Albert Tatlock

..........but of course they would have got their hands on the books that much sooner than if they had waited for returns, which may not have arrived in the desired quantity. UKPVs would have been supplied in exactly the quantities ordered, but the original question still remains, why then, and why was it discontinued? Why not roll it out across all titles? There is a lot to digest in the original post, I will go through it again, slowly and carefully, over my half a mild in t'Rovers this evening, to see if I can tease out the nub of the argument. Possibly there are some red herrings in there, but then again, maybe all the pieces of the jigsaw are needed to complete the picture, we shall see.

A great deal of thought and effort has gone into this, obviously, but I still cannot grasp why T & P would have believed that soliciting UKPVs at that point would have been advantageous, unless it cut the cost of labour involved in the stamping process, but surely that would have been tiny compared to the other costs of running the business, rent and or/rates, record keeping, transport and fuel, and all the rest.

I don't take offense, although those across the pond might. I don't even take offence, it takes more than these musings to offend me.

The UKPV copies were printed because T & P asked for them to be printed, surely, and not because they had been forced to accept them. Keeping the machine running on cents copies would have saved time. And T & P could have laid off a few of Ethel's colleagues. Wonder if they considered going on strike over the threatened redundancies.

Exacty.

This was quoted as very early 1950s, the dark ages as far as our research goes. 3 for a shilling is a good discount on the cover price of 6d, and presumably Comic Man would still have room for manouvre, as, according to Ralph Gold, Millers, and presumably their competitors, supplied the trade at 2d per comic. The drinkers in the hostelry depicted would, in the Coronation year of 1953, have been able to wet their whistles for less than 2 shillings a pint, so 3 comics for the nipper would only mean half a pint or so less down the hatch And a packet of 10 cigs (although packets of 5 were also available) would cost about the same as a pint. Nobody back then could have enjoyed their pint without a frequent drag on a (usually untipped) coffin nail. Junior presumably paid little heed to the nicotine stained edges of his literature of choice.

Yes, the bloke hawking comics round the pub was mentioned by Ralph Gold in his autobiog. That was in London, but maybe Miller's tentacles extended as far as the watering holes of the Black Country. Possibly these were the British reprints from T & P, though. That would have been before T & P began importing the real deal.

Her whalebone corset is even tighter than Ethel's.

And Diana Rigg's first name was Enid. Maybe she was wise to go with Diana, Enid does not project the appropriate vibe for an Amazonian beater-up of baddies. Imagine confessing to your fellow hoodlums, to the accompaniment of guffaws, that your black eye and bent nose were inflicted by a slip of a girl by the name of Enid.

Don't forget that I myself only existed in black and white until 1969. Except for my cap, that was grey. A natty shade of grey, though.

Original was in black and white?

Original was black and white?

Another Archie, this one from Miller.

I must confess that I am not up to speed with Archie stuff, so not sure whether this has been featured before. It is an early T & P stamped example, cover date and indicia date September 1959.

That's where you fell down. Jumble sales, advertised in your local paper, or on the notice boards outside the library, church and so on could have had you jumping for joy if you hit them at the right time and place. Still worth checking out, just in case.

I think that in one's childhood and youth, one's interaction with the wider world is, by necessity, limited. As the child matures, he will discover other avenues that simply had not occurred to him previously. Where to search for out of date comics, for example, could be gained then only by experience. I was aware of a couple of local street markets, but had no idea how to locate any more. A chance overheard conversation between two housewives on my bus back from school alerted me to another, and as soon as I arrived home, I jumped on my bicycle and paid it a visit. This would have been close to, or even after, 5pm, by which time its present-day counterpart would be deserted, but back then the stallholders put in a full shift. That particular market proved to be a source of many future acquisitions, but I had not the presence of mind to seek out the market superintendent, or even a stallholder, who could with ease have provided me with a list of similar venues. Eventually, by trial and error, I mastered the knack of hunting down my quarry, but my earlier naivete meant that there were gaps I could not fill until mail-order dealers made their appearance, asking prices far above the shabby, but cornucopian, second-hand outlets. ,

When I was a nipper, the oldest item in my collection for a while was a TTTG dated May 1959. It was surely a T & P latecomer. I only hung onto it because it was (to me, at least), so ancient. Finding anything pre-dating the last days of 1959 was just about impossible with the limited sources of supply I had at the time. Even the ubiquitous DC Thomson stuff only turned up in dribs and drabs before cover date 1958. I ended up with a good run of The Topper from the late 1950s and early 1960s, likewise my brother with his stack of Beezers, but they were all consigned to the flames in commemoration of the downfall of Catesby, Fawkes and their associates. I had, I felt, outgrown such childish frippery. Little did I know that the bug that had bitten me was not deceased, only dormant, and my interest was rekindled in 1965 on discovering a copy from 1960 that I still remembered. Of course, I had the sense not to perform an auto-da-fe with my comic books, as they were then dubbed to distinguish them from mere comics, the weekly British ones, as the American ones had a definite resale value at second-hand outlets, which scorned to stock the worthless kiddies' stuff.

What I find baffling about Customs duties is that they make a charge, and then put VAT on top of it. So you are being taxed for the privilege of having been taxed. Surely, as HMRC are the recipients of the original charge, the VAT charged to the customer should be MINUS, not PLUS. But I am not holding my breath.

No duty as yet on books and magazines, but Government functionaries are always on the lookout for further sources of revenue, so it may come, sooner than you think. Quite right, too, they have a lot of worthy causes to support. What reasonable person would object to being asked to put his hand in his pocket to fund the inflation-proof pensions of retired rear admirals and the like.

Here is a £sd Kenya, Uganda and Tanganyika stamp with Her Maj on, but I think that K, U and T went decimal before 1974. I had one with a picture of a giraffe on when I were but a lad, possibly with shillings and pence, but the versions I can find online now are all priced in cents.

Is it possible that the anachronistic 2 shilling stamped items were reimported into the UK after failing to sell somewhere overseas which was still pre-decimal? I have examples dated as late as 1974.

Yes, not a bad little scribbler, Mr PKD.

I know, I know. We have to avoid the anagram of carp, just like the forename of Mr Turpin, which currently escapes me. Think it's the same as Mr Dastardly, though.

Tell us about the ones that got away, Kev.

So you collect mounted fish, too?