Malacoda

Thanks Eric. I fully agree and I'm probably the worst culprit for bringing everything back to facts and figures, so I really appreciate what you're saying. Without the shared love of comics, we'd be just a bunch of oldsters banging on about inkstamps and indicias. Here's to the joy.

Once again, your oft stated credo is substantiated: the fastest way to make something appear is to firmly predict it never will. And, by the way, this has the split old/new money stamp which is the appropriate stamp for that month, and that month only, so it's not one that came in later. How great is that cover? I love Adkins inking on Kane. This just leaves Mar-Vell 13 which is rather interesting to me. About 40 years ago, my friend Nick's Dad was going to New York on business, so Nick gave him a list of all his gap issues - not the FF1 type stuff, but normal priced comics that had been gaps in his collection for many years. His Dad obviously never checked the list and just handed it over to a comic shop guy who must have thought it was Christmas. Nick's Dad came back with the entire list. We sat down and immediately began devouring comics in the sort of companionable silence that I imagine would last about 12 seconds with Millennials. We were there all day until eventually his mum chased us out into the garden to get some exercise and fresh air. What I remember most keenly, because it was on the top of the pile, because I read it first and because I had never seen it before, was Captain Marvel 13. You have to bear in mind that we'd been collecting for about 7 or 8 years by this point, and we were lucky enough to spend our pocket money in the London comic shops (Dark They Were, Comic Showcase, Forbidden Planet, Eternal, LTS etc) and at the London comic marts. So to have never seen a copy of this took some doing. Is it a coincidence that 40 years later, it's the last issue we can't find a stamp for?

You haven't forgotten. The actual window, the 7th phase of Marvel T&P after the 3rd hiatus goes from April 1969 to July 1971, but we have examples of stamps for every title in April 1969 and May - July 1971, so the ones on the Lost List above are May 69 to April 71. Most of the ones missing in the core titles are in the first year. If we could find Hulk 137 & 138, ASM 94, DD 69, Captain Marvel 21 and Surfer 15,16,17, we'd actually have the last 16 months sewn up for the MU. I suspect Captain Marvel 21 may not have stamps (shorter print run due to cancellation) and I wouldn't be surprised if the Surfers never reached our shores either. The other 4 I'm sure are out there, but in what quantities we will never know.

My pleasure. So this is Marvel comics between May 1969 and April 1971 cover dates. There are, we believe PV's and cover stamped cents issues for all of these. The PV's are easy to find, but some of the cover stamps have yet to present themselves. These are the ones that get the top prizes: Hulk 116, 137, 138. ASM 76, 79, 94 Avengers 65, 70, 72 X men 56, 58, 64 (also, 62 - you found that stickered one that looks like a cs, but I wouldn't kick you out of bed if you found a better one). DD 54, 58, 59, 62, 69 IM 15, 21, 22 Captain Marvel 13, 21 Subby 17, 20, 23 Surfer 15, 16, 17 Chamber of Darkness 6,7,8 Monsters on the Prowl 9 Where Monsters Dwell 3,4,5,6,7 Amazing Adventures 3 Astonishing Tales 2,3,4 The following are the ones that Gary ticked off so I ticked them off as well, but I am a bit of a completist (you will be surprised to hear) so would love to have scans of these too: Thor 167 Hulk 125 IM 18 If anyone can post a scan of any of these, my little cup of joy would overflow.

@Garystar @Get Marwood & I @Kevin.J Gents, apologies for the tardy thanks. Been away for a few days. But thank you all for the 69/71 cover stamp issues. Really can't thank you enough.

We also tend to forget about John Menzies but they were absolutely massive, not only as a high street newsagents/stationers, but also importers/exporters, to the point that they started their own freight airline, which is the only bit of it left these days. I think the date you site is the most telling thing. Whereas comics in the US were only just coming out of the post-Wertham trough in 60/61, the UK import ban had recently lifted and the likes of Fred Thorpe were standing by the UK docks with the engine running, so I'd imagine an absolute ton of leftovers and returns got unearthed and sent over at very short notice in that period.

Hi Gary, Great to see you When you previously sent me your work on this, I took it as Gospel and went from there (i.e. I didn't repeat any of your work). Over the year+ of searching. I've obviously stumbled onto most of the ones you sent me, but there are a few of yours I've never found. If you have any scans, these would be lovely as they'd complete my record. The ten that you have that I still don't are: Thor 167, Hulk 125, Avengers 84, X men 63, DD 57, Iron Man 16, 17 & 18, 23, 25. At the start, I was finding scans of your ones all the time, but obviously as my focus has tightened, I'm not stumbling across these ones any more (and I was always focussing on the ones that neither of us had). If you (or anyone) has scans of stamped copies of these, it would great to have a full record of all the covers.

I'm useless at grading. The fact that you can still have tanning, corner blunting, spine roll, creases up to a quarter of an inch with colour break & discoloured staples with tearing on a 7.0 FN/VF is bonkers to me. The system should take account of an accumulation of defects (I know good graders do, but it's not inherent in Overstreet's grading tables).

Did you get any sense of a pattern? E.g. if the shipping was every 28 days rather than every month, you'd get a constant regression i.e. the stamping dates would fall progressively earlier through each month until the cycle went round again. Then we'd have to match a 13 month year to a 9 stamp cycle. I'm not sure anyone would be turned on at the thought of having to plot that out. I stand corrected. (you probably went into this in great detail at the time which I've failed to retain,,,,apologies if so).

Up to a point. And then everything changes.

I agree, I now think all the super hero ones will. From the perspective of my personal bent (leave it), the Tower of Shadows / Chamber of Darkness type titles are actually more interesting at this point because you can see T&P flexing their import order for the first time. It's the first time you ever get non D titles.

Stickers are always interesting. This one seems to be replacing the shilling price, which is odd as this is April 1970 when pretty much everything was double priced and certainly no one was confused about what a shilling was. If it was going round for a second time when 5p had largely supplanted the shilling it would make sense, but then it would have to have spent a year under Ethel's desk. But you're absolutely right, this is definitely a shilling PV with a 5p sticker over the shilling not a cents copy. I can tell by taking off my Clark Kent glasses and looking straight through the sticker. The rest of you will just have to notice that the Curtis logo is missing.

I've seen this stamp a few times. What's interesting is that Marvels never cost 6p in the T&P era. I've catalogued it as stamping mystery number 2,378,892 and I have top men looking into it. Top. Men.

I may have a go, but I think I'd have to sample all/most/many of the titles over maybe 4 or 5 years on ebay and other sources. That said, if a comic did consistently show substantially more surviving stamps than PV's over that period, I think you'd have to conclude that there were more stamps in the first place. Obviously, it's possible that there were 10,000 PV's that all got binned and 2,000 stamps that all survived, but you'd really have to want to believe that to raise it as an objection. The good thing about the late 60's is that there were a lot of collectors by this point, so there is hard core of comics being retained from first purchase.

Indeed, but I think that fact indicates that the volumes varied . The thing I need to track at some point is the amount of PV's that crop up vs the amount of stamps. If I'm right, the stamps should have a lot more variability (be very interesting if they actually outnumbered the PV's on some titles or in some months). There's a few other projects ahead of that on the priority list though. Thanks again for these.

Is it my birthday and nobody told me?

That sticker really does look like 6p doesn't it? Surely it must be 5p though? Unless it was stickered MUCH later. It does look like there's a T&P stamp underneath it, doesn't it? They weren't 6p for another 2-3 years. Mind you, we know that comics hung around at T&P for 6 years and more.

Dude! That finishes off the FF i.e. we now know that there was a stamp variant for every PV. This is only the second title completed. Your No Prize in in the mail.

Mmmm. Indeed. You mean #13, but yes, I see the oh-so-familiar splotch. That might actually be the most disputed comic of all time (Paul Gravett had it as ND, Alan Austin thought it was distributed and Duncan thinks it's a stamp. I think you're on the fence, but definitely not a PV and I think it was ND). By this point, a sticker could easily be a comic shop sticker. Dark They Were always put stickers over the US prices. The list of comics for which I'd love to find a stamped example is now: Hulk 116, 137, 138. FF 102 ASM 76, 79, 94, 95. Avengers 65, 70, 72 X men 56, 58, 60, 62, 64 DD 54, 58, 59, 62, 69 IM 15, 21, 22 Captain Marvel 13, 21 Subby 17, 20, 23 Surfer 15, 16, 17 Chamber of Darkness 6,7,8 Monsters on the Prowl 9 Where Monsters Dwell 3,4,5,6,7 Amazing Adventures 3 Astonishing Tales 2,3,4 all between April 1969 and August 1971 cover dates. Those X men still make think that these were used to make up total consignment volumes.

Enjoy your break. If you're away for a couple of weeks, I may have a stamp numbering theory for you to catch up on, but I imagine by the time you see it, everyone will have already have agreed it's the only possible answer and there will be nothing left for you to do but agree with us all.

All?

True dat. The entry for T&P gives their address as "Melton Road, Thurmaston, Oadby, Leicester" which is a mash up of two different addresses 10 miles apart. It says " At first, the company was known for repackaging American comics and pulp magazines for the UK market. Later on, it became a publisher of original material" but actually, T&P's first original novel was the fabulously titled "Susie Goes to Soho" in June 1947. Fred didn't start repackaging American magazines for a full year after this. It also says that Gilberton 'acquired Thorpe & Porter from Fred Thorpe in the fall of 1959'. It seems like Gilberton became investors at some point, possibly 1962 when Bill Kanter joined T&P to supervise the new Classics Illustrated, but not so sure about 1959. According to the Wikipedia entry, this little tidbit comes from page 315 of "Jones, William B., Jr., Classics Illustrated: A Cultural History, with Illustrations (Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland & Company, Inc., 2002). Second edition, 2011". Well, page 315 of the second edition is part of the index for a start and secondly, even the chapter that is about T&P doesn't say Gilberton's bought them, so that must have come from somewhere else. So, yes, fully agree....wikipedia is a great start place, but you'd want corroboration before you took anything to the bank.

Have you just ploughed through the whole thing? Hats off, if so. I imagine that would take some stamina by this point.

9d, 10d, 1/- ......you can't put a price on Victory. Apparently. (10d is the headline price, 9d would be a discounted price, I imagine and 1/- was the price in Ireland).

Hmmm. Whilst going through a box of what I can only describe as 'old toot' I discovered this Charlton Atomic Mouse from Jan 1961