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

[jeffreyk]

Is the value of a book with the 8d stamp any different than if the stamp was not there?

Say a cgc 5.0 book was work 1k.  Would it still be worth 1k with the 8d stamp on it?

I ask cause these are US comics with US prices on them that were only distributed in the UK.  

Thanks!

[Malacoda]

On 1/31/2022 at 12:28 AM, jeffreyk said:

Is the value of a book with the 8d stamp any different than if the stamp was not there?

Say a cgc 5.0 book was work 1k.  Would it still be worth 1k with the 8d stamp on it?

I ask cause these are US comics with US prices on them that were only distributed in the UK.  

Thanks!

Hi Jeffrey - traditionally, printed pence variants went for way below their cents counterparts, sometimes as little as half. Evidence suggests that gap is massively shrinking.  Stamped comics are more tricky as they are obviously not UK variants, but US originals.  I would be amazed if CGC did not down-value a comic with an ink stamp on the cover, and also amazed if a US bidder was willing to pay top dollar when he could presumably get one without the stamp and more easily. UK bidders are less turned off by the stamps (some actively like them), so you'd be more likely to get top dollar here. 

That said, there is a mad amount of investment buying and comic speculation going on at the moment, so while CGC might down-value or downgrade a comic for the stamp, it could still go for above book value if it's a nice copy and there are few of them about.  So the answer is that it would probably not be valued at £1k, but none of us would be in the least bit surprised to see it sell for that or more. 

[Malacoda]

OK everyone.  I assume at this late hour you're all tucked in in your jim jams, but could I please request that no one post on this thread for the next 20 minutes?

It's that time again.....

[Malacoda]

The 1967 hiatus - Part One: Shout Outs.  

@Get Marwood & I  As promised, your birthday pressie.  You do know that some people would prefer to have a cake & balloons to an explanation of a 50 year old publishing mystery, right?  I mean, obviously, the answer is to have both and I fully assume you’re reading this with Victoria sponge all round your gob and a balloon on a string.

BTW, you’re going to love this one because, whereas the other 2 hiatuses (hiati? that’s an island, surely?) were only solvable by looking at wider situations, this one comes down to the indicas.

@Albert Tatlock  Hi Albert, somewhere in the middle of this you will get very excited as it will begin to look like I’m going to explain, finally, why FF#80 was not distributed. I am indeed going to have a crack at that, but I am nowhere near as convinced by this piecing together of events as I was TTA 62.  See what you think.

@anyone who is not interested in the 1967 Marvel PV hiatus, get out now. This is your chance to get 10 minutes of your life back.

 

OK, in the immortal words (of Tiffany) I think we’re alone now……

Edited January 31, 2022 by Malacoda

[Malacoda]

The 1967 hiatus - Part Two:  Introduction.

The 1967 hiatus is a somewhat different animal to the 1964 hiatus. Unlike 1964, it is easy to see why it started, but the question no one has answered is why it went on so long.  And that’s because they’re asking the wrong question.  The right questions are:

(1) What actually happened and what was going on behind the scenes?

 (2) How was the end of the 1967 hiatus different to the start and finish of the 64 hiatus and its own start?

(3) After the 64 hiatus, PV’s resumed, but why did some titles resume PV’s in April 1969  and some did not?

(4) Why, after 10 years of 100% distribution, did we immediately start getting ND issues after the hiatus was over?  

 

Buckle Up, Chums, we’re going in again.

 

 

Edited January 31, 2022 by Malacoda

[Malacoda]

The 1967 hiatus - Part Three:  What it’s not. 

I had assumed, with all the chaos going on at Marvel 1966 – 1969, the 67 hiatus was a cluster of issues and that whatever the initial cause, the reason it went on so long was just not having time to worry about the 2% print run to the UK. T&P went bankrupt and was bought by IND,  Kinney bought DC/IND which finally opened up Marvel’s distribution options, the UK announced in March 1966 that decimalisation was coming (the act was passed in May 69), Marvel changed printers, Cadence bought Marvel, Cadence bought Curtis, Marvel switched distribution from IND to Curtis, cover prices rose to 15c….

But as it turned out, only one of those things is relevant and the reason the 67 hiatus started, the reason it went on for so long and the reasons it finished are actually 3 different conversations.

Edited January 31, 2022 by Malacoda

[Malacoda]

The 1967 hiatus - Part four: Why it started.

From 1964 onwards, the Labour government, particularly Wilson and his chancellor Callaghan, were bitterly opposed to devaluing the pound, as it was an acknowledgement of Britain’s reduced status on the world stage. As we saw in the last exciting episode, they introduced an import tax in 1964 - everyone was betting (literally)  they’d devalue, but they just wouldn’t do it. However, by November 1967, financial pressure on the pound was overwhelming and the writing was on the wall.   They could actually have held out longer, but as Chancellor James Callaghan pointed out in cabinet, so much speculation was going on about devaluation that the government were having to plunder the currency reserves to keep the pound propped up  They realised that was a bottomless pit and that as long as it went on,  they were effectively just handing the UK’s currency reserves to speculators.  And no PM would be stupid enough to do that. Until John Major did it, anyway.  

On 16th  November James Callaghan, recommended to the Cabinet that sterling should be devalued by just under 15 per cent. This was agreed and then implemented, at 14 per cent on 18 November. Callaghan had placed so much personal stock in not devaluing that his position as Chancellor was no longer tenable and he left the role within days.  Wilson then informed the nation that ‘the pound in your pocket’ had not been devalued (…unless you wanted to buy anything that had been imported from any of the other 194 countries in the world, obviously).

As with 1964, T&P could not know when the devaluation would occur or by how much and therefore couldn’t tell Marvel/ECP what price to change the PV’s to.  So Ethel dusted off her ink stamps and in the first week of August 1967, T&P asked Marvel to stop producing PV’s.  This was not unique macro-economic insight on the part of T&P. People were more astonished it took Wilson & Callaghan so long to wake up and smell the (imported) coffee.  

On paper, it looks like T&P pulled a blinder as their unstamped copies started arriving dead on when the devaluation happened in November,  but actually they were late by a month as when the pound devalued, most of their November issues were already PV’d at 10d.

When Callaghan announced the decrease by 14%, T&P needed a 2d rise to cover the increased cost.  I don’t think the 14% figure was random.  It actually created a parity of 1d = 1c, so to recover the 12c US cover price, T&P had to increase not to 11d but to a shilling, which they did.

 

 

 

Edited January 31, 2022 by Malacoda

[jeffreyk]

On 1/30/2022 at 10:08 PM, Malacoda said:

Hi Jeffrey - traditionally, printed pence variants went for way below their cents counterparts, sometimes as little as half. Evidence suggests that gap is massively shrinking.  Stamped comics are more tricky as they are obviously not UK variants, but US originals.  I would be amazed if CGC did not down-value a comic with an ink stamp on the cover, and also amazed if a US bidder was willing to pay top dollar when he could presumably get one without the stamp and more easily. UK bidders are less turned off by the stamps (some actively like them), so you'd be more likely to get top dollar here. 

That said, there is a mad amount of investment buying and comic speculation going on at the moment, so while CGC might down-value or downgrade a comic for the stamp, it could still go for above book value if it's a nice copy and there are few of them about.  So the answer is that it would probably not be valued at £1k, but none of us would be in the least bit surprised to see it sell for that or more. 

I asked because I own this book and when I biught it, there wasn't a discount due to the stamp.

 

[Malacoda]

The 1967 hiatus - Part Five   Why did it go on so long?

In August 1967, T&P asked Marvel to stop printing PV’s until they knew what the new price was going to be.  But in the meantime, Marvel changed to a new printer. They moved from ECP in Waterbury, Connecticut to WCP in Sparta, Illinois. 

The transfer of printing all Marvels titles from ECP to WCP was NOT done by cover month or by release date or chronologically.  It took more than a year to fully transfer printing from ECP to Sparta, which, as you will see, accounts for the entire hiatus. 

At ECP, each cover month was composed of 4 release dates: 1 in each of the first two weeks of the month, 3 months in advance and 1 in each of the first two weeks, two months in advance.  Clear as mud?  Yeah, me too. Let’s do an example. Here’s all the comics cover dated November 1967

Batch 1:  Released 1/8/67: Two Gun Kid #90, Kid Colt #137, Strange Tales #162,  TOS #95, Marvel Tales #11,

Batch 2:  Released 8/8/67:  TTA #97, FF #68, ASM #54,

Batch 3: Released 31/8/67:  Thor #146, Sgt Fury #48

Batch 4: Released 7/9/67:  Avengers #46, X men #37,  Daredevil #37

This largely reflects the logic if not the order with which Marvel moved the titles over from ECP

Strangely, batch 4 are the first to move, so Avengers, Daredevil and X men (cover date Feb 1968, release date December 12th 1967) were the first printed at Sparta.

Then batch 2:  TTA, FF, ASM, Marvel Superheroes & Captain Savage moved cover date March.

Captain Marvel started at number 1 in May at Sparta  (though surprisingly Sub Mariner and Iron Man which both started at the same time were printed at ECP).

Silver Surfer started from no 1 at WCP and Marvel CIC transferred, both  in cd August.

Mighty Marvel Western started from no 1 at WCP in cd October.

Marvel Tales transferred from cd November.

Then Thor &  Sgt Fury in cd January 1969.

And finally Rawhide Kid, Captain America, Iron Man, Sub Mariner, Nick Fury, & Dr Strange transferred from cd February, 13 months after the process started. 

So for batches 2, 3 & 4 it was a fairly orderly, if long, evacuation. Batch one was messy and the new titles all went in a rush in the last month.

Really bizarrely, because Marvel launched so many new titles, ECP were actually distributing MORE titles, not less, as the year went on.

 

Me: OK, clear to everyone? Let’s not always see the same hands.

Marwood:  Please sir, can we have it in a table?

Me:  Good grief, boy, what is it with you and tables? Very well, seeing as it’s your birthday.

So, The hiatus began with comics with Nov/Dec cover dates.  These are the August release and is actually the first point where T&P could possibly have asked for the resumption of PV’s. However, Marvel were beginning to move printing to Sparta and launching new titles every month. 

It would have been an unholy mess and the supply manifests would have changed every month as the titles flipped from ECP to WCP and new ones were launched.  During the cutover, each calendar month was made up of potentially 8 release dates (including annuals) – the 4 batches above, now x 2 printers and  from 2 locations 1000 miles apart. But on top of that, the titles were actually changing hands from ECP to WCP, and new ones were being created at both printers,  so it wouldn’t have been just 42 targets, it would have been 42 moving targets.  Additionally, you would have imagined that Marvel would have given the new titles straight to Sparta, but they didn’t. Even as the older titles were being transferred to Sparta, Iron Man, Dr. Strange, Nick Fury & Sub Mariner all had first issues printed by ECP.                

So, after cd January 1969, Sparta had the full raft of titles and began pressing the new PV’s, the first of which all had cd of April. 

So…you can see that  while the hiatus looks incomprehensibly long,  the schedule I just described actually fills the entire 17 months from cd December 1967 (when the first titles moved to Sparta)  to cd April 1969 when the Dec/Jan releases started to get PV’s again.   

I’ve no idea why it took so long to transfer all the titles from ECP to WCP but what I’m saying is 100% verifiable in the indicas and the release dates.  The answer to the question why did the hiatus last 17 months is right there in plain sight.

But we’re not finished yet by a long chalk.  Long time fans of this thread will know that I’ve dragged it back to the topic of the April 69 – July 71 PV/Stamp duality more than once. And you’re about to see why.

Anyone who just bought a ticket for the 67 hiatus, please alight here. This is going to get so detailed that even Marwood will be telling me to go outside and play in the sunshine.

Edited January 31, 2022 by Malacoda

[Malacoda]

The 1967 hiatus - Part six. 

After the hiatus, why did T&P decide to run with both PV’s and stamps? 

A key point to bear in mind about the 1964 hiatus is that while it affected 10 months comics,  it didn’t really go on for 10 months.  The first PV’s back were cover date August, release date 1-6-64, so T&P must have asked for the resumption of PV’s in May at the latest, which was 7 months into the 1st hiatus, by which point I assume they had (a) realised the import tax wasn’t going away any time soon and (b) had time to assess the market response to the increase. 

However, in 1967, the pound was devalued. This was not like the ‘temporary’ import tax of 1964. It was never going back. So was the change of printers the sole reason it took them 17 months to resume PV’s? 

There were huge operational advantages to printed pence variants:  they were neat & tidy, had only one price on the cover, looked more professional, didn’t have bloody great ink splats on them, were always legible, and it was much faster and more efficient to have everything come off the boat ready to go, rather than be stacked up in Ethel’s stamping shed for a few days. 
However, this meant orders had to be put in at least 4 months in advance,  ready for the 3 month delivery window, prices could not be varied once printed, and most importantly, the order size could not be varied. However many copies you ordered as PV’s 4 months ago, that’s how many you got, and if title A was selling like hotcakes and title B was coming back unsold, you had to ride it out for another 3 months because your PV’s were long off the presses.

So stamping had all the commercial advantages.  In 1959, this made this no difference.  Exchange rates were fixed, prices didn’t change, everything sold out, and Fred’s order was ‘send as much as you can’, so PV’s had all the advantages. 
Fast forward to the late 60’s.  The market for comics has massively declined due to television (which is now in….gasp….colour!) . Gerry Anderson’s publishing empire has gone into liquidation, the slicks have all become offset litho printed,  and let’s not forget that the imported Marvel/DC comics are already the most expensive thing on the market before the 2d increase (their competition, the domestically produced UK comics, were obviously unaffected by the devaluation).  

So, in 1967, when Marvels went back to being ink stamped, there were a number of advantages that now kicked in, but most importantly the ability to vary the order size and mix and do it closer to the distribution date, and crucially, with the 17 month hiatus, T&P had had time to discover this. 

So, if it were you, how would you do it? Up to this point, it has always been PV OR stamp, never the twain shall meet.  But once you realise that there is no reason that has to be the case, what is the obvious thing to do?  Cover your minimum, guaranteed-to-sell amounts of core titles with PV’s and flex additional supply on top based on demand trends in each title. 
I would also guess that if you were having PV’s, you probably had to keep the order a relatively fixed or minimum guaranteed amount for operational reasons and for it to be worth the faff for Marvel.  With the cents orders, you can have whatever you want. You’re paying the shipping! 

 

Edited January 31, 2022 by Malacoda

[Malacoda]

The 1967 hiatus - Part Seven

The volumes of PV’s were obviously fixed, but were the stamps varied in quantity?

In the volumes that are left in 2022, between different titles, you could of course  account for variances in the survival rate by the popularity of the title at the time.  You would not be surprised that far more copies of ASM survived that the same month’s Rawhide Kid.  But what about within a single title? Is there a logical reason you can easily find stamps for every issue of Avengers 73 – 89, except 86?  Did everyone go off Avengers that month? Or is it more likely that there was just a much smaller supply that month in the first place (for whatever reason)?

In the last year of looking, I haven’t built up enough of a sample to find patterns, but some are hard to resist, for example I have easily found stamps for X men 55, 57,59,61,63 & 65 but never found even one for 56,58,60,62 or 64.  In the months when there are stamps, there were no Marvel Tales, Marvel Super Heroes or Captain Savage (bi-monthlies).  Were additional X men cents copies sent over make up the volume of the total order? Without volume numbers, we’ll never know, but it’s a pattern that dovetails with these 3 bi-monthlies for 11 straight months (only stopping when X men & Capt. Savage get cancelled).

Before the 3^rd hiatus, every title Marvel produced came over and was sold as one thing (be it PV or stamp).  After the hiatus, we have a total mish mash where, in any given month, any title could be a PV only, a stamp only, both or non-distributed. From September 1961 to March 1969, T&P simply imported every title (excluding romance) and distributed. From April 1969 onwards, the distribution spread between PV, CS, both & ND is different literally EVERY month. Their order varies every month.

Why were they suddenly much more selective?

 

 

Edited January 31, 2022 by Malacoda

[Malacoda]

The 1967 hiatus - Part 8   Downturn

1969 was not 1960.  During the war, when fripperies like glossy magazines were not being published, the American mags brought over by and for the GI’s were like gold dust to us Brits.  When the war ended and the government banned (or taxed into non-importation) these mags, people mourned them and fell upon any that came into US bases and similar. Fred Thorpe started out importing the remaindered & returned colour supplements from newspapers (because they were technically newspapers, they escaped the ban).  He re-printed US comics as long as he had to and the minute the ban lifted he imported the originals en masse.

In 1960 Timely must have been an absolutely minuscule part of T&P’s burgeoning empire.  It’s funny because I always think of T&P as the tiny, soon to be bankrupt UK distributor and Marvel as the mega-giant corporation.  However the real picture was that T&P were distributing over a million comics PER MONTH made up of Dell, DC, ACG, Archie, Charlton, Harvey, IW Super & Timely.   Timely were allowed 8 titles per month and their relationship to IND was pretty much Oliver Twist’s relationship to Mr. Bumble.

When he began to import US magazines & comics again in 1959, Fred did not advertise them as ‘romance’ or ‘suspense’ of ‘horror’ or ‘detective’ he only need to use one word: American and they would fly off the shelves.

Contrast this with only 13 years later, launching Marvel UK, Transworld’s biggest concern was how to make the comics look less American and  more British so they would stand a chance in the UK marketplace. In 1959, T&P could sell as many comics as they could get their hands on.  By 1969 it was a different kettle of fish. T&P were having to get creative with what they did with all the returns, particularly DC (hence the double doubles, the reprints in annuals, the 2^nd time around redistribution to seaside towns, the re-stamped sale price issues etc).

The days of ‘send us all you’ve got’ were over. At the time the hiatus began, Marvel were producing 17 titles all of which T&P were distributing.  By the time the hiatus was over, it was up to 23 titles, with many more planned (it would eventually peak at 52).  IND owned T&P and DC had a massive returns problem so I assume T&P had a difficult time scaling down supply with DC (hence all the creative ways to get rid of the unreturnable DC returns). Marvel was a different problem.  I believe Marvel sold better, but T&P couldn’t be putting 80 or 90 comics onto the spinners every month, so there had to be a way to slim Marvel down to the best sellers and I think what you see from April 1969 onwards is visibly that: T&P are much more strategic in their Marvel imports.

Having to order everything 4 months in advance with a printed price was not nimble, but adjusting supply on a monthly basis with a combination of PV, stamp & ND was. And having had 17 months of being able to adjust supply, lessons had been learnt.

Now we need to stop for a moment, and look at the resumption in April itself.

Because it’s interesting.

Honestly.

 

Edited January 31, 2022 by Malacoda

[Malacoda]

The 1967 hiatus - Part 9  April 1969 (a) The beautiful straight line.  

The first 5 times the PV status changes (Oct 64, Aug 65, Oct 66, Dec 66, Nov 67), you get a ragged line in the cover date month because it’s made up of 4 release dates spread across 2 months, so when you make a change, it splits that cover date’s comics into pre-change & post change. However, in April 1969, you don’t get this.  Despite the more complex distribution structure, everything comes back onto the UK spinners in one go in April. 

This shows you how well planned it was, in contrast to every other time. Why am I making a fuss about this?  Well, watch how it was organised :

For the January 2nd release date, Thor #162 was not made a PV (because it had a March cover date), but the presses were reset just for Iron Man #12 & Sub Mariner #12 and they were printed as PV’s because they had an April cover date. 
For the 9th January release date,  Avengers #62,  Xmen #54, Daredevil #50 were not made into PV’s (because they had March cover dates), but Hulk #114, FF #85, ASM#71 & Captain Marvel #12  were made into PV’s (all April cover dates). 
For the 4th Feb release date,  the presses were re-set for Thor #163 alone and it was printed as a PV because it had an April cover date. 
For the 11th Feb release date,  Avengers #63 , Xmen #55  Daredevil #51 were all printed as PV’s because they had April cover dates.

 
Then full batches of cents April cd copies of Captain America, Rawhide Kid & Nick Fury put aside from the 2nd Jan release; Marvel CIC, the Silver Surfer & Mighty Marvel Western put aside from the  Jan 9th release; Sgt Fury put aside from the 4th Feb release; and Captain Savage put aside from the Feb 11th release were added to the order.  

Then top up cents issues were added in different amounts for each title for all of the PV’s from each of the release dates and thus a full run of April cover dates was put together including EVERY SINGLE MARVEL COMIC (with the possible exception of Doc Strange 179, which might be the first ever intentional ND....more on that later).  PV’s and to-be-stamped cents issues, including annuals, all together and all would be consistently priced (at one shilling for normal size and 2/- for giant size).  

We can agree that compared to the 64 hiatus, with its missing, ND & LD issues, this is an amazing piece of co-ordination over several weeks.  I think this demonstrates that it was not a switch that was flipped back in response to some external event, they took plenty of time to do it precisely and they knew what they were doing. 

By the way, harking back to point five, imagine if all that had also been split between ECP and Sparta as well, with both providing both PV’s & cents copies.  You can see why they waited to get everything under one roof. 

Actual footage of Ethel….

Edited January 31, 2022 by Malacoda

[Malacoda]

The 1967 hiatus - Part 10  April 1969 (b) The individual titles.  

Having answered the first two questions, we started with, by now you will be gagging for the answer to question 3…

After the 64 hiatus, PV’s resumed, but why did some titles resume PV’s in April 1969  and some did not?

Obviously, the answer is that with their newly instituted 4 tier system (PV, stamp, PV+stamp, ND) they had the capacity to match supply more closely to demand. Do the facts bear that out?

Just because we’re us, let’s look at it by title:

Rawhide Kid had been a PV, but by 1969 the spinner rack was crowded so T&P had decisions to make.  RK went non-distributed after the 3^rd hiatus, until Marvel in the US made it a monthly again in April 70 (perhaps surprising as RK was selling lower than the superhero titles, but then in their newfound relationship with Curtis they had more freedom to experiment with distribution rather than just cancelling a title to replace it with another).

 T&P gave it another try as a monthly to see if it would catch on, but as a stamp so they could vary supply. Sales of western titles were dying so it  never regained its PV status and ceased to be distributed when Pembertons took over in July 71.

Captain America had been a split book (TOS) before the hiatus. I’m not clear what was going on with Cap, but 113, 115, 116 & 117 were ND, so clearly it wasn’t going back to being a PV.  Whatever this was, it wasn’t based on US sales (Cap was outselling Avengers & Xmen both of which went back to being PV’s).  I suspect, however, that UK sales had taken a dive when the title changed over to just being Cap (note that Iron Man got pence variants immediately).

Note that when Pembertons took over, Cap went ND until 1973, which would support the idea it was not a strong seller in the UK.  Also, one wonders if the fact that Stan gave Cap to maverick newcomer Steranko was an act of faith or indicates the title needed help.  

Sgt Fury was an obvious contender for low sales in the UK because there was a strong rack full of war comics (Lion, Eagle, Hotspur, the Hornet, Victor, Valiant).  Whereas the super heroes had no UK competition, the cigar chomping cyclops was hopelessly outgunned.  Pass the stamp, Ethel.

Nick Fury and Dr Strange were also poor sellers and on the cancellation list, so were ordered in low & variable volume. Both got a mix of stamps and ND until they were cancelled.

Marvel Tales, Marvel CIC, Fantasy Masterpieces – the reprint titles were not PV’s before the hiatus, they were 2/- prices, so presumably sales were never that high (but also GS issues almost all got stamped anyway). So no PV’s for them for 2 reasons.

Captain Savage was a new title, and a war title as well so I don’t imagine anyone was counting on major box office.  Stamp.

The Silver Surfer was a stamp only while he was GS and after a muddled transition went to PV+Stamp. 

Likewise, when the Xmen returned as GS reprints, they were stamp only and didn’t return to being PV’s until they went regular sized again in the Pembertons era.

So for this theory to hold up, the titles which got the PV & stamp treatment would have to be the old warhorses and indeed they were:  Thor, Hulk, FF, ASM, Avengers, X men, Iron Man & Sub Mariner, plus one newcomer, Captain Marvel.  Captain Marvel is of course a special case because Stan wanted to commandeer the name (and it had already been the cause of a 12 year lawsuit and the demise of Fawcett comics, so clearly if Stan was trying to reinforce claim to the title, he needed as much distribution as possible).

So the facts do support the theory (with Mar-Vell a possible exception). 

So let’s say that the PV + stamp strategy was a way of producing a core of high selling titles with neat, easy PV’s, topped up with a variable order of stamps depending on how it was selling each month (and the overall order size) - the low selling titles were all stamps because they didn’t pass the minimum threshold to be a PV and anything super low selling would be the first thing ND.

Does anything contradict that?  (That’s not rhetorical, I’m really asking).  Assuming no, that answers why each title got the distribution status it got post April 1969.  

I may be wrong about some specifics here, but I think this is clearly the structure.

 

 

Edited January 31, 2022 by Malacoda

[Malacoda]

The 1967 hiatus - Part Eleven :  ND. 

Question 4 from the start: Why, after 10 years of 100% distribution, did we immediately start getting ND issues after the hiatus was over?  

For ages, it seemed odd to me that Marvel had maintained 100% distribution to T&P throughout the hiatus, but as soon as things went back to normal, we started getting non-distributed issues. Weird that they managed to maintain 100% distribution (FF80 aside) during the whole cutover from ECP to WCP and THEN when everything’s normalised at WCP, that’s when we start getting ND?

Weirder still… before, if no PV’s were printed or they missed shipping, that would have been that.  Now, post April, we have BOTH systems, PV & stamped cents copies, so if something happens to the PV’s, you can send cents copies instead.  This should completely eliminate any possibility of ND, and yet this is the point where ND STARTS happening at the very moment when it was 100% solvable. This indicates it’s not a coincidence, it’s intentional.

Up to March 1969, there is effectively 100 % distribution of all titles ( there are 2 exceptions to this: TTA #62 which was caused by the 1st hiatus and FF80 – no one knows why this was ND), but every other title that was supposed to be distributed (i.e. the super hero & western titles) WAS distributed, every title, every month, no exceptions.

I have argued that one of the values of this blended approach was that T&P could increase/decrease the volume of each title in and of itself but of course it also meant something else.  In a world of PV’s, if a title wasn’t selling, you had 3 months to wait to vary the order.  Post April it became possible to keep the overall order stable, and the PV order stable,  whilst boosting the volume of the titles you wanted by ordering fewer/none of the titles that were not selling.  It became possible to choose not to distribute certain titles without decreasing the agreed total volume.

And this is exactly what happens. After nearly 10 years of indiscriminately importing every Marvel title, we finally begin to see those dreaded letters: ND.

Edited January 31, 2022 by Malacoda

[Malacoda]

The 1967 hiatus - Part 12 Conclusions. 

1)      The 1967 hiatus began because of the devaluation of the pound.  Because the amount and date were unknown, T&P asked Marvel to stop printing PV’s in the first week of August 1967.

2)      The reason that PV’s did not resume quickly was because Marvel were moving printers.  The initial month was split, there followed 13 months of handover, after which PV’s resumed 3 months hence.

3)      During the hiatus, T&P realised the drawbacks of a PV only order. Faced with an on coming avalanche of new Marvel titles, in a significantly declining market and having gone bankrupt under their old business plan, they decided to retain the stamps and be more discriminating about what they distribute.

4)      So, unlike 1964, stamped copies never stopped afterwards.  In April 1969, it wasn’t that stampable copies were added to the supply of PV’s. It was the other way round.

5)      The stampable copies were imported in the same month as the printed PV’s – they were not remainders or returns; they were stamped in the same month that the concomitant PV’s arrived.

6)      The Marvel  PV’s were printed specially for T&P whereas the DC comics for stamping were returns or unsold wholesale stock. This could fool one into thinking that the 69-71 Marvel cents copies for stamping were leftovers like DC, but there is no evidence for that. (1)  Marvel had nothing like as many US leftovers to get rid of (2) they were much more focused on the UK market than DC and (3) the stamps match the PV pricing. If they were leftovers like DC they would be much more inconsistent like DC and the stamped prices would reflect the then-current stamping protocol.

7)      In some cases there are more stamped copies extant now than PV’s, which could indicate that the stamped copies were the dominant species……  

8)      However, whilst you can ALWAYS find a PV for every issue, there are some stamps that you will never find at all and the extant quantities of the other stamps are extremely variable. That suggests to me that supply of stamped cents issues was varied at the time – which I believe was exactly their purpose.

9)      When supply of the PV’s resumed, it did so neatly across a single cover date month, which was actually 4 release dates.  In the 1964 hiatus, we saw a complete mess with Avengers 9, DD4, Sgt Fury 11 & Kid Colt 119 going haywire at the front end and a split month between PV’s and stamps at the back end because T&P’s stop and start orders hit wherever they hit in the production schedule and that impacted the cover months inconsistently.

10)    In 1967, the start of the hiatus was similarly chaotic because it was caused by the devaluation which was out of T&P’s control, but the 1969 resumption was a straight line right across the cover date month.  It was not in response to a change to some external factor in the US or UK.  T&P picked a cover date for the PV’s to come back because that was neat and tidy for their own admin but more importantly, it was consistent for the UK newsagents and wholesalers.  There was no need for it to be a half and half mess this time because it was done by design. It was organised over a period of 4 or more months and they waited for everything to be printed in one place. 

By the way, you may remember my conjecture that in 1964  the reason everything up to ASM got delivered and everything from Fury onwards fell off the boat was because the schedule was in the original order it had been in since day one.

In the 1967 hiatus, the exact same thing happened, which supports the theory (or at least does nothing to suggest otherwise).  I think it was batching ! Sgt Fury was a natural break in the schedule for some reason.

11)   The titles which had been PV’s but did not resume:

The disappearance of the 4 month notice period enable them to be far more responsive to the market in their ordering.

In the era of the IND restriction of Marvel production, volume of titles was not an issue: they just imported everything.  The 3^rd hiatus & aftermath coincided with the sale of IND and purchase of Curtis, so it happened during a massive expansion in the number of Marvel titles.

This made the flexibility of changing the order a key new strength.

After a certain point, T&P knew which titles were selling X amount each month, so it was easy to get a minimum core order of PV’s which would definitely sell and then top it up with cents copies, which could vary depending on how a title was selling, or even reduced to nothing (ND) if it was not selling. 

 

The end.

 

And that, O Best Beloveds, just leaves me to tell Albert how FF#80 fell into the Negative Zone.  

 

Edited January 31, 2022 by Malacoda

[Get Marwood & I]

On 1/31/2022 at 3:11 AM, Malacoda said:

@Get Marwood & I  As promised, your birthday pressie.  You do know that some people would prefer to have a cake & balloons to an explanation of a 50 year old publishing mystery, right?  I mean, obviously, the answer is to have both and I fully assume you’re reading this with Victoria sponge all round your gob and a balloon on a string.

Whoo-hoo! Look at all that. I shall read it tomorrow Rich, over the last remnants of cake 

[Get Marwood & I]

On 1/31/2022 at 3:08 AM, Malacoda said:

On 1/31/2022 at 12:28 AM, jeffreyk said:

Is the value of a book with the 8d stamp any different than if the stamp was not there?

Say a cgc 5.0 book was work 1k.  Would it still be worth 1k with the 8d stamp on it?

I ask cause these are US comics with US prices on them that were only distributed in the UK.  

Thanks!

Hi Jeffrey - traditionally, printed pence variants went for way below their cents counterparts, sometimes as little as half. Evidence suggests that gap is massively shrinking.  Stamped comics are more tricky as they are obviously not UK variants, but US originals.  I would be amazed if CGC did not down-value a comic with an ink stamp on the cover, and also amazed if a US bidder was willing to pay top dollar when he could presumably get one without the stamp and more easily. UK bidders are less turned off by the stamps (some actively like them), so you'd be more likely to get top dollar here. 

That said, there is a mad amount of investment buying and comic speculation going on at the moment, so while CGC might down-value or downgrade a comic for the stamp, it could still go for above book value if it's a nice copy and there are few of them about.  So the answer is that it would probably not be valued at £1k, but none of us would be in the least bit surprised to see it sell for that or more. 

I asked CGC how they treat books with UK price stamps and they said.....

I agree that most buyers would avoid a UK stamped copy if they could.

 

[Get Marwood & I]

On 1/31/2022 at 9:15 AM, Get Marwood & I said:

Whoo-hoo! Look at all that. I shall read it tomorrow Rich, over the last remnants of cake 

Today's plan changed and I snuck a first read just now, Rich. Not sure what more I can say, but flipping impressive work mate. Seriously, there is so much here to take in that it would take some time and effort to sense check it all, the theories, the dates etc. But it all reads as eminently plausible. One thing I am sure of - you have made in this thread the most in depth, considered, well researched attempt at explaining the Marvel pence gaps that I have ever seen, and will probably ever see. As I said before, this stuff is too good to be buried away in a thread on a board like this. I'd strongly consider trying to get something published somewhere - whether it be an article, a blog or a book of some sort. I will try to work through it all in more detail at a later time to see if I can add anything or, which I know you would appreciate, challenge any of it.

Bloody marvellous stuff, Rich. No pun intended. The next time someone claims the gaps are the results of shipping strikes....  

[jeffreyk]

On 1/31/2022 at 6:23 AM, Get Marwood & I said:

I asked CGC how they treat books with UK price stamps and they said.....

I agree that most buyers would avoid a UK stamped copy if they could.

 

Thanks.  CGCs stance on treating tjem as distrbution stamps witg no effect on the grade makes sense as they are US printed books that just got distributed in the UK.