Malacoda

Thanks Kevin. Just in case it wasn't clear, the 'it' that stopped was the UK printed pence variants, but these scans indeed demonstrate that the GS ones were circulated as stamps.

You know, it might actually be that the answer to the DC PV’s is staring us straight in the face, and this unrelated quote from Roy Thomas is the answer. Carmine Infantino has been quoted as saying that the decision to raise the page count and the price had nothing to do with him (and he was publisher of DC at the time). The decision was taken in a smoke filled room between Paul Wendell (the President of National Periodical Publications), Mark Inglesias (Head of Accounts for Kinney) and Harold Chamberlin (who was President of IND, although I think IND was gone by 1970 – so Chamberlin was now President of Warner Publishing). If PV’s was a DC-level project to test the market / system in case there was a problem with stamping the returns in the UK, and the 25c project was a higher level imposition to which Infantino was not party, it’s quite possible that the 2 projects got onto the slate together without ever being discussed in the same room ( I mean it actually seems quite certain from what Infantino says that they never were discussed in the same room), and that it wasn’t until the moment the two projects collided that someone said: ‘wait, are we really experimenting with UK priced editions at the same moment we’re changing everything to 25c, 52 page editions? If this 25c price point kills the market, we’re going to be left with a ton of returns. Is this really the moment we want to move away from shipping our returns to the UK? The timing of this is nuts!’ At which point, they hastily pulled the plug on the PV’s. For this to be correct, of course, you’d have to start up printing PV’s of the normal size editions, and then suddenly and unexpectedly stop right at the moment the GS editions start. Which is exactly what happened. Which is why you get one GS 25c, 7.5p comic (Flash #208) and then it stops. Could that work as a theory?

No, your knowledge still dwarfs mine. I could well be wrong. As you know, my bete noir is the myth that the dock strikes caused the Marvel hiatuses when they demonstrably didn’t, but people have said ‘well, these things happened around the same time, so they must have been connected’. I may have just created my own private dock strike. A key thing for me is the way everyone remembers and has written about the difference between Marvel and DC. It seems a very common recollection that Marvel were more regular, reliable and arrived month by month where DC were far more chaotic. I think (correct me please) that what you’ve found with bunching and multi-batching confirms this – it’s more DC than Marvel? How do we explain that? Well… As the Robot points out, the DC returns thing is a potential explanation for the multi-batching. As he says, if T&P were getting a load from the overprint and then subsequent repeats from the returns, it explains why they turn up in multiple batches, sometimes seemingly months apart. You don’t even need to believe that the overspill printing played a part. Returns drifting in from wholesalers over many months alone would explain it. According to Carmine Infantino, the returns could come in anywhere up to a year and according to Monroe Frohlich, there was no real deadline. If a wholesaler or retailer found a long-forgotten batch, they would still honour the credit. Conversely, I guess it can explain the bunching as well, if you accept that returns were piled by IND, then multiple months sent together, they were stamped all at the same time by Ethel but then they were drip-fed onto the market in a monthly fashion by T&P. Messy, though, right? The problem it then gives us is….why did this happen with Marvel? Their schedule with PV’s was pretty clearly monthly and people remember it that way too. "Rich, you insufficiently_thoughtful_person, the bunching and multi-batching is clearly only visible on the stamped cents copies, not the PV’s." OK, but, come on. Are we supposed to believe it’s humming like a well oiled machine while it’s PV’s, then turns into chaos when it’s stamps, then turns back into a well-oiled machine when the PV’s come back? Steve, can you please confirm: Is bunching & multi-batching much more prevalent on DC than Marvel? Where there is bunching & multi-batching on Marvel titles, is it only during the hiatuses? Or do titles like Cap, Sgt Fury, Marvel Tales, MGC, MSH, Captain Savage & the Surfer which have long runs of stamps also bunch and multi batch?

OK, one thing to be clear about in my theory is that this is where Marvel and T&P part ways (which it was). So the theory is: Starting in 1969, Kinney begin to consolidate their recent purchases around Warner’s, which basically shreds T&P as most of their output becomes part of Williams. In early 1971, they announce the closure of the Thurmaston HQ and corporate re-structuring and whatever the 1971 versions of ‘rightsizing’ ‘vertical integration’ ‘synergy’ ‘sustainability’ and ‘hyperlocality’ were i.e. you’re going to lose your job, Ethel. Now, Marvel must surely already want to get out of bed with T&P. To say it’s not the company they got into bed with is quite the understatement. In fact, it’s basically DC now. Maybe they began to look around at this point. World Distributors were already producing their annuals, so it’s unimaginable to me that no conversations were taking place before this. Maybe as a result of the dissolution of T&P, or maybe as I theorise, the PV + stamping option was really attractive and the loss of it was the last straw, Marvel move UK distribution over to World Distributors. The reason I suspect the shutdown of Thurmaston is key is that the two things happen at the same time. It may be that there was no interruption to stamping and Marvel just decided that this was the moment to cut ties. So….the disappearance of Marvel stamps on the July issues is not directly indicative of a stamping issue at T&P, it’s the moment Marvel moved over to World, who had no capacity for stamping. So from that moment, the cessation of stamping at Marvel has no bearing on whatever was happening on the fronts of DC comics. It may be caused by the same initial cause, but the two part ways and everything Marvel published after 13/4/71 is either PV or ND. We’ll come back to DC when we've all had a good snooze.

This is definitely a key point. When Marvel went into the B&W magazines (now having the big stick of Curtis at their disposal) they deliberately swamped the stands with more product than they could sell just to rule the school. They pretty much put Skywald out of business this way.

I don't think this puts any kind of dent in your theory. I think the extent to which Goodman kept Stan in the loop was as little as possible and the extent to which he kept Roy in the loop was not at all.

Yes, I definitely think it was a decision that was taken and then speedily reversed. I doubt it had anything to do with being kind to Ethel, though. The key thing is that it's not just a flip of cover design or even of physical stamping practice. It's a flip from sending returns to sending new product. It's massive. That's why I suspect it was something insuperable. Even for Superman.

Yes, I agree. It's like the point I made about the PV's. Right or wrong, in the comics published in that 9 day period, Superman, Supergirl, Batman & Flash get PV's and Strange Adventures, Forever People, House of Secrets & Our Army at War don't. It's not an accident, is it?

It's by absolutely NO means absolutely definite that the DC’s were all returns. The sheer weight of anecdotal evidence from the time and since means that we tend to accept the words of ones who know. Not just collectors and comic lovers, but a lot of the guys who created the fanzines back in the day were Mike Lake, Dez Skinn, Rob Barrow, Paul Gravett types. They knew what they were talking about. And I think it’s true, but what exactly a ‘return’ is is another matter. They are more likely made up of these unaccounted parts of the print run as you say. They may have been returns from regional or local wholesalers rather than returns from the actual retailers / news vendors. Certainly, none of the DC’s I ever saw looked like they had spent weeks outdoors hanging out of a rack in Times Square in a New York winter. And, if to get his credit back, the news vendor had to tear off all or part of the cover and return only that, they’re certainly not those ones. Apart from anything else, imagine how much easier it was to send a bale of never-been-kissed, neat, original consignment with the batch info on the front comics (compared the sodden dog eared pile of randos from various months that would have come back from the four corners of the Earth). I think some of these have to be returns from the field ( I assume some/many of the returns from local & regional wholesalers would have been returns from their customers). If they had all been out of the over-print, surely T&P’s supplies would have been far more orderly, less erratic, chronologically saner and more like Marvel. I think it’s the word ‘return’ that is a lot more complex than we give it credit for.

This is the stuff. This is fascinating. I've seen this alluded to but never nailed it down. It sounds like exactly the kind of the response Martin Goodman would have had to the Nixon shock and 11615 (and Goodman was still running the show at this point, he just no longer owned it). Where it kind of falls over a bit for me is: 1) It’s often portrayed as a kind of trick that Goodman pulled on DC, but it seems like it was an absolute saving grace . 2) There was a massive paper shortage and raging inflation in 1971, so the story that DC got somehow tricked into buying a year’s worth of paper and were stuck with it never really adds up. Publishers were killing each other for paper. Restrooms had security guards to stop people stealing the toilet paper. Having too much paper (at old prices) was like having too much free gold. Marvel’s press release partly attributed the stoppage of the 25c giants to the sudden increase in the price of paper. That may have been a lie, but it was a lie that no one batted an eye at. If DC had options on (or actual stacks of) paper at the old prices, they would have been making out like bandits. 3) There are quite a few exceptions to this: Amazing Adventures, Creatures on the Loose, Lil Kids & Two Gun Kid all moved straight from 15c to 20c without a 25c issue in the middle (maybe majority of the range was good enough?); Conan & Rawhide Kid had 2 months of 25c issues, not one, which if they were just a loss-making trick to get to a 20c price asap was a pretty weird error on Marvel’s part, and, of course, Marvel had been trying the 25c experiment for years before the Nixon Shock (Fear, Marvel Superheroes, Marvel Tales, Marvel’s Greatest Comics, Mighty Marvel Westerns, Monsters on the Prowl, X men for a while, Collector’s Item Classics, Fantasy Masterpieces….these go back to 1965). If they were suddenly so unprofitable, it seems more likely that it was the paper shortage or similar (although market saturation vs pocket money would surely be an issue too). However, none of that actually disproves the theory. Do you have any more info on this, Eric?

Nighty night. xxx

It's not bonkers, but surely, having been distributing via T&P with stamps for 12 years, you'd carry on with the stamps to see how the price increase affected sales, not randomly change another (cost-increasing) variable at the same time. Also, keep in mind that the project was cancelled before any of these comics so much as smelled the fish & chips. I think whatever explanation you have for this has to explain why it was initiated but then almost immediately cancelled before it ever got to market. Keep in mind also that 'a test run of UKPV's' also means flipping from returns to new product. Unless DC were selling the new product to T&P at the same price as the distressed inventory, but selling newly-minted, newly-cost-driving, new product at the same price you sell the 3 month old, past-it's sell-by, second-hand, stale returns would be nuts, especially at the point where you're trying to get a price increase on the new stuff, not find ways to sell it more cheaply. It's arguable that DC knew they'd be having X amount as returns going to the UK anyway, so why not mint them as PV's and sell them cheap to T&P to start with, because that's how they'll end up, but that argument is completely arse about face. T&P only got the super-cheap price because they were taking seconds and that was what they actually wanted (remember Dennis Juba: ‘we were able to buy at prices below the original wholesale price’). Also, of course, you’re shooting down my theory-based-purely-on-coincidence with another theory-based-purely-on-coincidence, and there’s only room for one fast talking wide boy around here.

Hi Robot - I was very much hoping you'd jump in on the DC PV thing & give me a right dressing down (from which I'd emerge a wiser and better man). Any thoughts on it? Cheers

Interesting guy. He predicted paper shortages during the war and stockpiled paper and thus became one of the few publishers to actually start a publishing business during the war (just read that).

1) I am totally spit-balling here, but I think it was a plan that began to be implemented and then was cancelled as soon as it started, like GS Marvels in November. If someone said to you ‘wow, you know it amazes me that whatever Marvel were trying to achieve with the GS issues, they achieved it only ONE month, and then, mission accomplished, went back to regular sized issues’ you would have to tell them ‘no, that is literally the opposite of what went down’. So, I don’t think they sat down and planned to print 5 issues and no more. I think, exactly as you do, that they were experimenting or that they were ramping something up which then proved unnecessary and was cancelled. But I think if they happened to be experimenting with PV’s at the exact moment, and only that moment, when Marvel moved to an only-PV distributor, that’s a Hell of a coincidence. And if you then throw in that that happened to be the exact same moment when their UK distributor was shutting down the location where all the stamping was done, well, that’s a level of coincidence that would get you beaten up even in a friendly poker game. 2) As you say, if they were trying to prevent their product from being absent from the shelves, why order a measly 5 titles? They didn’t. They were only in the PV game for NINE days. I suggest that is too short a time to judge anything from the timeframe or the number of titles produced, except that whatever they were doing, they changed their minds bloody quickly. 3) There is actually some logic to this in terms of the points that you raise. If the purpose of the DC PV’s was, as I propose, to stopgap a temporary problem, which was fixed faster than it was feared it might be, that explains why it was so short. So actually the shortness and the measliness not only support my theory, they also support each other (if it had gone on longer, there would have been more titles). 4) Let’s look at it the other way for a second. If you were launching into a new country where many of your titles were already selling, surely you’d print PV’s for everything you were exporting & stamping. If it wasn’t selling, why were T&P buying it? If it was selling and they were going over to PV’s, why exclude those titles? Doesn’t make sense. But if it was a temporary stopgap to keep DC in the market before normal service was resumed…..which titles would you make PV’s of? It would be all the marquee titles, wouldn’t it? All the ones with absolute association to your brand. All the ones you really cared about. If you look at what got a PV in that 9 day period, it is ALL Superman, Supergirl, Batman & Flash. Strange Adventures #231, Forever People #4, House of Secrets #93 and Our Army at War #235 all fall into the same nine day period but aren’t included in the experiment. Why not? 5) Maybe the problem is that the warning from T&P was just a ‘might be’. Marvel were minded to get out of their deal with T&P anyway and this was just the right moment, or the last straw. DC were never breaking ties with T&P, so they took some initial steps to check the alternative system, but the problem never actually materialised (or was literally a matter of a few days to get up & running and it was gone). 6) Let’s keep in mind also that from the other side of the Atlantic, there is pretty much nothing else you can do. If the British problem was discussed at all, it was probably item 34 of a meeting no one wanted to be in and if there was only one thing they could do from there and it cost less than ten thousand bucks, well, why are you bringing this to me? Just do it. Keep in mind that DC is part of Engulf & Devour by now. Actual footage of a board meeting. Silent Movie (1976) - Engulf & Devour - YouTube 7) Whatever the experiment was, they clearly cancelled it long before it was over. Whatever they were trying to check about the viability of doing UK PV’s, in 9 days the comics probably hadn’t even left the warehouse, let alone been shipped to Newark, sailed to Liverpool, been processed at T&P, been distributed around the country, had a month to sell whatever they were going to sell and what returns were coming back come back, sales figures collated and new orders placed by T&P. So what was it? Well, if it was to address a potential problem that suddenly got solved…. 8) If it was an experiment, I keep trying to imagine what else makes sense of this. Sales to T&P were final, no SOR, so not that. Could they charge more to T&P for PV’s? Well, probably, but they owned T&P so what’s the endgame? Were T&P pushing for PV’s because it made their lives easier? Hmmmm….pay proper money for new comics fresh off the presses rather than make galactic profits off the super cheap distressed inventory – I think not. Did they want a taste of the Marvel action – both PV’s and stamped copies? Well, Marvel were getting out of that game, so it can’t have been that great, and that approach only really makes sense if you’ve got few returns in the US and a thriving fan base in the UK. If you’ve got a mountain of returns and have done nothing to generate a UK fan base, it makes no sense. Did T&P want it for some other reason? They were already resorting to turning DC returns into double doubles, annuals and re-distributing to sell at discounts. How is a printed pence price going to turn that around? Nope. Whatever it was, it seemed like a really good idea in the last week of May and a bad one by the first week of June. I think it's more likely it was something that might have been needed in the last week of May and was determined to be unnecessary a week later. I think the timeframe, the measly 5 titles, the choice of titles, the timing, the fact that whatever the issue was, it was resolved really fast, and that, if it was an experiment, nothing we can see can possibly have been determined by it in 5 issues and 9 days, all sits well with the theory that it was a potential issue caused by the closure of Oadby at that time.

I don’t think so. I think the 5 distributed issues in October 1971 relates to a number of different causes, but they’re all identifiable in the US distribution and not related to distribution to the UK. And also…. (builds up suspense)..... It never happened !!! In October 1971, there were 13 titles produced (excl romance, humour, etc) in total (as opposed to 23 in September, and 21 in November), so it was indeed a very skinny month. Of the then current titles: Two Gun Kid, Kid Colt, Creatures on the Loose & Amazing Adventures were bi-monthly and not scheduled to be produced this month and would have been ND anyway. Where Monsters Dwell was bi-monthly and not scheduled to be produced this month. Where Creatures Roam had just been cancelled. Marvel Tales, Marvel Super Heroes & Fear were all over the place and also not produced this month (but would not now have been distributed to the UK anyway). Mighty Marvel Westerns & Western Gunfighters were quarterly and ND to the UK anyway. Marvel Special Edition was all over the place and was not published in this month. Rawhide Kid, Captain America, Sgt Fury, Xmen, Monsters on the Prowl, Astonishing Tales, Outlaw Kid & Conan were all produced but ND in the UK. This boils it down to 3 comics that were unexpectedly ‘absent’ (Thor, Avengers & Daredevil), all of which went GS the following month. Generally most Marvel titles had a sales window of about 80 – 90 days between the on sale date and the 1st day of the cover month, but these 3 had a much shorter window (i.e. a much shorter shelf life) of around 50 – 60 days (it varies by title and by month). For whatever reason this had been the case, when they got to the point of changing to GS, the increased cost of paper & distribution meant they needed higher sell through and therefore the longest possible shelf life, so these three titles were harmonised with the others. It therefore appears, if you look at cover dates, that 3 issues were missing, but if you look at on sale dates, there are no gaps. They just pushed forward in time, like a reverse leap year. So while I agree with your number, and 5 was indeed super skinny, it was more a confluence of (1) the normal bi-monthly/quarterly/wildly random production schedule (2) the fact that loads of stuff was ND due to the new deal with World and (3) prep for the earth-shattering and instantly cancelled GS revolution of November 1971.

I don’t believe it does disprove it. The PV’s would presumably have been dispatched when printed, right? (so would have been shipped to the UK with the usual shipment of older returns). Later, when the US cents returns of those five came back, do you reckon they said: ‘oh, wait a sec, a few of those are titles we’ve already sent previously as PV’s. Better spend a few hours sifting those out of each stack of returns and then bin them all and lose the extra revenue. We don’t want to mess up our superb monthly continuity in the UK’. Or do you reckon they said ‘who gives a toss? just send ‘em’. Their policy towards the UK seems to me to be very much more the ‘Who Gives A Toss?’ approach. If something, anything, indicated that these cents copies came over at the same time as the PV’s and were stamped and sent out alongside the PV’s, then you’d definitely have me. But we know (or pretty much 100% believe) that the DC comics coming over were returns months later, so how does the fact that these 5 came over as cents issues in October or November or whenever and got stamped disprove the possibility that there could have been a stamping hiatus in the late spring / early summer? For example, here’s Mr. Miracle #3, cd August, presumably rocked up some months later and got stamped 5p. Why couldn’t these 5 have done the same? You might be right, and this might be evidence of it, but I’m not smelling the cordite.

You wanna ring the bell, Apollo?

I really like this. This is fascinating to think about, but doesn't it propose a whole new theory of what the stamps mean? e.g. 50 of comic A arrive, Ethel stamps half of them batch 1, then she goes on her holidays, comes back and stamps the rest of that same batch as batch 2. And/or, Ethel is happily stamping a batch as Batch 1, then she goes on her holidays, while she's away the next month's comics arrive from IND, and she carries on stamping the next month's comics as Batch 1 as well. How do we then explain that the bunching and multi-batching goes on for anything up to 6 months? Did Ethel summer with the Rainiers in Monaco and only return to (much rainier) Leicester months later? Also, I think that the real reason for the tradition of giving everyone the same two weeks off was to do vital maintenance and repairs to plant, factories and machinery. T&P didn't have any of that, just a warehouse and about 50 staff. I think shutting the place down just so Igor could oil the forklift and rub some linseed oil into Ethel's best stamp would be massive overkill. But this is really interesting and a great catch. If this did turn out to be relevant in some way my spoiled Southern Gen X imagination can't grasp, I would not be surprised.

It's going to be a while. While you're waiting, here's a little something on account for you and the Robot to chew on. I know it's something you've both wondered about for a while. Why are there DC PV’s for 2 months in July & August 1971? To us, the T&P stamp is a ubiquitous feature of 20 years of comics, but in reality, T&P went through 7 changes of ownership & management, 4 changes of location and 4 changes of core business activity. The rock steady stamping hand of Ethel belies a lot of chaos behind the scenes. In 1966, they went bankrupt and were bought by IND. IND in turn were bought by Kinney in 1967. Kinney then bought Warner Bros in 1969 and set about merging all the different operations under Warner Communications. In 1971, T&P relocated from Thurmaston to the Warner-Columbia building in London, I assume losing most of the staff on the way. The various publishing corporations that Kinney owned were all consolidated and T&P not only lost its HQ and operational base, but almost all of its publications were made part of Williams. Dez Skinn’s publications were under the Top Sellers imprint, all the porn was put under the GBD imprint, the northern European branches that were part of Gilberton’s (run from T&P) became part of Williams. Very little remained of T&P, except that stamp. So, I think that 1971 is actually when T&P disappeared. Warner’s knew that of all the jobs they had to relocate from Thurmaston to London, a temporary killer was going to be the ink stampers. This job was doubtless really badly paid and there was no way the Ethels were going to relocate to central London for a job ink stamping comics. I think T&P warned IND and their other customers that there was going to be a hiatus. At this point, Marvel and DC are in very different boats. Marvel have finally got free of IND in the US and are about to surpass DC for the first time. They must surely want to get out of the relationship with T&P, but for the last few years they have been distributing both PV and stamped issues and it has been going very nicely, thank you. However, if T&P are now going to be unable to distribute any stamped copies, potentially for a period of months, then Marvel are better off switching to another UK distributor. Even if that distributor can only handle PV’s. I suspect that Marvel knew that T&P was done and didn’t expect preferential treatment from their historic enemies. DC on the other hand are sister company to IND/T&P. Effectively, they self-distribute. They can’t jump ship because they own the ship. So what can DC do if there are to be no ink stampers? It will have to be PV’s, but if you think about it, this is a massive sea change for DC. It’s not just a matter of changing from stamps to PV’s – their supply to the UK is returns. Distressed inventory. Now they are going to need to send bespoke, newly printed comics to the UK and have nowhere to get rid of the mountain of returns. This is why, in the end, the hiatus only lasts 2 months. Notice that DC only managed to produce about 5 titles with pence variants with weirdly placed prices. They straddle two cover date months, but in fact they only straddle 2 weeks of on sale dates so it was a fast hit. It’s pretty clear that their heart was not in it – it was either always intended as a very brief stopgap, or they did a very fast U-turn. They just didn’t want the UK shelves empty of DC product for 2 months (right at the moment Marvel were surpassing them in the US?) This is why (1) you have DC PV’s at all (2) why you only have a few titles and (3) only for 2 months. T&P, such as it now was, moved to Wardour Street in the summer of 71, so they would have warned Marvel & DC in the spring that there would be no stampers for the July issues. But do all 3 dates tie up? Yes. Yes they do. Marvel stamps disappear from on sale May, cover date July and so do DC. A nice little touch here is that the Marvel July cover dates which were published in April still have stamped issues, and the July/May ones don’t, so it ties up rather exactly. Bear in mind also that whereas in the past, the relationship between DC on sale dates and when the returns rocked up in the UK could potentially be anything, but here, finally, you have a line in the sand because the UKPV's rolled off the presses at the same time as the US cents copies with nowhere to go but the UK. I have no evidence that this is causal, by the way. It may be a complete coincidence that T&P are shut down in Thurmaston at the same moment that Marvel change UK distributors and go over wholly to PV’s, which is also at the same moment that DC have an inexplicable and short lived flirtation with UK PV’s. But it’s one Hell of a triple coincidence if it is. I propose we adopt this theory until a better one comes along. OK...let me have it. What have I overlooked?

That's just sarcasm at this point.

Oh FFS. And it's a roman numeral well. Even better. I think I'm going to take my own advice and go and sit in the sunshine and do a crossword with the mem-sahib.

Indeed. But whatever the answer turns out to be, I can't imagine there was an actual reason for it being 9 other than the structure of the stamps themselves. If our sine-qua-non for an explanation is that it has to explain why there were 9 numbers on the stamps, I think it's going to be an uphill struggle. A more interesting question, IMO, is why did it go as high as nine? Apart from a few straggler returns, warehouse finds etc, was there actually some business cycle around distribution that went in 9 month cycles? It seems bloody unlikely. If I had to speculate (had to?) I'd say that when they started, they bought a bunch of off-the-rack, John Bull stamps - the ones that had no T&P logo - and just used them. When they then had bespoke ones made, the 9 cycle was entrenched. I further speculate that if, rather than 9 separate stamps with fixed numbers, they were stamps with the number on a rotor, then the wheel with the number on might only have had space for a single digit. To stamp out clearly with the ink on, double digits would need equal space for both digits. This would mean either that 10, 11, 12 would have to be smaller than 1-9 or there would be a space which would cause a big ink splat. This getting a bit insane now, but if you look at the T&P stamps, the ampersand is always, always on a level with the T and the P, which makes me think it was a fixed stamp, but when it was numbering, the numbers were raised, which makes think maybe they were on a rotor? You can see there was no way for 2 digits on that stamp. Maybe it was just happenstance (happenstamps?) like that. Check out this stamp on Amazon with 9, count 'em, 9 lines of text of your choosing. A hundred years from now will a bunch of nerds be sitting on whatever the Hell the 22nd century internet is, asking "but why did they choose NINE lines of text? What is the significance of nine?". If you're out there, dudes, the stamp just came like that. Now shut off your fission-powered laptops, go out in the sunshine (assuming you still can) and chat up some 22nd century girlies. Amazon.com : Self Inking Rubber Stamp with up to 9 Lines of Custom Text (Ships for Free) : Business Stamps : Office Products

I think that it might be easier to crack some of the mystery of the stamps from when it stopped rather than when it started. We don’t really know why it started and the reason seems to have been in place pre 1959. However, the point at which it stopped might be more definitive. Something like a piece of legislation or tax rule may have changed. And whatever that was must have been the reason for its existence, unless if was just a change in their business practices, but then why were their business practices so different for PV’s and cents? Seems more likely to be regulation they were conforming to. The stamping practices may have been a direct solution to that regulation, or may have been an administrative practice that facilitated a solution downstream. For example, in the late 50’s, we’re in the middle of an extreme balance of payments crisis, right? So the government has very strict controls on how much sterling can leave the country in any form e.g. sterling that was always sterling can’t be used to buy dollars above a certain amount, however, Registered Sterling, i.e. sterling that was bought with gold or dollars in the first place is exchangeable back & forth in dollars & sterling. This means you’ve got a pot of money that can only be used for operating your domestic business and another pot of money, heavily regulated, which is the capital for your imports. If Gilberton’s were owners or silent partners in T&P for this reason, as I’ve theorised, their dollar capital might be all or some of this import pot. Let’s say, for arguments sake, that at the point of audit, you’ve got X amount of stock in your warehouse, waiting to go out…. And now, a short film entitled The Auditors come to Oadby: Int. Warehouse. Day. “Well, Mr. Thorpe, I’m afraid the value of US imports in your warehouse massively exceeds the value of your registered sterling for the month” “No, no, this lot over here are all new comics which have come in this month, so they’re new spend, but that lot over there are all returns. They’re comics that were bought months ago and are now going out again for re-sale, so they’re part of previous months’ allowances” “I see. But just because these comics were printed in the States earlier than those, that doesn’t prove when you imported them, nor that they have already been distributed once to the UK market. You need a system for tracking these through your distribution system so that when they come back as returns, the stock is all accounted separately and which month they originally arrived in can be substantiated.” “But, but, we’d have to put some sort of sequential numbering system in place and it would have to be stamped on every comic individually” “Best get cracking, Mr. Thorpe” [And… scene] OK, so imagine that in 1970, the exchange controls on sterling imports are revised, and this is no longer necessary. That’s when you change yer stamps. I’m just spit balling here, but it seems to me that there must have been some kind of change that rendered the numbers redundant. So if we can figure out when the numbers stopped meaning anything, we’ve got some sort of line in the sand. This, incidentally, is an issue I have with Albert’s theory that it was a signal to the newsagent to take the comics off the shelves. That sounds completely plausible to me, except why stop doing it? It clearly wasn’t replaced with any kind of marker on the comics themselves. We’re stumped as to why the numbers were placed on the comics to begin with, but it might be more illuminating to ask: When did they stop? Why did they stop? Why was it important to remove the numbers from the stamps? If they were redundant, why not just carry on using the stamps for pricing? Why change the stamps in April 1970 (note, start of the tax year?) and why create new T&P stamps, but carry on using the old number stamps in tandem and putting decimal stickers on some of the comics? Why not just use your shiny new T&P stamps? More importantly, why have stamps created with the new T&P brand, but the old currency, when you already needed new ones with decimal currency? And then get more new ones with both currencies which you only use for one month? And then get yet more new ones only a month later with decimal prices? All the while putting 5p stickers on some of them (or were these late arrivals stickered afterwards? Seems to be too many of them for that). Obviously, the cost of the stamps is incidental, but whatever system was behind them has clearly gone by this point because this is chaos. So…at what point does the system which you have divined in the early years actually break down? If both bunching and multi-batching increase as it goes along, was it just a system that broke down, or was it a system whose reason for being ceased and chaos slowly ensued? I think the riddle of stamps might be easier to solve at the back end.