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

[Get Marwood & I]

Three main possibilities then - stamped in the US prior to shipping, stamped by T&P on arrival or stamped by the individual shops and sellers. One thing I have looked for intermittently online is one of the actual stamps. If the stores were supplied with them, you'd imagine that one or two might have surfaced on eBay or some auction site by now wouldn't you. "Vintage 9d stamp", or something like that. And yet I've never seen one and no combination of key words ever brings one up when Googleating. So my money is on T&P did the stamping and, when the prices increased to 10d, they threw the 9d stamps away in bulk as they would never be needed again. That might explain why not one single vintage stamp has ever found its way online.  Maybe. 

[Kevin.J]

I think you are thinking of it as a 9d stamp, I remember it being a pad with all letters and numbers and a few different heads, you made up the stamp you needed, this is not an item specific to comics.

We used to stamp our names on our hands etc. this was a small tin with a spongy pad what you poured ink in from a bottle, the characters were rubber.

This is an item that would wear out easy and have little or no value at the time to anyone, especially after decimalization and price guns.

Anyway, as I said, who cares, we will never know 

[Get Marwood & I]

5 hours ago, Kevin.J said:

I think you are thinking of it as a 9d stamp, I remember it being a pad with all letters and numbers and a few different heads, you made up the stamp you needed, this is not an item specific to comics.

We used to stamp our names on our hands etc. this was a small tin with a spongy pad what you poured ink in from a bottle, the characters were rubber.

This is an item that would wear out easy and have little or no value at the time to anyone, especially after decimalization and price guns.

Anyway, as I said, who cares, we will never know 

I care 

 

June 1958 

[Get Marwood & I]

A 9d from J.A.E.

See?

 

No?

Use the microscope then.

[Kevin.J]

Just Another Enigma

[Get Marwood & I]

7 minutes ago, Kevin.J said:

Just Another Enigma

Jeopardising Arnold's* Enterprise...

 

*Alright, alright, it was Len's by then. Don't spoil it 

 

[Mr Thorpe]

I'm a 'Stamped in the warehouse' guy! That would expain this 1/- over sticker.

That J.A.E is a beaut!

[Get Marwood & I]

5 minutes ago, Mr Thorpe said:

I'm a 'Stamped in the warehouse' guy! That would expain this 1/- over sticker.

That J.A.E is a beaut!

Couldn't make their mind up on that one could they 

[Get Marwood & I]

26 minutes ago, Mr Thorpe said:

That J.A.E is a beaut!

I like the R.V.s too Mr T  

 

 

Spoiler

 

[Get Marwood & I]

...and his mate R.W 

 

Spoiler

 

[Get Marwood & I]

On 6/28/2020 at 5:31 PM, Get Marwood & I said:

A brief interlude, before we dive into ACG and then Marvel.

You'll hopefully note that I purposely titled the thread 'A Review of the First Official Distribution...' and noted in the early posts that I have concentrated on what can be proven to have been distributed by way of an 'official' distributor cover stamp being present. And, for now, Charlton will hold the crown for earliest known cover dated US comic with such a stamp - our 'War at Sea' #29 dated February 1959 - until someone comes along and beats it. But it is common enough knowledge that US comics found their way to the UK unofficially prior to the above date. The difficulty with any research into that is the inability to prove anything retrospectively without any physical evidence that is, say, comparable to the cover stamps that Thorpe & Porter and L Miller began using from 1959/1960.

The above said, there are scenarios here and there that can lead to some reasonable conclusions. One thing I am used to as I scroll the internet looking for price variants and such is the 'same book' phenomenon, i.e. the scenario where the same issue turns up all the flipping time, often in total isolation of its surrounding issues. One such book is 'Li'l Genius' #17, cover dated April 1958. Every time I search that title looking for new pence copies I see multiples of that book. There are no UK Price Variant printed pence copies of course and, over time, its appearance in every search starts to grate, so many of them there seem to be over here.

At any given time, you could expect around ten results from the eBay.co.uk search "Li'l Genius" and, typically, over half of them will be for issue #17. Here are three copies from three different sellers all taken from eBay UK:

Look closer, and you'll see the copies above all have this same small one shilling sticker on them:

  

Could this be taken as evidence that this book was imported to the UK around the date of its cover? Later copies with T&P stamps would tend to be one shilling and sixpence (1/6) for an issue that size - could the lower price be indicative of an earlier import date? Or perhaps a load of excess copies came over much later and one UK dealer decided to sell them? It wouldn't be the first time that one regional sellers' books turned up all over.

But there is no way of knowing now is there. So all we can do is speculate and guess. 

Meanwhile, back to the 'provable' first arrivals. Some cool stuff from ACG to follow...

 

[Mr Thorpe]

I want an RW stamp!

I've actually got one of those Lil' Genius' which is 'stampless' -in more common parlance, a 'cents copy'. Mine, I'm pretty sure is part of the Miller warehouse find. I've actually found evidence of this now.

It's in the book called 'Poisoned Chalice' which is about Marvelman, but the early chapters cover a lot of the L Miller story.

To summarise, Len Miller died in 1966 at the age of 67. The company was wound up in 1972 and the company was closed down by 1974. The author then quotes an article by Steve Holland

 

      'The contents of a warehouse full of old unsold copies of magazines was sold off; a British dealer by the name of Brian Jepson bought a lot of it and others may have tapped into the same source. That's why you can occasionally find mint condition Miller comics, although that's increasingly rare these days'.

 

Have a read of 'Charlton's Giant Revolution' which ended up disastrously with loads of unsold 68 page giants. I reckon these got dumped on mainly Len Miller and to a lesser extent, T & P. They ended up in the warehouse unsold probably because of the sheer number of them and the awkward format. Miller probably bought the comics by tonnage rather than number (who wants to count comics -and aren't they all the same anyway?), so he was stuffed. If he sold them at 9d he was making a loss. So they just stayed in the warehouse until the clearance.

I offer the following from my collection. I bought all these at the same time and I'm pretty certain they are Miller warehouse provenance. According to the Charlton piece, there were 29 15C giants. I've got 15 of them. Are the other 14 about as well? I'm sure I bought all the ones I saw at the time. You can tell I wasn't fussed about genre!

 

 

 

[Get Marwood & I]

6 hours ago, Mr Thorpe said:

I want an RW stamp!

It's the only one I've ever seen. Looks cool doesn't it. A bit racy. 

Quote

I've actually got one of those Lil' Genius' which is 'stampless' -in more common parlance, a 'cents copy'. Mine, I'm pretty sure is part of the Miller warehouse find. I've actually found evidence of this now.

It's in the book called 'Poisoned Chalice' which is about Marvelman, but the early chapters cover a lot of the L Miller story.

To summarise, Len Miller died in 1966 at the age of 67. The company was wound up in 1972 and the company was closed down by 1974. The author then quotes an article by Steve Holland

 

      'The contents of a warehouse full of old unsold copies of magazines was sold off; a British dealer by the name of Brian Jepson bought a lot of it and others may have tapped into the same source. That's why you can occasionally find mint condition Miller comics, although that's increasingly rare these days'.

 

Have a read of 'Charlton's Giant Revolution' which ended up disastrously with loads of unsold 68 page giants. I reckon these got dumped on mainly Len Miller and to a lesser extent, T & P. They ended up in the warehouse unsold probably because of the sheer number of them and the awkward format. Miller probably bought the comics by tonnage rather than number (who wants to count comics -and aren't they all the same anyway?), so he was stuffed. If he sold them at 9d he was making a loss. So they just stayed in the warehouse until the clearance.

I offer the following from my collection. I bought all these at the same time and I'm pretty certain they are Miller warehouse provenance. According to the Charlton piece, there were 29 15C giants. I've got 15 of them. Are the other 14 about as well? I'm sure I bought all the ones I saw at the time. You can tell I wasn't fussed about genre!

Brilliant, thanks for posting that CGR article Mr T. Not seen that before. I wonder what happened to Jepson - that's not a name I've heard before?

They look good together don't they, the giants.

I'm sure you've seen it, but this interview with Alan Class by 30th Century is quite good and mentions the Miller ending around the 7 minute mark. I wish I was back in that age again, when things were a little simpler and, dare I say it, filled with possibilities. 

 

[01TheDude]

On 7/13/2020 at 1:28 PM, Get Marwood & I said:

...and his mate R.W 

 

  Reveal hidden contents

 

now that is a dead sexy looking stamp!

RW = Rutting Wolverine?

[Get Marwood & I]

I've been looking at the different T&P stamp types over the last few weeks.

We know from my grid below that the first 9d stamps were numbered one to nine:

And all the subsequent 'first version'' stamps were numbered thus - here are the first wave 10d versions:

And the numbering continued for the second less intrusive version type - here are the 1-9's for the slimmer, smaller second wave 10d stamps:

The numbering stopped with decimalisation it seems.

The grid below, showing the 20 different T&P stamps that I have found so far, shows that the 1-9 numbers disappeared from the 5p stamp onwards:

Odd that there is no 9p T&P stamp. The UK Price Variants went from a printed price of 8p to 9p to 10p, but the stamps went straight from 8p to 10. I wonder why?

There are quite a few stamps that have no publisher attached to them which I suspect are T&P's but can't be sure. I'll post some examples later.

In the meantime, does anyone know which books were the last to have an identifiable T&P stamp on them? My folder is filling up with examples...

[Gnasher]

The numbering did continue then on the smaller stamps. and stopped as you say at the decimal system being bought in. I was mistaken then, as I'd thought they'd stopped when the larger stamps finished. Just goes to show how we take things for granted, and on how unobservant I am!!!  

Keep up the good work! 

[Get Marwood & I]

53 minutes ago, Gnasher said:

The numbering did continue then on the smaller stamps. and stopped as you say at the decimal system being bought in. I was mistaken then, as I'd thought they'd stopped when the larger stamps finished. Just goes to show how we take things for granted, and on how unobservant I am!!!  

Keep up the good work! 

Cheers. It gets quite compelling after a while Bob, looking out for all the differences. As you say, sitting under our noses for years and none of us have ever really studied them it seems. I quite like putting the image grids together as they tell their own story. I often find that just as I think a research strand has reached it's conclusion, it takes me in another direction. I honestly thought this thread would dry up after my first five or so posts. All good fun. 

[Gnasher]

When I was buying them as a kid, I never really took any notice of the stamp, save for the price, I was to busy wondering how I was going to tell my parents what happened to the shilling on top of the gas meter. 

[themagicrobot]

I'm enjoying this thread, heck I'm enjoying most of the threads here, even ones about Spider-man. Dredging the bottom of the barrel now. Isn't it interesting (?!?) that the early stamps all used a black ink pad and most (but not all) later stamps used a blue ink pad. So perhaps later black T&P stamps are rare? Or not? Do you find some issues with black stamps and blue stamps? Or not? 

PS: I assume unsold British comics like Lion, Valiant etc were returned for credit when the latest issues arrived. Did the Thorpe and Porter rep removed last month's unsold comics and replace with fresh ones every time? They seemed to with Mad magazine as I bought it religiiously. I'm not so sure if unsold comics were replaced every single time as I remember when the price increased to One Shilliing and I spun the spinner rack reluctantly avoiding that new batch and picked out issues that still were stamped 10d. as I could get three comics for my Half Crown.

[Get Marwood & I]

18 minutes ago, themagicrobot said:

I'm enjoying this thread, heck I'm enjoying most of the threads here, even ones about Spider-man. Dredging the bottom of the barrel now.

Posting in one of my threads is the very definition of barrel scraping TMR  (thanks for the kind post on your own blog by the way)

And what's up with Spider-Man? 

Quote

Isn't it interesting (?!?) that the early stamps all used a black ink pad and most (but not all) later stamps used a blue ink pad. So perhaps later black T&P stamps are rare? Or not? Do you find some issues with black stamps and blue stamps? Or not? 

The later ones are the same colour as the ink pads we used to use in the Bank years ago to stamp cheques and stuff. Sort of purpley. But having already burrowed through the bottom of the barrel with the numbering, even I wouldn't dare research stamp colour variations.

 

Or would I! 

Quote

PS: I assume unsold British comics like Lion, Valiant etc were returned for credit when the latest issues arrived. Did the Thorpe and Porter rep removed last month's unsold comics and replace with fresh ones every time? They seemed to with Mad magazine as I bought it religiiously. I'm not so sure if unsold comics were replaced every single time as I remember when the price increased to One Shilliing and I spun the spinner rack reluctantly avoiding that new batch and picked out issues that still were stamped 10d. as I could get three comics for my Half Crown.

I posed this question earlier in the thread - what happened to the unsold UK newsagents copies? No evidence I'm aware of and there aren't enough remaindered compendiums out there to cover all titles in my opinion (Double Doubles only had DC and the odd Marvel - what about the Charltons, Archies etc?). I bet they just sat there until sold or were dumped.