The Distribution of US Published Comics in the UK (1959~1982) 15 15

[themagicrobot]

This must be one of the worst comic covers on any 1960s DC comic (with some of the weakest villains to fight the JLA) .....unless you know better....and you probably do.... and the most difficult for the Thorpe and Porter stamperer to find somewhere to stamp the stamp?!?

[OtherEric]

On 9/17/2022 at 6:02 AM, Malacoda said:

Yes, I'm surprised the pricing wasn't more attractive. It would explain why the newsagents tore them open and re-priced them. If you could re-sticker them at new prices, you probably only had to sell a couple of them to make a profit. I also wonder what the target market was?  Were they aimed at desperate parents trying to keep the kids quiet on long journeys or similar?  I got 50p per week pocket money once I turned 11 (1977), but before that 50p was an unthinkable sum.  And Grown Ups still called 50p 'ten bob' as if that was an even more unthinkable amount of money.  

At least with the bags in the US when I was around 7, there were two huge appeals to the things.  1,  they were frequently the only comics the store in question had.  2, and this was the bigger one:  even if they were only a few months to a year old, the were the only source of back issues I was aware of.  I spent a LOT of time trying to find issues I had missed in those things.  (I never did find a bag with Star Wars 1-3, I didn't get those until a few years later when my parents ordered me some books from a Mile High Comics ad when we lived in Germany a few years.)

[LowGradeBronze]

On 9/17/2022 at 2:02 PM, Malacoda said:

And Grown Ups still called 50p 'ten bob' as if that was an even more unthinkable amount of money.  

Well, only a few years earlier Ten Bob was a paper note! 

[Garystar]

On 9/16/2022 at 5:47 PM, Garystar said:

As I mentioned before i’ve never seen or heard of Marvel lucky bags before. I’d be amazed if any multi-mags turned up with pence copies

Didn’t expect to find these, looks genuine so I’m going to argue with myself;

Marvel Multi-mags Iron Man #124 Two-in-One Thing #47 Power Man #50 VF+

Marvel Multi-mags bag Captain America #230 Team-up Spider-Man #78 Thor #285 VF+
 

By this time I was buying these comics as they came out in UK, plenty of shops had them but I never ever saw any multi-mags! Any one else?

(Three 12p copies for 25p so a decent saving)

[Malacoda]

On 9/17/2022 at 10:33 PM, Garystar said:

On 9/16/2022 at 5:47 PM, Garystar said:

As I mentioned before i’ve never seen or heard of Marvel lucky bags before. I’d be amazed if any multi-mags turned up with pence copies

Didn’t expect to find these, looks genuine so I’m going to argue with myself;

Dang my britches.   The very things. And all of the PV's produced at that time were for World, so those are definitely the things.  

Pleeeeeeeeeeeeease tell me that you won them !!!!

[Kevin.J]

On 9/17/2022 at 10:33 PM, Garystar said:

Didn’t expect to find these, looks genuine so I’m going to argue with myself;

Marvel Multi-mags Iron Man #124 Two-in-One Thing #47 Power Man #50 VF+

Marvel Multi-mags bag Captain America #230 Team-up Spider-Man #78 Thor #285 VF+
 

By this time I was buying these comics as they came out in UK, plenty of shops had them but I never ever saw any multi-mags! Any one else?

(Three 12p copies for 25p so a decent saving)

What that around 1979? I was 15/16 at that time.

By then my mind was on girls and any comics I was buying then was from Timeslip, never went to any Newsagents or seen any of these to the best of my knowledge, please say you grabbed them 

[Malacoda]

On 9/17/2022 at 10:33 PM, Garystar said:

By this time I was buying these comics as they came out in UK, plenty of shops had them but I never ever saw any multi-mags! Any one else?

Nope, never saw them, but as I said previously, occasionally at my local shop, comics from one or two years ago would suddenly pop up, re-stickered with the then-current price.  

[Garystar]

On 9/17/2022 at 11:14 PM, Kevin.J said:

please say you grabbed them 

No sadly just noticed them in the solds. Although the bags look genuine I’m not totally convinced - the second lot has cap America, MTU  from Feb 1979 but Thor is from July. I can’t imagine UK unsolds would have been returned to US for bagging and I also find it difficult to imagine the bags being printed in UK but perhaps they were. 

[nmtg9]

I agree. 

Surely the bags should have pence not centres prices on?

Don't think the seller is scamming but it doesn't seem right to me. 

I would have been about 7 then and don't remember ever seeing these. 

[Get Marwood & I]

I'm too young to have any personal recollections on these, but the 25p priced bag appears to be authentic:

  

The eBay seller says he is "Clearing out his personal collection of 1970s comics from the loft." Maybe someone could drop him a line, to see if he has any other recollections (I'm guessing Rich will have already done this).

The thing I find with these types of situations - books appearing that you haven't seen before - is that once they come to your attention, you can usually find out more about them with some intensive Googling. There doesn't seem to be any evidence out there that I can find. No write ups, no other examples or references. So if they are genuine, they haven't made their mark on the hobby and surviving examples are clearly, fairly logically perhaps, non-existent. So it may have been a very limited experiment. But they could well be real. Look at all those Harvey 15cvs I've discovered with their UK distribution aspect. No record of them anywhere until I 'discovered' them. It happens, even in this late day in the hobby.

[themagicrobot]

In the 1970s there weren't (m)any people buying comics to store until they were worth money 40 years later. Comics were bought and read so even if there were batches of bagged comics sold, then the outer wrapper would be thrown away immediately. You see the same thing with bubblegum card collectors. They pay fortunes for outer wrappers as who thought to keep them? How many people preserved the boxes their Dinky/Corgi toy cars came in? But in the States you can even buy empty bags it seems. Note the similar format between the cents and pence bags though so they must be real and really rare.

[Malacoda]

On 9/18/2022 at 7:39 AM, Garystar said:

I can’t imagine UK unsolds would have been returned to US for bagging

They definitely weren't.  

On 9/18/2022 at 7:39 AM, Garystar said:

I also find it difficult to imagine the bags being printed in UK but perhaps they were. 

I suspect that World got some of them UK-varianted.  I guess if you can have millions of comics re-priced in pence, having a few thousand bags re-priced is not a biggie. From the looks of things (anecdotal), these things ran (for Marvel) in the US from 1972 to 1984 and there were a ton of them.  Doesn't seem a huge stretch to imagine that World piggy-backed on that. 

http://www.wymann.info/comics/MarvelMultiMags-Overview-BronzeAge.html

According to Tom Brevoort (Senior Vice President of Publishing for Marvel), they were 'everywhere' in the US, even in vending machines. When you read this, scroll down to the responder from the West of Scotland.  He says that distribution there was bad in the late 70's and these things were a godsend. 

https://tombrevoort.com/2020/04/18/blah-blah-blog-marvel-multi-mags/

Silver Age - 47c for 4 at this point. 

https://comics.ha.com/itm/silver-age-1956-1969-/superhero/marvel-silver-age-multi-mags-pack-69-a3-marvel-1967-/a/829-41181.s

[Malacoda]

On 9/18/2022 at 9:44 AM, Get Marwood & I said:

The eBay seller says he is "Clearing out his personal collection of 1970s comics from the loft." Maybe someone could drop him a line, to see if he has any other recollections (I'm guessing Rich will have already done this).

We've been together too long.  

Yup.  Sold to US buyer, believe it or not.   So the seller is from Maidstone in Kent, not a million miles from the coast, but not exactly what you'd call a popular seaside destination, so do you think he bought these in Maidstone, or do you think they're seaside specials.....if you don't want to know, look away now.....

Edited September 18, 2022 by Malacoda

[Malacoda]

" If memory serves, I *believe* I bought these (or more likely were bought for me!) when on holiday, so probably from somewhere on the south coast (Bognor, Bournemouth, somewhere like that)."

[Get Marwood & I]

On 9/18/2022 at 12:25 PM, Malacoda said:

" If memory serves, I *believe* I bought these (or more likely were bought for me!) when on holiday, so probably from somewhere on the south coast (Bognor, Bournemouth, somewhere like that)."

Makes sense. Although I do recall a rather cool comic shop in Maidstone, as I used to holiday near there occasionally with the first wife and her family. 

You'd have to be a special kind of person to buy them on holiday for preservation, not to rip open.

[Malacoda]

On 9/18/2022 at 7:39 AM, Garystar said:

No sadly just noticed them in the solds.

...and he doesn't have any more, I'm afraid. 

[Malacoda]

On 9/18/2022 at 12:29 PM, Get Marwood & I said:

You'd have to be a special kind of person to buy them on holiday for preservation, not to rip open.

I don't think he did buy them for preservation. The bag must be re-sealable. Here they are out of the bag and it doesn't look torn open. 

[Get Marwood & I]

On 9/18/2022 at 12:35 PM, Malacoda said:

I don't think he did buy them for preservation. The bag must be re-sealable. Here they are out of the bag and it doesn't look torn open. 

I know, I meant in general.

[Garystar]

Those bags do appear genuine and you wouldn’t do a good mock up to sell for £10. My concern was the 6 month time gap between issues but being bag opened the owner could have mixed up the issues which were included. 
I have an eBay search for marvel multi mags but somehow missed these. I am surprised as I was actively buying marvels from 1973 and from August  1974 they were readily to be found but I’ve  never seen any marvel multi-mags for sale other than cents ones from a dealer or collector. 

[Garystar]

On 9/18/2022 at 12:35 PM, Malacoda said:

I don't think he did buy them for preservation. The bag must be re-sealable. Here they are out of the bag and it doesn't look torn open. 

I’ve got several of these (all cents) and they aren’t re-sealable so owner must have very carefully opened.