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

[Get Marwood & I]

Kev spotted this stamp riot on the bay...

[Malacoda]

On 2/16/2024 at 3:21 PM, Get Marwood & I said:

Kev spotted this stamp riot on the bay...

Cool.  T&P AND popular book centre AND the mystery diamond stamp on a comic from December 1970.  I think the ampersands and (excuse me, &) post-decimal pricing combo starts in June and is the only game in town after October.  Though, obviously, it's DC returns so it's either that or absolutely anything else. 

 

[OtherEric]

On 2/16/2024 at 7:21 AM, Get Marwood & I said:

Kev spotted this stamp riot on the bay...

Hot Wheels is just a pain in the arse to find on the best of days, I've only got #6.  Unstamped.

[Get Marwood & I]

On 2/16/2024 at 5:02 PM, Malacoda said:

Though, obviously, it's DC returns so it's either that or absolutely anything else. 

What if it was none of those things though... What then? 

[Get Marwood & I]

On 2/16/2024 at 5:08 PM, OtherEric said:

I've only got #6.  Unstamped.

Of course. Nor pushed, filed, indexed, briefed, debriefed, or numbered.

[Redshade]

On 2/16/2024 at 1:49 AM, Bart Allen said:

Just two of my Whitworth facsimiles' if that'll help ~ I originally believed my YM #370 was a facsimile, though proved to be an original via Ewan and 30thCC due to the staple rust:

P.S. Where, Redshade, where did you see that Whitworth catalogue?

I bought the catalogue from a dealer (sorry, can't remember whom) some years ago. Rather appositely it is a xeroxed copy complete with occasional tick marks at the side of some of the titles.

[Malacoda]

On 2/16/2024 at 5:48 PM, Get Marwood & I said:

What if it was none of those things though... What then? 

 

[Malacoda]

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".

@Albert Tatlock  To your point about the purpose of the diamond stamp, this is a 2/- comic that was actually stamped 2/- at the time, so stamping it with 2/- again was completely redundant unless the stamp was serving some other purpose.  Also (1)  the fact that it was stamped 2/- by T&P means it was stamped at the time (2) the fact that it's Marvel means it was almost certainly shipped at the point of production not some unspecified time later and (3) the T&P stamp looks distinctly faded to me which means either Ethel needed to hit the pad again or, equally possibly, it had already spent some time out in the world.  So maybe a return that was sold on and had to be re-stamped because the T&P price wasn't the official stamp of whoever was re-retailing it. 

Edited February 18 by Malacoda

[Albert Tatlock]

On 2/18/2024 at 5:32 PM, Malacoda said:

@Albert Tatlock  To your point about the purpose of the diamond stamp, this is a 2/- comic that was actually stamped 2/- at the time, so stamping it with 2/- again was completely redundant unless the stamp was serving some other purpose.  Also (1)  the fact that it was stamped 2/- by T&P means it was stamped at the time (2) the fact that it's Marvel means it was almost certainly shipped at the point of production not some unspecified time later and (3) the T&P stamp looks distinctly faded to me which means either Ethel needed to hit the pad again or, equally possibly, it had already spent some time out in the world.  So maybe a return that was sold on and had to be re-stamped because the T&P price wasn't the official stamp of whoever was re-retailing it. 

 

 

 

But we do not know on which date the diamond stamp was applied. Not close to the original date when it was stamped by T & P. I reckon.

Many of the other diamond stamps are on post-decimal examples, so my guess is that this one had been remaindered for a few years when it was taken up by the mystery buyer who also bought a whole batch of other out of date stuff.

[Malacoda]

On 2/18/2024 at 6:47 PM, Albert Tatlock said:

remaindered for a few years when it was taken up by the mystery buyer who also bought a whole batch of other out of date stuff.

Indeed, though it raises the question of whether it was a re-saler, a wholesaler or a retailer.  The amount of these is so small and so spread out over time, it could be a retailer.  To this day, I still see stickers from pretty much every shop I bought from 40 years ago (including DTW, LTS, FP, Comics Showcase and just the other day a stack of Defenders from Books Bits & Bobs in Kingston). (Upon Thames). 

[Albert Tatlock]

On 2/18/2024 at 10:22 PM, Malacoda said:

Indeed, though it raises the question of whether it was a re-saler, a wholesaler or a retailer.  The amount of these is so small and so spread out over time, it could be a retailer.  To this day, I still see stickers from pretty much every shop I bought from 40 years ago (including DTW, LTS, FP, Comics Showcase and just the other day a stack of Defenders from Books Bits & Bobs in Kingston). (Upon Thames). 

If a retailer, would they not bear the stamp or sticker of that outlet, even if clearly second-hand?

My guess is that they were bought up as a cheap job lot, then sold on to market traders and the like.

That there was still a bit of mileage in them is evidenced by this one a couple of pages back with a PBS stamp, plus the Hot Wheels one at the top of this page..

Edited February 19 by Albert Tatlock
scan added.

[Garystar]

This one must be quite rare? Whilst regular FF # 110 turns up regularly in the UK I don't recall seeing the "green thing" misprint before as a T&P

 

[Mr Thorpe]

Mr Thorpe -the lurker here! It's about time I made another contribution.

I've been following the debate on the diamond T&P stamp with a far too unhealthy interest and I've come up with another plausible hypothesis/theory.

We know the diamond stamp extends back to the late 1960's and into the mid 1970's. 

My theory -here goes

1) T&P had a load of old comics which they were looking to dump somewhere. The comics consisted of old unsolds -T&P stamped and unstamped. The comics were too old to be sold through their normal UK channels. 

2) T&P manage to find a buyer in a far off land that was using sterling as currency. I believe (having done a Google search) that Uganda was still using sterling, for example. 

3) A deal is struck.

4) The comics that are part of the deal are all stamped up with this country's currency ie in shillings.

5) Everything is all set then something happens to upset the deal.

6) T&P are stuck with all this sterling stamped stock that is basically a write off.

7) The stock is destined for the dumper and some of it is rescued by Albert!

It's all conjecture on my part, but it ticks all the boxes. I will now step back and wait for someone to take pot shots at my theory.    

Edited February 19 by Mr Thorpe
added numbers!

[Malacoda]

On 2/19/2024 at 11:53 PM, Mr Thorpe said:

Mr Thorpe -the lurker here! It's about time I made another contribution.

I've been following the debate on the diamond T&P stamp with a far too unhealthy interest and I've come up with another plausible hypothesis/theory.

We know the diamond stamp extends back to the late 1960's and into the mid 1970's. 

My theory -here goes

1) T&P had a load of old comics which they were looking to dump somewhere. The comics consisted of old unsolds -T&P stamped and unstamped. The comics were too old to be sold through their normal UK channels. 

2) T&P manage to find a buyer in a far off land that was using sterling as currency. I believe (having done a Google search) that Uganda was still using sterling, for example. 

3) A deal is struck.

4) The comics that are part of the deal are all stamped up with this country's currency ie in shillings.

5) Everything is all set then something happens to upset the deal.

6) T&P are stuck with all this sterling stamped stock that is basically a write off.

7) The stock is destined for the dumper and some of it is rescued by Albert!

It's all conjecture on my part, but it ticks all the boxes. I will now step back and wait for someone to take pot shots at my theory.    

Lovely to have you back.  I'm loving the conjecture. So the reason these span over 10 years of comics is because they were all piled up in Thurmaston and actually stamped as a job lot in the 70's?   Uganda was indeed still using the shilling, but it was neither the UK shilling nor the East African shilling.  In the mid 70's, 2/- Ugandan was about 80p UK money which would have made comics utterly unaffordable even with UK pocket money.  I can't believe a typical Ugandan child would have seen 2/- in a year, let alone have spent it on a comic.  

So, I don't buy it, but I like the fact that it explains why they are all priced at 2/-.  Because they were all priced at the same time and bound for somewhere where a shilling was not a UK shilling. 

The theory also requires, as you say, some of them to be unstamped.  This would mean they were bought and shipped all the way here but never distributed.  Seems odd that T&P were gathering up all the unsolds from all over the country, re-distributing at discounts, re-distributing to seaside towns, creating the Double Doubles and the annuals out of the leftovers, but at the same time had tons of comics that they just never bothered to / failed to distribute.

It also seems odd that you get comics like Avengers 25 which was actually a PV.  T&P never had any unstamped cents copies.  This one could have been a makeweight rando thrown into a crate, I guess, but we're building land bridges here. 

 

Also, as has been demonstrated by Marwood and the Robot (which sounds like 70's crime fighting duo), there is a mad variety of stuff with this stamp over a long period of time.  If someone were carefully selecting a package of export materials from the measureless-to-man leftovers at Thurmaston, it was with some wild selection criteria. 

 

 

 

[Mr Thorpe]

Thanks Malacoda for kicking the tyres of the 'Priced in Shillings for Export' theory.

Re your points

Your observation about the price being too high for the average Ugandan child is taken. However, what if these comics and magazines were not aimed at Ugandan kids but perhaps they were for sale in more elite outlets -airports, high end shops in Kampala or even the equivalent of Ugandan NAAFI type stores? 

I think the Avengers 25 is an example of a random box of cent priced Marvels turning up with the rest of the month's DC shipment from the US distribution hub. T&P, would have been stipulating 'no Marvels' (as they were getting them as PV's), no DC romance or humour titles and, sometimes, no war titles. The occasional box did show up and it probably ended up in the corner of the warehouse. 

The dumping of stock as Double Doubles had stopped by the early 70's. Possibly they weren't selling so well or T&P realised they were cannibalising their own market as they were selling them through the same newsagent outlets. Don't know about the seaside 'dumping' and when that may have stopped.

 

More food for thought

I've gathered together all the diamond stamped comics in my collection (there may be others I haven't come across yet). They date from 1966 to 1974.

Note they are all '5's! Does this tell us anything? Were T&P trying to mimic their stock control method abroad? I acquired these diamond stamped comics from various sources in the mid to late 70's when I restarted buying comics again and I was buying back issues. 

I also note that the Hot Wheels #5 above is a '1'.

We've been talking about Uganda as a possible destination for these comics, but it could have been Kenya or Tanzania. They still use shillings, apparently.

The magazines Malacoda has posted are a '6' and an '8'. Does this suggest that T&P were more successful selling magazines than comics. Perhaps the '5' was an experiment to sell comics too?

And finally an outlier! A 5 shilling diamond stamped comic! Rampant inflation in the destination country? 

 

One other point I'd make about Uganda (or even Kenya) being the likely destination of these diamond T&P stamped comics. We had a huge influx of Ugandan Asians (expelled by the tyrant Idi Amin) in the early 1970's. A lot of them would have settled in and around Leicester and also a lot of them ended up running newsagents. Did an enterprising Ugandan Asian refugee have a hand in all this, possibly working for T&P?

 

What's the East African equivalent of eBay?!!!

 

[Mr Thorpe]

Those '5's haven't come out so well above.

Here they are in their full cover glory!

[Albert Tatlock]

On 2/20/2024 at 8:59 AM, Mr Thorpe said:

Those '5's haven't come out so well above.

Here they are in their full cover glory!

Some of these appear to be in pretty decent shape, but all of mine had been in the wars (a long drawn-out series of war of attrition) by the time I came across them.

[baggsey]

On 2/19/2024 at 5:53 PM, Mr Thorpe said:

Mr Thorpe -the lurker here! It's about time I made another contribution.

I've been following the debate on the diamond T&P stamp with a far too unhealthy interest and I've come up with another plausible hypothesis/theory.

We know the diamond stamp extends back to the late 1960's and into the mid 1970's. 

My theory -here goes

1) T&P had a load of old comics which they were looking to dump somewhere. The comics consisted of old unsolds -T&P stamped and unstamped. The comics were too old to be sold through their normal UK channels. 

2) T&P manage to find a buyer in a far off land that was using sterling as currency. I believe (having done a Google search) that Uganda was still using sterling, for example. 

3) A deal is struck.

4) The comics that are part of the deal are all stamped up with this country's currency ie in shillings.

5) Everything is all set then something happens to upset the deal.

6) T&P are stuck with all this sterling stamped stock that is basically a write off.

7) The stock is destined for the dumper and some of it is rescued by Albert!

It's all conjecture on my part, but it ticks all the boxes. I will now step back and wait for someone to take pot shots at my theory.    

How about comics destined for Ireland? According to Wikipedia, although Eire decimalized along with the UK in 1971, the old shilling coin was kept in circulation until 1993.  @Malacoda - did T&P have a distribution centre in Ireland. If we have any Irish lurkers on this forum, perhaps they can confirm if the stamp is familiar?

[Albert Tatlock]

On 2/20/2024 at 5:46 PM, baggsey said:

How about comics destined for Ireland? According to Wikipedia, although Eire decimalized along with the UK in 1971, the old shilling coin was kept in circulation until 1993.  @Malacoda - did T&P have a distribution centre in Ireland. If we have any Irish lurkers on this forum, perhaps they can confirm if the stamp is familiar?

Our shillings here in Blighty also continued in circulation until 1990, and the old 2 bob lingered until 1992. They circulated alongside the new 5 and 10 pence coins until they were withdrawn.

So they could be spent throughout the 1970s and 1980s, although the goods they could buy were priced in decimal currency.

Probably the Irish coinage followed the same pattern.

Any of T & P's stock headed across the Irish Sea would have been stamped or stickered with a decimal price, I am sure.

Here is how Pat, Mick or Seamus, or indeed Fred, Bert or Alf, would have paid for his fix.

Edited February 20 by Albert Tatlock
scan added.

[themagicrobot]

I suppose it could be possible that the diamond stamped comics were destined for Ireland. We've seen earlier in this thread Irish comics ink stamp priced at 1/- that were still 10d in the UK. A quick look at ebay.ie doesn't reveal any diamond stamps though but there is a batch of mid 1970s comics with different 10p stamps which interestingly means by then their comics were the same price as ours. I still favour the theory that the diamond stamps were applied to a random batch of (mostly very ) old comics when Gladys decided to sweep up under the benches.