Malacoda

Well, it was clearly a different world. Hmmmmm.....I've got 60p to spend, what shall I get? Xmen #2 and #3, ASM #3, Silver Surfer #1 and #2 and #3, JIM #84 and #85.....or FF #32? I mean TOS 39 is £1.50 and FF32 is 60p? ( for reference that means TOS 39 was 2.5 times the value of FF 32.....now it's more like 110 times).

That's a really cool find, Albert. I mean, we know from countless anecdotal accounts (not least your own) that they were SOR, but there it is in print. The Smoking Gun. The US wholesalers were all denoted by a single letter code, so it might well be that UK wholesalers were too.

Also, my old pal Doc Strange 179, which I still suspect is out there....

So, speaking of fanzines.....(master of the unobtrusive segue that I am)....it's interesting to read the comic prices in the for sale bits. Annoyingly, they rarely specify ND but the prices themselves are quite suggestive. @Get Marwood & I remember when we were young, back on page 79, and you were saying that neither you nor @Garystar had ever found a copy of FF 32 indicating that it was ND, and then we founds loads of stamped ones straight away (as is normal). Well, check out the price of FF 32 compared to #7 upwards in this price list from 1973. Number 32 was rare as rocking horse droppings even 9 years after distribution (or lack of it).

Agree. Must be randos or we'd have seen more. Interesting though that it's TOS and 71 and then TOS 73, both cents copies, isn't it? That's too close for coincidence.

I think this was probably a wise request to make. Despite my puerile post above, I think everyone on this particular thread is collegiate, polite and respectful. Having confined myself largely to this thread, I was genuinely shocked by some of the haranguing and insulting language bandied about on other threads. In particular, people who are knowledgeable being openly insulting to newbies who are just asking an honest question. There were quite a few threads where I was actually interested in the subject matter but stopped reading because the tone was so vile. So hats off to you, Eric, and to the other contributors. This thread is nearly 200 pages of polite, informed discourse (with only occasional lowerings of the tone by myself and other reprobates).

This TTA 96 was obviously so furious at missing the 2nd hiatus he was determined to be early for the next one.

I'd love to know where JB Distributors fits into the mix (I've never been able to work out what was going on in Scotland). What's weird about this is that comics had cost 10d for well over a year by this point and there were PV's of TOS 73 and as far as we know, no T&P stamps of it. This upsets so many apple carts, I'll be making apple pies for weeks.

If political chatboards use the same filtering, it must get interesting. If you're a US politician called Richard it's practically compulsory to be called Dcik. Dcik Cheney was the [insert joke here] Vice President, Nixon was often referred to as a dcik, a famous supporter of Susana Mendoza was called Dcik Bigger and the US Ambassador to Denmark was called Dcik Swett. I also remember thinking when Lance Armstrong got into a spat with MR. Pound about doping, who is going to settle this? Dixie Normous?

After thousands of erudite & relevant comments, it's when we're flinging 'Jonty person_without_enough_empathycrack', 'Juniper Blunderslut' & 'Jiffy Bumsnot' around that Mike from the CGC happens to stick his head round the door and catch us running round with no trousers on. It's always just when the class has gone completely feral that Teach comes back into the room. Edit : 'Jonty person_without_enough_empathycrack' ? Superb. I'm not even going to edit that.

Gold Key were the only ones who refused to use Sparta because they regarded the quality as not good enough (for most of the others, particularly Marvel, it was an upgrade). I would imagine therefore that their wholesale price was more expensive and therefore ditto the retail.

Most outlaws had a price on their head. No wonder he was so keen to avoid the stamp.

As you say, Kid Colt 131 has T&P stamps, but it also has our other friends. Did we agree at some point that the very similar looking triangular version of the (presumed) Gold Star stamp was the higher priced equivalent of the 10d oblong stamp? I don't think I've seen oblong 1/6 stamps, but only these toblerones.....which would make these the droids you're looking for?? May be mis-remembering. Also, as you say, T&P stamps..... And, you know, just because why not..... Landsakes, that critter got hisself branded so many which ways y'd think he'd been to the Cattle Baron's ball, and no mistake.

Some interesting comics on the bay last week. These are shilling stamped T&P's from the late 60's, re-stickered to new decimal prices and re-distributed later. These are more of the seaside specials of which we've heard many times, but these came with one of most clearly delineated back stories I've heard so far. These were bought from new by a farmer's son who couldn't get such comics in his neighbourhood, but used to buy these re-circulated ones when they visited the family holiday caravan at the seaside. The selection was always very random so he could never build any runs of anything. They were displayed in a classic spinner rack in a literal beach side store on the coast at Heachum in Norfolk. I've encountered this tale of Marvels & DCs, particularly recycled ones, appearing at seaside locations many times and we've talked about it here on the south coast, the west country, Wales, in the Northern resorts and in Kent, but I think this is the first time I've heard the story from Norfolk, which kind of completes the picture (excluding Scotland). Most interesting is the Cap #117 which was distributed, according to both Alan Austin and Duncan McAlpine, but I've never seen one until now. The seller is certain that there is no possibility that it came from a comic shop or dealer later as none of his comics did, nor could have done. Shame the sticker was peeled off.

That was his locum, Doctor Broom.

And he's making a selling point of the 'super rare' UK price! Thanks for posting this.

And a whole week before the on sale date according to Mike, which proves nothing but arguably makes it look more like a stamp from somewhere in the wholesale chain than a retailer. The funny thing is that according to Mike's dates, SS 7 - 18 are all approx dates (meaning he estimated from a variety of arcane sources), whereas 10 is the only one of the later ones that he gives a firm date for (usually meaning he got a release date from an in house ad or similar source). As Doc Strange once said, comic collecting has no masters, only adventurers.

Hi - do you have any history on the product reference codes? They clearly pre-date the UPC codes (or at least pre-date them in bar code format). I have a couple of pet theories about why these were introduced, but have never been able to verify. Thanks

Cap, Thor & Iron Man, front right, addressing everyone else further back on the left.... Next month, same again....

That said (and I think Steve has done some of this) it would be interesting to collect multiple date stamps for as many copies as possible (not that that would necessarily prove they were retailer rather than wholesaler). According to Mike's, number 10 of the Surfer reached the beach on September 23rd and here he is.... but then this one made landfall two days later.

LOL well actually we don't even know that for sure. It could have been returned by the dealer and found its way back out into the wild by some other method, like the ballast comics. But I agree, the logical assumption is that it was bought from a retailer. I don't think I'll be delving into the mystery of the retailer stamps any time soon. Next up I'm going back to the summer of 71 and those pesky DC PV's and then it's going to be the Unified Field Theory of Stamping Numbers, but that's going to be like watching the entire MCU back to back. But less fun.

I agree. If it was just the top copy it would make more sense to me if it were the distributor, but then, to what purpose? Vendors stamping / marking them makes more sense, but then why are the vast majority of surviving comics unmarked if this was common / necessary / logical practice? I guess it was just some did, some didn't. On the plus side, from the normal perspective, it's great to have comics unspoilt, but from our perspective, it's pure gold when you find these. But if it was necessary for some vendors to do it, then why was it so few of them? Right, but I think (don't quote me on this) almost every example of a (presumed) retailer date stamp I've seen on a comic on sale in the UK has also not had a T&P stamp. There are a very few exceptions: (of course) one of @Get Marwood & I 's Charltons which was originally on sale in the US in December 1958, so it clearly has a very atypical & unrepresentative history. This JIM annual Action 328 This ASM is an odd one. I think all the rest of them I've seen are US copies that have floated over having been originally purchased in the US and then brought over by dealers / collectors. The fact that I've only come across 3 of these in the many thousands of comics I've looked through, and when I do see a retailer stamp on a comic for sale in the UK it is almost invariably not one that passed under Ethel's fair hand, suggests to me that they're all US sold copies that came over later. There is another thing. Despite the incredible scarcity of these stamps, I do seem to find examples on those comics for which I have repeatedly looked for T&P stamped issues. This could just be a case of you-find-what-you look-for, but the fact that, try as I might, I have looked through hundreds or even thousands of examples of these comics on sale in the UK and I have never found a T&P stamp but I have found one or more of these super-rare retailer stamps, indicates to me that they were not imported causing dealers to bring over US copies which means these ND or LD issues have a higher propensity for the retailer stamps. Needless to say, @Garystar 's all time fave falls into this category. And my own favourite escapee. We'd need a ton more examples of these, but when, after having searched unsuccessfully a hundred times for a T&P imported comic, I am never surprised to come across one these retailer stamps. I think there could be a correlation. What do you reckon? PS your point about the imports being a mix of returns from news vendors and never-left-the-warehouse jobbies would explain both the presence & scarcity of the retailer stamps.

I agree, that's probably correct and a very good point. Although personally, I've only seen dozens (maybe over a hundred) variations on the arrival dates and there are more than 100,000 towns and cities in America, so there could easily be thousands of local and regional wholesalers. Would you say that's enough to account for all the variation we've seen? I tend to feel like if it were all the retailers, including the hundreds of thousands of newsstand vendors, we'd see a lot more, however it is only going to be the top copy of a bundle that get the arrival stamp, so it's hard to tell. I'm not actually sure what the purpose of it was - unless the vendor actually kept the top copy to retain the date, but that doesn't seem likely (if they did, we wouldn't have them all, would we?) I assume in many cases the top copy was the first one put out and therefore the first one sold, so actually a disproportionately high number of them survive in circulation because they tended not to go back as returns.

Here's something I would love to know: DC distributed across the US and then sent returns to T&P. They may have sent returns from retailers, returns from wholesalers (there may practically be no difference) or leftovers from the original print runs. We don't know. With Marvel, comics (usually bespoke printed PV's) were sent straight from the presses to the docks However, the DC comics sent to T&P were second distribution returns from the US distribution network. WCP (Sparta) was a printer, not a distributor, but they dominated the market by having a highly sophisticated distribution system for first delivery to wholesalers. They did not, however, own any of the comics they produced. These were in effect owned by the distributors on a sale or return basis. As far as we know, none of the publishers had what we would now call implants at Sparta. If comics were returned there at all, it was for pulping, not for redistribution, but as Sparta didn't (to my knowledge) manufacture paper, the returns would have gone to paper mills for re-pulping. So... If we know anecdotally that comics coming back from retailers were partial (just covers, later parts of covers and still later nothing returned, just done on trust) then where did the returns that went to T&P come from? (We have speculated they were returns from wholesalers, not retailers). But also....where did they go to? There must have been a team re-sorting the tens of thousands of returns into sensibly mixed bundles for export to the UK. If they had just randomly sent the first 200,000 (or whatever number) comics that came back, then every month T&P would have received tens of thousands of copies of each of the titles whose shelf life expired first and zero of the rest of that month's titles. They would have to have been sorted into a saleable mix of titles, with T&P presumably clamouring for the more saleable ones to dominate the shipment. Where was all this re-sorting going on? Anyone? Anyone? Bueller?

Although we should probably count our blessings. I've had a couple of one-in-a-lifetime moments because someone just wanted to get shot of 'a load of old children's comics'. From the perspective of accurate grading it would be great if they knew what they were doing, but from the perspective of getting a grail for a song, that's only going to happen in a world of snooty ignorance.