Get Marwood & I

Night Rich. Most fun I've had in a pence thread in ages  

On 5/19/2024 at 8:04 PM, Malacoda said:

Yup.  And there are also T&P stamped cents copies (with the June delivery stamp in this case!) to add to the WTF pile. 

That will bring us back to do!

Do, re, mi, WTF, don't know!

On 5/19/2024 at 8:00 PM, Malacoda said:

It was the fact that you referred to it as 'operational processing queues' and then made it clear you were talking about a trestle table with two piles of comics on it. Superb. And probably dead on. 

Dave the driver must've dropped this one and put it on the wrong table 

On 5/19/2024 at 7:54 PM, Malacoda said:

Though I am pssing myself about the two tables.  Nice one. 

I know it's bad form, but I could hardly type that one for laughing 

On 5/19/2024 at 7:41 PM, Malacoda said:

To be honest, I'm losing the thread of which points I'm replying to myself. Shall we knock this on the head and go for a virtual pint instead?  I think 'That's Life' is on in a minute.  

I'm crossing my fingers that you're pissing yourself laughing at all this Rich. I am. Most fun I've had in ages mate. Virtual pint it is!  

On 5/19/2024 at 7:36 PM, Malacoda said:

Yes and no.  More people doing the operational stuff, absolutely, I grant you, but these annuals were drawn by Kirby & Ditko. You can't summon up more Kirbys and more Ditkos to work consecutively. If the annuals were all produced by freelancers, you could have more people, but as far as I can see they were produced by all the same people who produced the regular issues who, according to legend, were working flat out (well, Kirby). 

But I grant you that point is probably spurious.  If we're only talking about a single double size issue, then it's a few extra weekends in the basement.  

Yes and no is quite annoying Rich. It's either yes, or no. It can't be both. If I ask Ditko in January that I want 60 pages of story in 5 months time, and he works on it in his spare time, alongside regular stories, as long as he produces it the book is ready for print in May. That's got nothing to do with when T&P make the decision to add 5% volume to the already in place printing schedule. 

On 5/19/2024 at 7:01 PM, Malacoda said:

It doesn't.  It's the other way.  The production schedule for the issue content (well, the finished article) prompts the question 'how many of these jumbo sized, squarebound, twice-the-price johnnies are you going to want?'

No it doesn't. The production schedule for the issue content would be the same whether the intention was to print 5 copies or 5 million. Why am I not understanding your point here Rich? Have I got me stoopid head on? 

On 5/19/2024 at 7:29 PM, Malacoda said:

The warehouse at Thurmaston was probably something on this scale and operation but the warehouse at Oadby was 17k sq ft  (so about 33 yards by 57 yards). I suspect things may have been less optimally organised than we think.   

Agreed. It would be hard to fit two tables in a space that small, to separate those comics needing stamps from those that didn't. 

On 5/19/2024 at 6:49 PM, Malacoda said:

If they were scheduled earlier (at each point in the production) schedule, then whatever point T&P confirm the order would inherently come sooner.  Also, I suspect that the order for the regular size titles was exactly that....regular....whereas the annuals.....once per year, different size, different cost.....were surely a conversation? 

So you're saying T&P engaged Marvel, or vice versa, and agreed on 5 UKPV annuals which were due to go to print in late May. Some weeks later, they were in contact again to the start up the regular comics again?

On 5/19/2024 at 6:59 PM, Malacoda said:

It may have taken longer to produce 72 pages of content than 32 pages?  OK, I'm game.  Talk us through the scenario where it takes less time 

You have more people work on it, consecutively. 

I'm really struggling with this paragraph Rich:

On 5/19/2024 at 3:58 PM, Malacoda said:

This left them with a big (pre-paid?) (already printed?) order for PV annuals. Should they cancel and go back to stamps?  

If there's no penalty, sure, why not. Are cents cheaper than UKPVs? Yes? Well cancel then.

On 5/19/2024 at 3:58 PM, Malacoda said:

Well, there’s actually zero benefit whatsoever in cancelling the order.  

Oh, isn't there? Why? 

On 5/19/2024 at 3:58 PM, Malacoda said:

If you’re going to stamp them all to make the price super clear,  

Eh? It's clear enough. Miller's 9d couldn't be any smaller if it tried, and sellers and buyers coped.

On 5/19/2024 at 3:58 PM, Malacoda said:

you’re better off the with UK price on it twice.

Not if you have to pay someone to stamp them all.

On 5/19/2024 at 3:58 PM, Malacoda said:

 There’s no benefit in cancelling the PV and getting cents copies to stamp

There is if they're cheaper, and there's no cancellation penalty.

On 5/19/2024 at 3:58 PM, Malacoda said:

….it’s exactly the same amount of stamping

Not if you don't stamp them it isn't

On 5/19/2024 at 3:58 PM, Malacoda said:

to achieve less result.

Eh? 

On 5/19/2024 at 3:58 PM, Malacoda said:

I don’t think that happened.  As I said, I think the annuals would HAVE to have been in the schedule well ahead of time because: they took longer to produce, were twice the size, twice the material, included posters and extras, were squarebound so could not be collated in the normal way, and had to be produced alongside the monthlies without impacting the schedule, so I would suggest that work on the annuals began relatively early and probably T&P had their order in for the annuals long before the order for the 1st June released monthlies I named above. 

But Rich, as I said before, all this work was in train already for the US bound copies. The UKPVs added 3-5% volume. I can't see T&P having to make a UKPV solicitation decision on those annuals any earlier than they would have for those first, post hiatus regular size titles. A plate change and an extra 5% volume was peanuts to the printers - you've said yourself that they were pumping out millions of comics each week. I understand that it may (and I stress may) have taken longer to conceive the content for the annuals, but the printers would have rattled them off in their sleep. How does the timing of T&Ps UKPV solicitation have any bearing on the lead in production time for the issue content?

On 5/19/2024 at 3:58 PM, Malacoda said:

This left them with a big (pre-paid?) (already printed?) order for PV annuals. Should they cancel and go back to stamps?  Well, there’s actually zero benefit whatsoever in cancelling the order.  If you’re going to stamp them all to make the price super clear,  you’re better off the with UK price on it twice.  There’s no benefit in cancelling the PV and getting cents copies to stamp….it’s exactly the same amount of stamping to achieve less result.

Eh? Even if you're right, and T&P decided, having ordered them, not to cancel the UKPV annual order and flip back to cents for stamping, why bother stamping them? T&P would have had operational processing queues for UKPVs which didn't require stamps and cents copies that did. If I'm understanding you correctly, you're saying that T&P knowingly stamped the UKPV annuals. Why would they do that, if they had separate existing processing queues? 

On 5/19/2024 at 3:58 PM, Malacoda said:

This is just a thought experiment really, but it does explain: 
(a)    Why there were PV annuals
(b)    Why they coincide with the first hiatus
(c)    Why there were only PV annuals this one year
(d)    Why they were all stamped when they already had UK prices on them. 

My earlier theory also explains everything. There weren't UKPV annuals originally, because they didn't want them, just as they didn't want the regular titles that weren't taken. Issue quotas / restrictions, costs, whatever. When the hiatus is coming to an end, they decide to give them a go as some of the earlier stamped ones sold. They start with five. They go through the wrong processing queue and get stamped (looks like they arrived in two deliveries, only two headline mistakes which I gave a plausible explanation for). When the next round of annuals fall due, they decide they don't want them. 

On 5/19/2024 at 3:17 PM, DC# said:

Thanks so much for the quick response.   What a great tool!  

You're not the first to call Marwood that 

On 5/19/2024 at 2:40 PM, Malacoda said:

There's a problem there, though, isn't there?  ASM & JIM would have rocked up in June,  FF & Sgt Fury in July and Marvel Tales in August, so they would have had to have kept the mistake going for 3 straight months.  

Three of the five could have arrived in the same UK shipment:

On 5/19/2024 at 2:38 PM, Get Marwood & I said:

And it's how we know that there are two UK Price Variant Gorgo #1s on the census...

And we know that for sure as CGC never mislabel anything.

Ever!

On 5/19/2024 at 2:40 PM, Malacoda said:

Could be, but it does make me think about the joke about the guy who goes to the opera: he's so into it that he leans out too far and falls out of the box into the orchestra pit.   Rather than admit his mistake, he goes back every night and falls out of the box at the exact same moment. 

Painful lesson that. Opera's awful. 

On 5/19/2024 at 2:40 PM, Malacoda said:

There's a problem there, though, isn't there?  ASM & JIM would have rocked up in June,  FF & Sgt Fury in July and Marvel Tales in August, so they would have had to have kept the mistake going for 3 straight months.  

You're saying humans can't repeat the same mistakes? 

On 5/19/2024 at 2:40 PM, Malacoda said:

I'm about to take a swing at it.  I don't think you'll be convinced, but I'm just conjecturing. 

I might be. Depends what you've got to conject 

And it's how we know that there are two UK Price Variant Gorgo #1s on the census...

...with none being added in the last five months 

On 5/19/2024 at 2:15 PM, Malacoda said:

It can't be that Ethel accidentally stamped a few - they're all stamped, and they're all stamped with the 1/6 stamp, so clearly not an error. 

It could be one operational error. The annuals may have all been placed on the wrong pile, so all got stamped. One error causes the whole batch to be stamped instead of them passing through the 'no need to stamp as already UK priced' operational swim lane. The ASM #2 Annual UKPVs would have arrived in one delivery. Ditto the other four titles. They go into the wrong queue, as the staff are used to annuals not having UKPVs, and are used to stamping them. The printed cover price is tiny, no one is interested enough to notice. They just stamp what is in front of them. One mistake, repeated 5 times (or less, if some titles arrived together) in a short window, results in every book being needlessly stamped in error.

Sticking a 9d sticker over a 6d printed price is explainable. Stamping a comic at 1/6 when it is already priced 1/6 can't be anything other than an operational oversight. Unless you can think of an operational / sales advantage garnered by doing so?

On 5/19/2024 at 2:00 PM, ADAMANTIUM said:

I was just about to do dat dere, coffee kicking in!

 

Cherryade wearing off.....

http://www.cgcdata.com

@valiantman

On 5/19/2024 at 12:41 AM, Malacoda said:

Which means that the moment where they chose to have PV's would certainly have been during the hiatus. 

It couldn't be any other way, Rich?

Sorry mate, but I don't really understand what you're trying to say or the significance of it. Look at my earlier post. Everything in it is fact driven. Cover dates, arrival dates, plotting, clear conclusions. Your previous post made me realise that I had plotted the ASM annual wrongly all those years ago. So I reassess, move it to its rightful position, and the extant examples back it up. It shows us that the ASM annual was on sale at the same time as the first ongoing ASM UKPV issue, after the UKPV resumption. So it makes sense that it was included.

T&P could only request the recommencement of UKPVs during the preceding hiatus by definition, so I don't know what point you're trying to make or prove. What we can prove is T&P originally solicited UKPVs from cover date May 1960 and decided against annuals, just as they decided against not taking all the Marvel titles in production (whereas Miller took every Charlton title as a UKPV in his UKPV window). Then we have a Marvel UKPV hiatus during which we see stamped cents copies, including the first round of Marvel annuals. When T&P decide to recommence printed UKPVs they try their hand with 5 of the annuals which were in production alongside those regular ongoing issues. The lead in time to the production of those annuals has no bearing on when and whether T&P solicited them. The US versions were being made regardless, and the T&P request could have come at any point prior to them being printed. One call, one plate change. The call could have gone like this:

• "Hello Marvel. Can we restart UKPVs please? We want them as 10d this time. I've got a title list, starting with Spider-Man"
• "Sure, Thorpe. Issue 27 has already been printed so the first ASM we can do will be issue 28, OK?"
• "Yep, fine"
• "We have an annual prepared too. Want that as well?"
• "Well, the stamped ones didn't sell too well. Maybe we could try a few and see...."

For reasons we don't know, T&P decided against annuals the next year. Maybe cost had a bearing. We'll never know for sure.

So, Rich, tell me clearly what your 1965 Annuals thing is please. Just hit me with it in one sentence.

On 5/19/2024 at 12:19 AM, Surfing Alien said:

To be fair, these are kind of one-offs. There has been no announcement or directive, but rather, I'm just showing that, short of offering a pb/digest "service", they will grade anything that fits the description if you pay for it.

Oh right, I take that back then. Still, I'd prefer they didn't grade these until they have a suitable holder. They look awful. 

On 5/18/2024 at 11:17 PM, Surfing Alien said:

That one is particularly offensive, as they put it in a magazine holder  The others look like comic book holders and a little less crazy but if they made the whole thing the size of a modern or silver sized comic book, I could see them looking pretty snazzy.

Indeed. Trading cards look good in their little cases. This just smacks of wanting to get into the market quickly before being ready with a product specific holder. 

On 5/18/2024 at 10:56 PM, Surfing Alien said:

My caveat to all that is, and has been, that the cases are waaaay to big for the format and downright silly looking at the pb level

I agree. That Green Lantern is a beauty but looks completely lost in that ugly great holder. All I see is oceans of skew-whiff, empty plastic. CGC would be better holding off until they have suitable cases to match the dimensions of the collectibles they seek to add to their ever growing portfolio. 

On 5/18/2024 at 10:25 PM, Malacoda said:

I think you've gone a bit grassy knoll there, Oliver.  

Depends which way you read it, Oswald.