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

[rakehell]

On 5/17/2024 at 2:27 PM, Garystar said:

Don’t spread the word, although looks like we’ve all seen it, I’m the only bidder at present. 

Good luck, mate. I'll be watching...

[Albert Tatlock]

On 5/18/2024 at 10:08 AM, Garystar said:

I've lost track but have we seen this one before as a T&P, if so can't have been very often. Duncan has it as ND.

We knew nothing of nd or ND at the time.

All we knew was that this was 'impossible' to get hold of.

We waited in hope that it would eventually surface, as # 56 and #57 had done, several months late, but no, it never showed.

I am surprised that a few arrived to be stamped, but they must have been in very small numbers.

[Malacoda]

On 5/20/2024 at 6:52 PM, Albert Tatlock said:

I am surprised that a few arrived to be stamped, but they must have been in very small numbers.

I think your recollection matches the general remembrance, Albert.  I've never seen a stamp until Gary & Steve posted these and I looked at several hundred. I was betting that if they did turn up stamped, it would be the other fellas. 

In the 70's, PG had this as rare and it was twice the price of surrounding issues. Likewise AA in the 80's (however, neither of them listed it as ND!)

Edited May 20 by Malacoda

[Albert Tatlock]

Look what Ena is up to now....

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/276412979069

Rochdale in the Premier League?

Wait till she comes into t'Rovers, I will give her a piece of my mind!

Don't worry, will get back on track with my next post, I have found a few more purchases that can help us date arrivals.

[Albert Tatlock]

Here is a record of a few purchases I made at the PX on Burtonwood USAF base.

Not checked yet, but they are probably in advance of UK retail outlets.

A good bit of what I bought there had the Mark Jewelers and Diamond inserts.

Some I foolishly tore out and discarded, to keep down the price of postage on the ones I was selling.

I still have a few, though, and one day I will go through everything within reach and see how many still survive.

[Albert Tatlock]

On 5/20/2024 at 7:50 PM, Malacoda said:

I think your recollection matches the general remembrance, Albert.  I've never seen a stamp until Gary & Steve posted these and I looked at several hundred. I was betting that if they did turn up stamped, it would be the other fellas. 

In the 70's, PG had this as rare and it was twice the price of surrounding issues. Likewise AA in the 80's (however, neither of them listed it as ND!)

I have just gone through my FF collection from this period.

They are all stamped cents, except for # 72 and #80, both unstamped cents..

#72 was not common at the time, but of course enough copies have been imported by now to make it nothing special.

[Malacoda]

On 5/21/2024 at 10:00 PM, Albert Tatlock said:

#72 was not common at the time, but of course enough copies have been imported by now to make it nothing special.

Interesting though.  When I was researching, I found a couple of stampies easily and moved on, so made no notes on 72, but looking through ebay now there are loads of copies but only one stamp.  And I would imagine with the Surfer on the cover, it's not due to a lack of interest at the time.   Also...

Edited May 21 by Malacoda

[Malacoda]

On 5/21/2024 at 8:52 PM, Albert Tatlock said:

Here is a record of a few purchases I made at the PX on Burtonwood USAF base.

Not checked yet, but they are probably in advance of UK retail outlets.

A good bit of what I bought there had the Mark Jewelers and Diamond inserts.

Some I foolishly tore out and discarded, to keep down the price of postage on the ones I was selling.

I still have a few, though, and one day I will go through everything within reach and see how many still survive.

How exactly did the pricing work at Burtonwood?  75p for 9, but £2.37 (and a ha'penny) for 24 look about consistent with a couple at 50c and a dollar,  but what were you paying per comic? Was there a deal?

 

 

[Garystar]

On 5/14/2024 at 9:08 PM, Albert Tatlock said:

Here is what the lettercol of FF # 6 tells us:

Set in type 14 March

Mike says it shoulda got to where it shoulda got to by 12 June

Cover date September 1962.

By 1975 (hulk 184) Marvel had forgot themselves why comics were dated 3 months in advance. 

[Albert Tatlock]

On 5/22/2024 at 12:16 AM, Malacoda said:

How exactly did the pricing work at Burtonwood?  75p for 9, but £2.37 (and a ha'penny) for 24 look about consistent with a couple at 50c and a dollar,  but what were you paying per comic? Was there a deal?

 

This is over 50 years ago, and at the rate my brain cells are dropping off their perch, it is a miracle I remember anything at all.

The mags were priced in US currency, of course, as was everything on the base. I just took my loot to the counter and handed over what was demanded.

In the next shed was a change desk, where I handed in pounds for greenbacks.  I could have miscalculated the sterling equivalent. Bit late to go back and check now, the receipts will be long gone, unless Uncle Sam has filed away his copies in some remote desert storage facility. Burtonwood USAF was razed to the ground years ago.

These kinds of places were probably where the few copies of ND comics came from before US dealers had customers on this side of the pond.

[Malacoda]

Indeed. The American PX story seems to come up a lot.  You'd think they'd have been few & far between, but everyone of a certain vintage seems to have their 'we got these at the American forces base' story.  My mum always loved the soap as a little girl.  The heavy duty, utility carbolic soap she was used to sank like a stone in the bath, but the American soap floated, which she thought was magic.   Apparently there were literally thousands of PX's right across the world. 

[Garystar]

On 5/22/2024 at 1:50 PM, Malacoda said:

Indeed. The American PX story seems to come up a lot.  You'd think they'd have been few & far between, but everyone of a certain vintage seems to have their 'we got these at the American forces base' story.  My mum always loved the soap as a little girl.  The heavy duty, utility carbolic soap she was used to sank like a stone in the bath, but the American soap floated, which she thought was magic.   Apparently there were literally thousands of PX's right across the world. 

Indeed. USAF Fairford was near where I used to live and Mark Jewelers seemed quite plentiful in our area. It wasn’t until mid 80s I got to go on site and by then there were plenty of other platforms to obtain comics. As Albert says you could only pay in $ so had to go to a currency exchange first. 

[baggsey]

On 5/17/2024 at 7:35 PM, Malacoda said:

 

I think we concluded that the returns were probably unsold / never distributed copies from wholesalers that never made it to the streets or a combination of those and actual returns from retailers. In the eras when the retailers were ripping off covers or bits of covers, the returns would definitely have to have been the undistributed copies from the wholesalers. 

 

To add a belated two cents to this discussion on pull dates.....back in 1977 (Jul 11th-Jul 31st) on a family visit to the US (Caldwell, NJ) I definitely was pleasantly surprised that the local 7-11 had two consecutive copies of Detective Comics on the spinner rack - #471 and #472 which had cover "pull" dates of August and September. I bought them both. Of course, that is only one data point. Like you, I believe that the comics that turned up in the UK were not comics that had been returned after the pull date, but were comics from wholesalers warehouses more likely to have been returned unsold when the next issue of a comic was published.

[baggsey]

At the risk of going off-topic, Can anyone point me to what information exists on paperbacks that T&P imported from the US into the UK in the sixties? It looks like T&P imported Belmont paperbacks of the Shadow in the period 1963-1967.  The sticker on this book currently for sale seems tto be a T&P TeePee ?

[Malacoda]

On 6/1/2024 at 8:59 PM, baggsey said:

At the risk of going off-topic, Can anyone point me to what information exists on paperbacks that T&P imported from the US into the UK in the sixties? It looks like T&P imported Belmont paperbacks of the Shadow in the period 1963-1967.  The sticker on this book currently for sale seems tto be a T&P TeePee ?

It sort of looks like T&P and sort of doesn't.  The T&P ones were priced at 2/6 with recognisable T&P stickers, so maybe this is a discounted copy (hence the pen mark)?  Can't get this to expand properly (a familiar problem).....

[baggsey]

On 6/1/2024 at 3:51 PM, Malacoda said:

It sort of looks like T&P and sort of doesn't.  The T&P ones were priced at 2/6 with recognisable T&P stickers, so maybe this is a discounted copy (hence the pen mark)?  Can't get this to expand properly (a familiar problem).....

Interesting that the image you provided has a "4" inside the TeePee stamp, whereas the one I posted has a "1".  Presumably they were following the same batching process they followed for DC imports in the same period.

[Albert Tatlock]

On 6/1/2024 at 8:55 PM, baggsey said:

Like you, I believe that the comics that turned up in the UK were not comics that had been returned after the pull date, but were comics from wholesalers warehouses more likely to have been returned unsold when the next issue of a comic was published.

There are many examples previously posted in this thread of mags with T & P stamps in addition to arrival dates applied by the US retail trade.

[baggsey]

On 6/1/2024 at 5:10 PM, Albert Tatlock said:

There are many examples previously posted in this thread of mags with T & P stamps in addition to arrival dates applied by the US retail trade.

Yes, @Albert Tatlock , thanks for the reminder of that, but AFAIK the overwhelming majority of comics that arrived in the UK, at least in the late sixties and seventies were without arrival dates, either pencilled or stamped. That said, it might be worth analyzing the incidence of arrival dates on comics to see if they were more prevalent on UK-imported comics in the early sixties. It might indicate a change in fulfillment strategy for comics going to the UK. 

Incidentally, I visited a small independent comic shop close to me here in the Chicago hinterland, run by a chap in his seventies who started collecting with Spider-Man #6. He mentioned that one of the drug stores he frequented for new comics always had the arrival date pencilled on the comics by the owner to remind the owner when to send the comics back. He also confirmed to me that it was common (at least in Elgin, IL) for multiple issues of any title to remain available before the oldest was returned for credit.