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

[nmtg9]

So it's the author going to blame Ethel's appearance and behavior on the comics rather than disinterested parents?

Makes sense, carry on. I mean, look at us 

[Get Marwood & I]

On 1/24/2024 at 10:41 PM, Albert Tatlock said:

I believe I have mentioned George Pumphrey previously in this thread.

You have, yes.

I let the eBay patent pending copy go, as it looked a bit mouldy. I managed to get a nice copy elsewhere though, which is hopefully on it's way to Marwood Towers as we speak  There were previous sales on eBay, so I don't think it will be the hardest book for anyone else to track down.

[Get Marwood & I]

On 1/25/2024 at 8:43 AM, Get Marwood & I said:

I managed to get a nice copy elsewhere though, which is hopefully on it's way to Marwood Towers as we speak  

Alas, and entirely in keeping with my luck so far this year, I've just received notification that the book that is (still) showing on Humford Mill's website is in fact unavailable. 

[Albert Tatlock]

On 12/22/2023 at 10:15 PM, baggsey said:

I've not got any of the magazines of that era, but went through the UK Phone Directories on Ancestry for the period 1948-1959 for T&P addresses, @Malacoda The results for that period are below, plus up to 1963 in London:

1947,1948   86 London Rd, Leicester

1958 - Thorpe & Porter, Wholesalers,  171 Southampton Way, SE 5   (Rodney)   [Nothing at this address outside 1958]

1959,1960  153 Usk Rd, SE 11  (Battersea)  

1949-1959   East St Oadby

1959 2 Gate St Nottingham

1959 18A Halesown Rd, Cradley Heath

1959 Lloyd old Mill Butler St 4, Collyhurst

1959 Stafford Com Passenger Station

1959 66 Palmer St, Weston Super-Mare

1963,1964  39 Upper Brook St, Hyde Park

This is not complete. There are a further 80-odd records of addresses of various other locations around the country across the 1950s and 1960s that I could document, if you'd like?  But as far as I'm aware, Brook St was only listed as a London address in 1963, and 1964. Southampton Way in 1958, and Usk Rd in 1959 and 1960.

Hope this is of some help.

 

 

 

Many thanks to Baggsey here, as soon as I saw this post it set off a train of thought.

Had I known back in the Bronze Age that T & P had premises at the mill listed above,  I would have paid it a visit, as it lay on one of my regular routes hunting down whatever was to be found on the second-hand outlets in the area.

I have had a little research to do, as I wanted to get my ducks in a row.......

I mentioned back on about page 30 of this thread that I came across a large tranche of the diamond 2 shilling stamped items in an old mill.

That was not the mill above, but the far larger Brunswick Mill, which still stands to this day, but is about to be converted into hipster apartments in the ever-sprawling Northern Quarter.

Here is how it looks today.....

 

But this is how it appeared to me at about the same time as my visit...

Could T & P also have had space rented here? Maybe, maybe not, but the other mill was just a two minute stroll away.

In any event, the diamond stamp bears such a strong resemblance to the circular T & P stamp that it is hardly likely that someone else applied it.

But why?

Let me propose a theory.

T & P had a lot of surplus stock, and in spite of sending much of it out to do the rounds again, with the familiar triangle stamp, at reduced prices, there was still no chance of disposing of it all.

I think that the diamond stamp material was offloaded at rock-bottom prices onto someone who reckoned they could shift them on to market traders and the like, and maybe even specialist back issue comic shops, which were up and running long before the date of 1974 found on my batch.

In order to prevent them finding their way back into the SOR system, they had to be marked in some way.

In the USA, this as achieved by tearing off the title, but that would render them almost unsaleable.

I believe, therefore, that the diamond stamp is a cancellation, to stop unscrupulous dealers returning them to T & P for a credit.

So, I have my arrow in my hand, you decide whether it has landed here...

or here.......

or has flown wide of the mark and has embedded itself here........

I will not post the link here, as it is a little off-topic, but anyone interested in our fast-disappearing industrial heritage can put Brunswick Mill into the Youtube search box, and click on the one with Disused Floors in the title

[Get Marwood & I]

On 1/25/2024 at 8:08 PM, Albert Tatlock said:

I have had a little research to do, as I wanted to get my ducks in a row.......

I mentioned back on about page 30 of this thread that I came across a large tranche of the diamond 2 shilling stamped items in an old mill.

I haven't seen those ducks for so long now. Those were the days.

My first thought, Albert, is that there simply aren't enough surviving examples of the 'diamond' stamp to suggest anything major. T&P numbers were huge. Surely, we'd see so many more of the stamps if your theory were true?

You all know I gather examples, to build pictures. The 'diamond' folder has very little in it which means I've seen very little of them. Indeed, they appear on more magazines than comics:

*

I'm not saying you're wrong, just that in my experience, very low surviving numbers tend not to indicate systematic distribution arrangements. If it was T&P, and as you say, I think we'd see hundreds of them on eBay now. 

Nice pictures though, of an era long gone. 

*No modern Rod jokes please.

 

[Albert Tatlock]

On 1/25/2024 at 8:59 PM, Get Marwood & I said:

I haven't seen those ducks for so long now. Those were the days.

My first thought, Albert, is that there simply aren't enough surviving examples of the 'diamond' stamp to suggest anything major. T&P numbers were huge. Surely, we'd see so many more of the stamps if your theory were true?

You all know I gather examples, to build pictures. The 'diamond' folder has very little in it which means I've seen very little of them. Indeed, they appear on more magazines than comics:

*

I'm not saying you're wrong, just that in my experience, very low surviving numbers tend not to indicate systematic distribution arrangements. If it was T&P, and as you say, I think we'd see hundreds of them on eBay now. 

Nice pictures though, of an era long gone. 

*No modern Rod jokes please.

 

Possibly just a one-off, an experiment from a local agent that was not repeated.

All the ones I bought, possibly 1500 in total, were in a quite narrow date window, early to mid-1974.

What are the earliest and latest dates (comics only) that you have found on these?

[Get Marwood & I]

On 1/25/2024 at 9:08 PM, Albert Tatlock said:

Possibly just a one-off, an experiment from a local agent that was not repeated.

All the ones I bought, possibly 1500 in total, were in a quite narrow date window, early to mid-1974.

What are the earliest and latest dates (comics only) that you have found on these?

It screams one off to me. Remind me, you bought c1,500 comics all with this stamp on them?

[Albert Tatlock]

On 1/25/2024 at 9:10 PM, Get Marwood & I said:

It screams one off to me. Remind me, you bought c1,500 comics all with this stamp on them?

Maybe more, my car boot was full, so I had to use the back seat as well.

I still have a couple of hundred at least, all with wear and tear, they were in no fit state to be sold in regular outlets, as well as being about 5 years out of date.

 

[Get Marwood & I]

On 1/25/2024 at 9:15 PM, Albert Tatlock said:

Maybe more, my car boot was full, so I had to use the back seat as well.

I still have a couple of hundred at least, all with wear and tear, they were in no fit state to be sold in regular outlets, as well as being about 5 years out of date.

 

Have you mentioned this before? Where did you buy them from?

[Albert Tatlock]

On 1/25/2024 at 9:16 PM, Get Marwood & I said:

Have you mentioned this before? Where did you buy them from?

It is back in this thread, about page 30 or so.

[Get Marwood & I]

On 1/25/2024 at 9:17 PM, Albert Tatlock said:

It is back in this thread, about page 30 or so.

Found it. I'm not sure what happened then. I don't see many of them on my travels online and in the physical world. Maybe you bought the lot?

[Get Marwood & I]

Some random thoughts, @Albert Tatlock that I'm not sure even go anywhere.

Here's an Iron Man #2. 

It was distributed by T&P and you can find multiple copies on eBay with 4 or 5 numbered shilling stamps, correct for the time.

Then we have a copy with a T&P sticker, and then the diamond stamp.

Why the copy has a 9d sticker is anyone's guess. But let's just say it was overstock that didn't sell at 9d, sitting around in a T&P warehouse. Under what circumstances would someone connected to T&P stick a two shilling price on it, using a square stamp so as to 'stop it coming back to them'?

T&P 6d 'triangle' sale price stamps tend to accompany our standard circular T&P price stamps:

On the Rod magazine, the diamond stamp is the original UK distribution price, presumably:

The 6d sale price follows it. So on that occasion, the diamond stamp has no bearing other than to show the sale price (no 'don't be sending this back' element that I can see). The 6d sale price on that magazine is not the same as the T&P triangle one. So you can't say the sale price is T&P so the original must be.

So we have this diamond stamp on 1960s comics (e.g. Iron Man #2), 1970s comics (your Kamandi lot back on page 30) and magazines. We see them on Marvel, Charlton and DC. We see them as apparent original prices and implied later prices. The currency doesn't fit the timeline on the post decimal comics. We don't see many of them for sale online (well, I don't). You bought a ton of them. 

What can you make of that? The only thing I feel confident about, is saying how few of them are in distribution today. I don't see them all the time on eBay. So whatever was going on, by whom, it feels small scale, possibly regional. 

Just some thoughts, off the top of my head, using what images I've gathered to date to inform them.

 

[Get Marwood & I]

We may have covered this elsewhere in the thread, I've forgotten if we have, but the biggest head scratcher is why 6p priced comics end up with two shilling stamps on them. 

The Royal Mint website says:

Little more than a week after D Day the United Kingdom was for practical purposes a decimal country. For the moment old pennies and threepenny bits could still be used but so successful was the change that within a couple of weeks they had all but disappeared. Indeed, the transitional period was brought to an end on 31 August 1971, months ahead of schedule, and it was possible to enquire, as many did, what all the fuss had been about.

If true, who would stamp comics at a price that no one would be able to pay?

@Albert Tatlock, I'm wondering whether I've got the wrong end of the stick. You say you bought a car load in the mid 70's. If they were priced in shillings, what price did you pay and why didn't you come up against that out of date currency block? Apologies if you've said this already. I couldn't find what I was looking for on page 30.

 

[Albert Tatlock]

On 1/25/2024 at 10:37 PM, Get Marwood & I said:

Some random thoughts, @Albert Tatlock that I'm not sure even go anywhere.

Here's an Iron Man #2. 

It was distributed by T&P and you can find multiple copies on eBay with 4 or 5 numbered shilling stamps, correct for the time.

Then we have a copy with a T&P sticker, and then the diamond stamp.

Why the copy has a 9d sticker is anyone's guess. But let's just say it was overstock that didn't sell at 9d, sitting around in a T&P warehouse. Under what circumstances would someone connected to T&P stick a two shilling price on it, using a square stamp so as to 'stop it coming back to them'?

T&P 6d 'triangle' sale price stamps tend to accompany our standard circular T&P price stamps:

On the Rod magazine, the diamond stamp is the original UK distribution price, presumably:

The 6d sale price follows it. So on that occasion, the diamond stamp has no bearing other than to show the sale price (no 'don't be sending this back' element that I can see). The 6d sale price on that magazine is not the same as the T&P triangle one. So you can't say the sale price is T&P so the original must be.

So we have this diamond stamp on 1960s comics (e.g. Iron Man #2), 1970s comics (your Kamandi lot back on page 30) and magazines. We see them on Marvel, Charlton and DC. We see them as apparent original prices and implied later prices. The currency doesn't fit the timeline on the post decimal comics. We don't see many of them for sale online (well, I don't). You bought a ton of them. 

What can you make of that? The only thing I feel confident about, is saying how few of them are in distribution today. I don't see them all the time on eBay. So whatever was going on, by whom, it feels small scale, possibly regional. 

Just some thoughts, off the top of my head, using what images I've gathered to date to inform them.

 

But we do not know which of the price stamps was applied first.

A  50 cent mag should have been priced originally at 2/6 to 3/6, if a 12 cent comic was on sale at 10d.

Priced at only 6d, and failing to sell, where do you go from there?

Get rid of it for whatever you can get, but mark it as unreturnable, maybe years later with an anachronistic price stamp.

The problem we have is that we simply do not know when the diamond stamps were applied.

My gut feeling is that they were put there as part of the last rites, just to make sure that no one was able to pull a fast one and feed them back into the SOR chain.

The ones I found were certainly at death's door.

 

[Get Marwood & I]

On 1/25/2024 at 11:16 PM, Albert Tatlock said:

A  50 cent mag should have been priced originally at 2/6 to 3/6, if a 12 cent comic was on sale at 10d.

Key word 'should'. There are many early T&P comics with 9d and 1/3 stamp variations. The only logical conclusion on that mag is that the diamond 1/6 was the original sale price. 

[Get Marwood & I]

On 1/25/2024 at 11:16 PM, Albert Tatlock said:

The problem we have is that we simply do not know when the diamond stamps were applied.

We do for some - your 1974 books must have had the stamp applied at that time. Couldn't be prior, as they hadn't been printed yet, couldn't be after, as that's when you bought them. No?

[Albert Tatlock]

On 1/25/2024 at 11:15 PM, Get Marwood & I said:

We may have covered this elsewhere in the thread, I've forgotten if we have, but the biggest head scratcher is why 6p priced comics end up with two shilling stamps on them. 

The Royal Mint website says:

Little more than a week after D Day the United Kingdom was for practical purposes a decimal country. For the moment old pennies and threepenny bits could still be used but so successful was the change that within a couple of weeks they had all but disappeared. Indeed, the transitional period was brought to an end on 31 August 1971, months ahead of schedule, and it was possible to enquire, as many did, what all the fuss had been about.

If true, who would stamp comics at a price that no one would be able to pay?

@Albert Tatlock, I'm wondering whether I've got the wrong end of the stick. You say you bought a car load in the mid 70's. If they were priced in shillings, what price did you pay and why didn't you come up against that out of date currency block? Apologies if you've said this already. I couldn't find what I was looking for on page 30.

 

They were not priced in shillings so that they could be sold in shillings, a currency that no longer existed.

They were so stamped, I believe, to indicate that they had been removed from the official distribution system.

I, being not as daft as I look, paid next to nothing for them, I cannot remember at this remove of time, maybe a couple of grubby fivers changed hands.

If the cover price was £50 per thousand for brand new stock, I don't think  would have given more than a quarter of that, and probably less.,

[Get Marwood & I]

On 1/25/2024 at 11:24 PM, Albert Tatlock said:

They were not priced in shillings so that they could be sold in shillings, a currency that no longer existed.

They were so stamped, I believe, to indicate that they had been removed from the official distribution system.

I, being not as daft as I look, paid next to nothing for them, I cannot remember at this remove of time, maybe a couple of grubby fivers changed hands.

If the cover price was £50 per thousand for brand new stock, I don't think  would have given more than a quarter of that, and probably less.,

So you're saying that T&P tried to sell those early 1970 Charltons at 6p, failed, had them retuned to them, and then sold them off to someone(s) else cheap. To guard against that someone(s) trying to do a SOR on them, they stuck a two shilling diamond stamp on them. So if they should be returned, they could say "Hey, I'm not having this - I see our two shilling safety guard we're not having it stamp".

[Albert Tatlock]

On 1/25/2024 at 11:21 PM, Get Marwood & I said:

We do for some - your 1974 books must have had the stamp applied at that time. Couldn't be prior, as they hadn't been printed yet, couldn't be after, as that's when you bought them. No?

Yes, we know about these, but how about the others?

Only 1/6d DCs I know of are the 1960s annuals.

Superman Annual # 1 was 1/3, but the later ones were 1/6, so no DCs had this diamond stamp price at the time of issue.

[Albert Tatlock]

On 1/25/2024 at 11:28 PM, Get Marwood & I said:

So you're saying that T&P tried to sell those early 1970 Charltons at 6p, failed, had them retuned to them, and then sold them off to someone(s) else cheap. To guard against that someone(s) trying to do a SOR on them, they stuck a two shilling diamond stamp on them. So if they should be returned, they could say "Hey, I'm not having this - I see our two shilling safety guard we're not having it stamp".

Exactly.