Mr Thorpe

Fascinating info re Marvel and Transworld, but we are talking primarily DC's here with the diamond T&P stamp. Did Transworld have any involvement with DC distribution? I bought this book a while back hoping to find out more about DC distribution in the UK, but Thorpe and Porter and the UK do not feature at all. Plenty on South America and Europe. I was also hoping to find out a bit more about Gordon and Gotch and the Aussie DC reprints, but again nothing. The book is a print on demand job, fulfilled by Amazon.

T&P seemed to have a glut of these Wonder Woman #163's back when I was a lad stalking the newsagents. A lot of them ended up in Double Double Comics. The top one stayed stored in a box until its time came to be stamped with the diamond. The 5p stickered copy is very unusual in that, in my experience back then, it was very rare to find a comic that was more than 2 years old in a newsagent. This one would have been 4 years old when the 5p sticker was stuck on over the 10d. Other 1966 excessive glut comics that T&P had included Superman #188, Worlds Finest #163 and Batman #186. They turn up all the time in Double Doubles.

Those '5's haven't come out so well above. Here they are in their full cover glory!

Thanks Malacoda for kicking the tyres of the 'Priced in Shillings for Export' theory. Re your points Your observation about the price being too high for the average Ugandan child is taken. However, what if these comics and magazines were not aimed at Ugandan kids but perhaps they were for sale in more elite outlets -airports, high end shops in Kampala or even the equivalent of Ugandan NAAFI type stores? I think the Avengers 25 is an example of a random box of cent priced Marvels turning up with the rest of the month's DC shipment from the US distribution hub. T&P, would have been stipulating 'no Marvels' (as they were getting them as PV's), no DC romance or humour titles and, sometimes, no war titles. The occasional box did show up and it probably ended up in the corner of the warehouse. The dumping of stock as Double Doubles had stopped by the early 70's. Possibly they weren't selling so well or T&P realised they were cannibalising their own market as they were selling them through the same newsagent outlets. Don't know about the seaside 'dumping' and when that may have stopped. More food for thought I've gathered together all the diamond stamped comics in my collection (there may be others I haven't come across yet). They date from 1966 to 1974. Note they are all '5's! Does this tell us anything? Were T&P trying to mimic their stock control method abroad? I acquired these diamond stamped comics from various sources in the mid to late 70's when I restarted buying comics again and I was buying back issues. I also note that the Hot Wheels #5 above is a '1'. We've been talking about Uganda as a possible destination for these comics, but it could have been Kenya or Tanzania. They still use shillings, apparently. The magazines Malacoda has posted are a '6' and an '8'. Does this suggest that T&P were more successful selling magazines than comics. Perhaps the '5' was an experiment to sell comics too? And finally an outlier! A 5 shilling diamond stamped comic! Rampant inflation in the destination country? One other point I'd make about Uganda (or even Kenya) being the likely destination of these diamond T&P stamped comics. We had a huge influx of Ugandan Asians (expelled by the tyrant Idi Amin) in the early 1970's. A lot of them would have settled in and around Leicester and also a lot of them ended up running newsagents. Did an enterprising Ugandan Asian refugee have a hand in all this, possibly working for T&P? What's the East African equivalent of eBay?!!!

Mr Thorpe -the lurker here! It's about time I made another contribution. I've been following the debate on the diamond T&P stamp with a far too unhealthy interest and I've come up with another plausible hypothesis/theory. We know the diamond stamp extends back to the late 1960's and into the mid 1970's. My theory -here goes 1) T&P had a load of old comics which they were looking to dump somewhere. The comics consisted of old unsolds -T&P stamped and unstamped. The comics were too old to be sold through their normal UK channels. 2) T&P manage to find a buyer in a far off land that was using sterling as currency. I believe (having done a Google search) that Uganda was still using sterling, for example. 3) A deal is struck. 4) The comics that are part of the deal are all stamped up with this country's currency ie in shillings. 5) Everything is all set then something happens to upset the deal. 6) T&P are stuck with all this sterling stamped stock that is basically a write off. 7) The stock is destined for the dumper and some of it is rescued by Albert! It's all conjecture on my part, but it ticks all the boxes. I will now step back and wait for someone to take pot shots at my theory.

I was around buying comics in the late 60's/early 70's. As I remember, when the 1/- UKPV Marvels appeared, they were sold in all branches of WH Smith and some newsagents. Newsagents were either Marvel UKPV or DC T&P (or didn't sell either). So effectively you got 'Marvel' or 'DC' newsagents, with WH Smith doing Marvels. I only bought DC's so I avoided the 'Marvel' newsagents. That much is experience and fact, if you accept my memory is correct. I'd therefore speculate that someone else was distributing the UKPV Marvels (remember they were Curtis by this stage) and T&P were apparently free to import unsold cent priced Marvels and they did.

A couple of missing Tomahawks.

Showcase 'completed', some serious inroads into the missing House of Mysteries and a few more!

Some war comic 'fills'

Some Albert and Robot 'duplicates' and a few new ones. I'll try and get to my Mystery and War comics over the weekend to see if I can fill any more gaps.

It is unusual. I don't recall any others off the top of my head. It seems even though DC had effectively cancelled Rex at 45, the May-June issue, there was a prepared issue 46 which DC didn't want to waste and pushed it out later in the year. You could argue that cover dating it November was a cunning plan to give the comic a longer shelf life as there wasn't another issue.

Definitely Sept-Oct 1959. The previous issue #45 was May-June 1959. I definitely haven't got the 4 missing ones or ever seen them. I'm sure they are out there though waiting to be discovered for this thread!

This will cheer you up, Marwood. I found this in a box yesterday. I knew I had it somewhere! Difficult to see the number. I think it's an 8.

Your 'receipt' for your bag was half of a playing card. The other half was clothespegged on to your bag. I never bought much in there and Mr Grumpy was none too pleased if you'd wasted his time without buying anything and just wanted your bag back! I seem to recall FP ran a 'bag exchange programme' as well, when they first opened.

In my callow youth, in the late 1970's and 1980's, I was a regular visitor to Leicester Sq and its environs, doing the 'comic rounds'. I also remember that shop in Denmark Place. Wasn't it called 'LTS'? I don't think I ever knew what LTS actually stood for. There were two people running the shop. The older guy, who was behind the scenes and a younger bloke who seemed to be permanently grumpy.