Malacoda

Yup, you called it. Subscription insert.

Great memento though. I can imagine the excitement of seeing those brown envelopes arrive and then wishing you'd kept one. I kept the envelope my first treasury came in for years.

Well, your one is identical to the direct one, so we can eliminate the Germany issue. I just need to get my hands on a newsstand one now.

Ah, right. The seller of this is making a big thing of the 'subscription' angle so I thought that was it. Nonetheless, there are loads of subscription copies advertised on ebay which seem to be direct editions and you can also tell that they're subscription because they're still sealed in shipping mailers (or so the good sellers of ebay are trying to tell me).

I note that the later ones just seem to be direct edition copies, but this is long after the WCP Sparta period I'm interested in. This one is handy though because it has an actual subscription copy insert certified by CGC. (I love how you can see the owners hands in the slab).

Well any differences would be fascinating, but the one I'm after is the product code. A key difference between the direct editions and the newsstand issues is that the newsstand editions have product codes and the direct ones don't. So using your Star Wars 49 as an example, if you look at the newsstand edition ... You can see that under the month there's a product code of 02817 which is repeated in the bar code. but the direct editions don't have any of that. I would love to know what the subscription editions have. Ideally I would love some examples from earlier in the 70's, preferably before the bar codes started up (pre 1976) but this would be a great start. I cannot thank you enough for checking on this.

Thanks Eric. It's actually the pre-direct days I'm interested in, so you da man (hopefully). Do you have any copies of 1970's Marvel or DC's that you know for a fact were subscription copies? I'd be fascinated to know if there any differences to newsstand copies.

Happy Easter, Guys.... While I have your attention... much time has been devoted to the difference between newsstand and direct editions but does anyone know if there is a difference between subscription editions and newsstand? ( I ask that in all innocence assuming that there is a 10,000 post thread on here somewhere with people threatening to kill each other over whether a particular full stop means something or not). I thought I would ask the question here in the collegiate and respectful confines of our love nest before I swim out into the shark tank. Anyone have any info on this? Remember the bit in the Sparta video where we see the subscription editions being processed differently? Anyone? Anyone?

This is a very cool stamp, Robot Any idea what it is?

I do like it when sellers honestly display faults rather than try to hide them. Particularly when they take pics of chopped out MVS's rather than keep quiet. The lengths some sellers go to crop flaws out of the pics is nothing short of fiendish.

@Albert Tatlock one for your collection. Dated Aug 3rd. Mike puts in on sale at Aug 1st.

Apparently in the 70's, there was an assembly line of Ethels obliviously sticking porn into packets and covers all day long while chatting about the price of fish and how funny Frank Spencer was last night. I guess it's shocking for the first 5 minutes. Adverts for GBD in the 70's stated 'experienced ladies required'. Initially I wondered how much experience one needed to stamp a cover or stick something in a box. Then I realised it was not that kind of experience they were thinking about. That said, I'm sure you're right in that 'Man' magazine raised a lot more eyebrows in 1959 than some of the more blatant erotica of the 70's.

Hang on a sec. How come we're at 4101? I was just basking in the glow of bagging 4000 a minute ago. I've barely worn the tiara and I haven't opened a single supermarket.

Maybe as opposed to kindly, end-of-life, Dignitas type assassins. Which girl do you reckon is Miss Smooth & Fragrant? I think if she intentionally led Yank Agent Steve Graff into a deadly face off with a mob of vicious assassins, then my money's on the girl on the right. Her scarlet underwear is definitely designed to lure. If it was unintentional, I reckon it was the other girl as her bra and pants don't match so she clearly wasn't expecting to get down to her shreddies.

I assume that 9d is a sticker? Also, is there a phone number for Miss Smooth & Fragrant?

You're gonna need more popcorn as well.

I hate to tell you, but There are unbranded ones earlier in the 70's, replacing the T&P branded ones which have nothing to do with PV's or even price changes.

It's coming And yes, it explains why there are still stampey stampies as well as PV's.

So in November 1973, Charltons cost 20c and are stamped at 6p. Then in December, they're stamped at 7p or have dual pricing, but if dual pricing it's at 6p. Then in January 1974, they're dual priced at 6p, but with 7p stickers over the 6p, or are cents copies stamped at 7p. Then in Feb dual priced at 6p, but with 8p stickers. Then the 74 hiatus. Then in May 74, the US price goes up to 25c, but the dual printed price remains at 6p, however the dual price is again stickered over at 8p. OK, well that seems like a pretty smooth operation. The 1978 DC thing reminds me of decimalisation at T&P. It's weird how T&P carried on using the old stamps for years after the numbers had stopped meaning anything, and then right before decimalisation, they changed to the ampersand stamp, but still at old money when that was clearly the moment to go new or dual. Then they introduce a dual old/new money stamp which was clearly a great idea, except they only use it for one month and then go over to a third new set of stamps with decimal pricing. I'm guessing that a very pretty girl started working at the stamp shop. I can't work out why else it suddenly became necessary to buy a new set of stamps every month. Even more weirdly (and don't take this to the bank because I've only checked it on 2 or 3 titles), they go over to unbranded stamps from (cd) Aug 1975, which makes a lot of sense as the company has just restructured and the T&P warehouse is now the GBD warehouse. However, when the price changes from 10p to 12p in August 1976, the newly minted 12p stamps say T&P again, which is weird because I think T&P barely exists at this point except as a largely defunct imprint of Warner Communications. Then right before they go over to PV's (or more likely at the same time), they change back to a new set of (unbranded) stamps. Must be new because they're 12p. But these are not created for a price change. They just happen. My theory about the dual stamps in 1970 was always that they were made without a T&P brand deliberately but without enough forethought. The dual pricing 5p and 1/- was the best idea, but I think it caused issues identifying the distributor as the T&P logo was so familiar. I theorised they realised their mistake and ordered new stamps with the name back on. The stamp was too small to legibly support the name and 2 different price variations so they did the unthinkable and went decimal. However, all the malarky over the next 8 years makes me think it could have been anything. Just anything, I tell you!!!

Sub Mariner #1 do you? (Don't get excited, the price tag is brutal). This is the only one I've seen with 3 Marvels. Unique DOUBLE DOUBLE COMICS 1968 Sub-Mariner 1 X-Men 44 Spider-man 57 Blackhawk | eBay

This is where you (Stamp Man) and I (Distribution Man) part company. Whilst Thorpe and Porter was still a registered company at Companies House, was still an imprint for a few odds and sods of publishing and was probably still referred to as inter-company shorthand at Warner's, it did not exist in any meaningful sense by 1978. In 1971 the head office was relocated to London and the European businesses were restructured under Williams Publishing. This left the sole remaining piece of T&P as the warehouse in Thurmaston. This became the GBD warehouse in April 1975. By a series of contortions that I'll spare you (for the moment ), it was owned by Moore Harness by 1978 and for whatever reason, the model of buying up a scramble of scattergun DC returns cheaply was no longer desirable. Moore Harness had operated with far fewer reps so I suspect they retained a fair proportion of the old T&P infrastructure when they expanded, but clearly the business model of buying effectively second hand stock from the US, paying whatever they got charged for all it to be re-collated and shipped, getting it over here, re-collating it all to distribute through all the bunching and multi-batching, then sending the chaos out to newsagents in the hope that super intrepid DC fans would scour the land trying to buy issues consistently instead of just buying Marvel or the Beezer, then getting all the returns back and doing God know what with them by this point.....was simply not profitable any more. It was clearly a lot easier, cheaper, more streamlined, more manageable, less labour intensive, less-dedicated-staff-implied and more economic to just get WCP to print PV's and ship them straight from Sparta to Thurmaston. I assume it was actually more expensive per comic than buying the leftovers, but if having a consistently delivered, month-to-month supply with a UK price on it massively reduced every other cost AND (key point) actually resulted in you selling the bloody things in newsagents at the end of it all, then I can easily imagine it was far more profitable. Just for a giggle, let's for a moment consider the distances involved in distributing comics from Illinois all across the USA (maybe we're only talking about returns from the North Eastern seaboard but even so), then gathering them all back in, shipping them to the UK and then distributing them all over again to the UK and then, when they fail to sell yet again, gathering them all back up and sending them to the pulpers. It would be 1,000 miles from Illinois to the Eastern Seaboard. Let's say another 400 miles to gather all the unsold wholesale copies back up, recollate them and haul them to the docks. Then 3,500 miles from Newark to Felixstowe. 150 miles to Thurmaston (....it's dark, and we're wearing sunglasses.....). Let's say a couple of hundred miles of UK redistribution (you can get most places in England & Wales on 200 miles, let's leave Scotland out of it). And another couple of hundred to gather them all back up and drive them to the pulper (potentially an undercall). That's about five and a half thousand miles of road, rail and sea shipping. Just to not sell a comic and make zero revenue. And let's remember that the price of oil quadrupled in the OPEC crisis. Distribution was nowhere near the same cost it had been. Just for reference, at this point, it took Sparta one-twelfth of one second to print a comic. Clearly paying an extra penny per comic (or whatever the difference was) but actually selling the damned thing was a penny well spent. You can see how, back in 1959, when anything American, particularly the long missed 'yank mags' were flying off the shelves, Fred's credo was 'give me your poor, your tired, your huddled masses' but 20 years later, when everyone had a colour TV and every kid could watch cartoons on it, the trick was no longer to just fill a spinner rack with as much brightly coloured, American-looking paper as possible. Your only chance of a profit was to build a dedicated readership and actually sell a (very high) proportion of whatever you were transporting thousands of miles. So my point (yup, there's a point, I'm as surprised as anyone by now) is that the 71 pence variant experiment was not only a different kettle of fish (I'll come to that on the distribution thread), but it was also instigated by a different company. From my perspective, down here in the bunker, I think we should be wary of saying that DC experimented with PV's in 1971 and then recommenced in 1978. It's technically perfectly correct, but it jumps over a lot of stuff. PS Have you noticed how GBD carried on using the old T&P stamps up to (cover date) Nov 1977 and then bought a new bunch of non-branded stamps exactly 3 months before they went over to PV's? If you allow for the production/distribution window, it ties up i.e. the Feb cover dated comics were the first PVs and they were on sale in the US in November, so the point at which GBD start using non-branded stamps is the same point at which they must have commissioned the first PV's to be printed. So this is potentially the point at which MH take over GBD. Need to do some more work there. PPS It's funny to think, isn't it, that when Fred started up, one of the biggest blockers to printing comics was paper rationing (until 1953). When the ban lifted, he started buying leftover supply because the US printed hundreds of thousands more comics than they could ever sell. By the 60's, Sparta were not only printing hundreds of thousands more than they could sell, they were doing it in a matter of minutes. And by the 70's, it was no longer even a question of how many millions of comics you could print, but whether it was even economical to load them onto a truck and drive them to retailers.

Ta. I've got a new theory about the 71 PV's which I think will sit better on the distribution thread (with a link here), but I think I can add something about the 78 PV's which you will like (though it's a bit fuzzy).

Never noticed that. Good spot.

@Get Marwood & I Steve, when the 78 PV's kick in, what is the overlap with the stamps? i.e. the stamped ones carry on alongside the PV's for X amount of time before the stamps disappear? You'd expect it to be 2 or 3 months, so it the case that we have stamps, then PV's & stamps for 2-3 months, then a PV hiatus (so only stamps) and then the PV's come back and the stamps are gone forever? If you tell me you haven't done this work, I will be taken aback. Aback, I tell you.

If we're allowing that it could say SB, Sal Buscema maybe, at a stretch?