Albert Tatlock

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 Where to search for out of date comics, for example, could be gained then only by experience.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?

Don't you realise you are driving the planet to ruin? Forget plastic polluting bags. Store your books in recycled brown paper, ecologically sound, envelopes. Or just go back to the shoebox solution of our faraway youth. Your grandchildren will salute your memory. Going back a long way, I remember Jerry Bails counselling others to follow his lead, as he sold off his collection after committing its content to microfilm, not knowing at the time that microfilm is at least as prone to age-related degradation as cheap newsprint-type paper. But they don't look quite as good in brown paper, do they?

I have a stack of old posters, on quite heavy paper, A1 size, too many to sell during my few remaining years, so I get a local print shop to guillotine them up into just the exact size for the bags, then I use 2 of the resulting pieces, face to face so the blank outside is showing, in place of backing boards. They are not as sturdy as the bespoke backing boards, but they will do nicely for items of lower value, certainly for the books I propose to sell. If I ever did run out, I would go to a local paper merchant and buy a quantity of suitably sized blank paper, board or card. They should be able, for a small extra fee, or possibly no extra charge to guillotine them to any required size. Then all I would have to do is transport them back to my place of abode. Maybe worth your while ringing a local paper merchant, they will be delighted to give you a quotation, free of charge or obligation. Or you could just carry on lining the pockets of the fat cats in the higher echelons of Royal Mail.

Good luck, Kev, You only live once, and it's only money, so leave the underbidders trailing in your wake. 8d was a lot of dosh then, but someone bit the bullet. And if you tire of it, you should be able to find someone even dafter than your good self.

Another bargain at only 8d, but I reckon they could have got the full price of 9d if they had refrained from stamping it. There is another stamp further down, somebody or other's books, it says, but I cannot make it out. If I manage to decipher it, I will pop along and see what else is on the shelf. Can't go wrong at that price.