with the Oct 1959 and again with the March 1960. Have a look at some Charltons (my holdings are very scanty) cover dated AFTER the end of 1959 and see if they conform to the DC pattern.

nobody likes a mumpsimus do they Certe.

The numbers on the Thorpe & Porter price stamp were applied in chronological order, not by cover date, but by arrival date. I have been through several titles for the years 1959-62, and they follow, more or less, the pattern below: 1959 1960 1961 1962 JAN 1 4/5/6 9 FEB 2 6 1 MAR 3 7 2 APR 4 8 3 MAY 5/ 6 9 4 JUNE 7 1 4/5 JULY 8 2 5/6 AUG 9 3 6 SEPT 1 4/5 7 OCT 7 2 6 8 NOV 8 3 7 9 DEC 9 4 8 1 There will always be exceptions, as the cover date for one month may have been split across 2 shipments, and also some issues may have been delayed on the journey from the US retail outlet to the dockside, causing them to be stamped with a higher number, or possibly they had remained undealt with in a corner of the T & P warehouse. However, most issues are stamped with a number close to the above, and it is unusual to find a comic with a difference of more than 1 or 2 from that expected. The number 5 stamp behaves strangely, though. It is found less often than the others, and always seems to share its slot with 4 or 6. Possibly it was under-used to prevent confusion with a number 6.

My uncle had a newsagents in Stockport in the 1960s, and I was a paperboy there in about 1964-67. I was out on my round on the afternoon of 30 July 1966, in fact I did 3 rounds that day, as some of the other lads found something else to do. He told me that he sent unsold comics back, and I have been there on more that one occasion when he was bundling up comics and magazines to be collected. I wish I could consult with him now, but unfortunately he has been pining for the fjords for quite some time.

Another is attached. There are just too many of these around to be the work of one particular newsagent. A wholesaler possibly (the one in these parts was Abel Heywood), but if they turned up nationwide, we can surely assume that they were from the T & P warehouse. What we need is some input from a (probably retired) newsdealer of the day.

Here is a set of 1961 stamped DCs. All available 8 Flash are there, and the 4 missing months I have filled in with other titles. They follow a logical sequence, gradually ascending. In case they are not showing too clearly, the number are: Jan 4, Feb 6, Mar 7, Apr 8, May 8, June 1, July 2, Aug 3, Sept 4, Oct 6, Nov 7, Dec 8. There will always be slight anomalies because T & P were at that time importing unsold returns from DC, so there must have been instances where an odd number of stragglers went on a later shipment. Also, different publication dates in the US would have meant that a particular cover date would have been split between 2 consecutive shipments. The first few months should have been stamped: Oct '59........7 Nov '59.......8 Dec '59.......9 and so on. The Pat Boone cover dated October '59 was a bi-monthly, so received a stamp that corresponded with September. Same applies to JLA 2, which it seem from the cover date should have been a 5, but it has received a 4 because JLA was also a bi-monthly at the time, this one being Dec '60/Jan '61. Confusing enough?

Maybe Patsy Walker burnt their fingers and they said never again. Ditto My Girl Pearl.

This is mostly speculation, I readily admit, but there may be some ideas worth pursuing. The circular T & P stamp had a dual function, the primary one being to display the price. The top half, with the number, was intended to convey some information, but what information, and to whom? Clearly not to the purchaser, the end user, to whom it would have been unintelligible. So it was for the benefit of the wholesaler, the retailer, or possibly T & P themselves If it were an indicator of the shelf life of the individual comic, then it would inform the newsagent of how long that item had been on his shelf, and when he could return it for a credit. Maybe there was a window of opportunity for returns. Say, for example, the new delivery were stamped with a number 7. The newsagent would have known when to expect this delivery, and would have his returns bundled up ready, an operation, after all, which he performed daily with his newspapers. Say that he was entitled at this point to return anything marked with a 5, and those found their way back to the warehouse. The following month, he would return number 6, and receive fresh stock marked 8, and so on. This would prevent his stock from becoming stale. If the number represents a deadline for returns, it would incentivise him to weed out the out of date items. It would also help T & P to guard against any unscrupulous dealers who attempted to take advantage of the SOR facility by introducing cheaply bought secondhand material back into the supply chain. If T & P would accept only that month’s legitimate returns, stamped with the relevant number, any would-be fraudster would have to wait up to 9 months to cash in. The SOR system was already open to abuse in the USA, as the publishers accepted returns of just the top portion of the front cover, leading to the availability of incomplete copies on the secondhand market, sometimes marked with a price as low as 1 cent. These can still be found on ebay to this day, but there do not seem to be any three quarter British equivalents, so T & P must have insisted on the return of the full comic. Once again, I stress that the number was not connected to any calendar month, but just to T & P’s internal accounting system. More numbers could have been used, of course, but 9 would be sufficient in these circumstances. It did not even need to be numbers, letters would have been an acceptable alternative. After all, A, B, C, D could perform the same function as 1, 2. 3, 4 and so on.

Just off up the wooden hill meself. As soon as my teeth have dropped into the glass I will be snoring.

But the numbers are not tied to any particular month. They are just an indicator of how up-to -date any given issue is. if your shop has just taken delivery of a batch of comics stamped with No 1, you can keep the Number 9 and 8 for the time being, but anything lower has had its chance, and can be returned for a credit. And the numbers do not correspond exactly with the cover date. As previously noted, Journey Into Mystery was running a month behind, so the, for example, its December issue was current as long as the January issues of other titles. What mattered was the number stamped on that JIM. It corresponded with the rest of the batch with which it had arrived, which would have shown a variety of cover dates in the case of DC, and no cover date at all in the case of Marvel. The newsagent would have been bewildered if there had not been this method of indicating how up-to-date each comic was. My Uncle Albert, who I am running this account for, has fallen out with Ena for the time being, but he says you seem a decent chap. He is 140 next birthday, so cannot get out much, but he says to let us know next time you will be in t'Rovers and he will shuffle round an treat you to half a mild.

If the newsagent went through his stock, he could see that if his new delivery was, say, numbered 8, then anything lower than that was now out of date. Not every comic sold, so to hold onto them all would mean an ever-increasing stockpile, meaning more money tied up. At intervals, therefore, he would weed out the oldest items and return them for a credit. In the case of my local newsagent, a little man came and parked his little dark blue or purple van outside the door and carried various bundles in and out. If I pestered the owner for a look at the comics, I would be told that they were not ready yet (they must have been lower down the packing order that the stuff for older customers), and if I came back a little later all would be well. The van driver and the newsagent would then hold a conclave with various sheets of paper, but no money, changing hands. Highly mysterious to me at the time, knowing nothing of the inner workings of the capitalist system. I still remember what my mother told me what to say when taking in the money for our account 'pay for the papers, 138'. We had a daily newspaper, a woman's magazine and 2 weekly British comics on order, so the amount never varied.

Cheers I am presuming that they were being recycled by T & P, as they arrived alongside the regular priced items, not every month in my locality, probably 3 or 4 times a year. As T & P had an effective monopoly on the distribution, who else could have supplied them? There are enough of them around to suggest that they were available nationwide and had not passed through the hands of a purely local outlet. T & P would surely not have supplied a third party to undercut their own items, so the only explanation I can think of (and I thought of it at the time) is that these had been dredged up out of the warehouse whence came the current month's crop, to try and squeeze a little more revenue out of them. Also, who but T & P would put a comic on sale with an INCREASE in the cover price, as on the Flash 142 you have shown, and my FF 2? I have some more of the triangular stamped items squirreled away, will try to unearth some soon. On the subject of the numbers in the top half of the earlier T & P stamps, surely these were a coded signal to the newsagent on which to return at the next opportunity, to receive a credit. if a comic had not shifted after say 2 months, it would be parcelled up and sent back when the next delivery came in. Having said that, back issues could quite frequently be found, up to a year after they were originally offered for sale. It would depend on the alertness level of the individual shopkeeper. I obtained JIM 58 still on sale in a nearby shop in the late summer of 1961, along with a couple of other supposedly expired issues. I went back a couple of weeks later expecting to be able to fill more gaps, but alas there were by that time only the latest batch, the same as those available everywhere,

Thorpe & Porter recycled their unsold stock periodically, usually at reduced prices. The triangular stamp on this was found on comics alongside the regular 9d and 10d versions, usually on issues 2 or 3 years out of date. I had thought they tailed off about 1966/67, but have recently noticed a couple from 1971. In theory, there is a chance they could turn up on anything from 1959 onwards. Anyone want to do the spadework on gathering a full set? There could be even more than the 3021 or so Marvel UKPVs, as they appeared on anything T & P distributed.

Thanks, I would put them on the other board if I only knew how to shift them across.......???