Comics UK

Raven wrote:

Phoenix wrote: ... but individually those issues of Lucky Charm are worth a minimum of £5 each even if they had been stored in a greenhouse, and some have been sold on eBay over the last two or three years for in excess of £30 each.

What makes these Lucky Charm comics especially rare/desirable/collectable, then? Weren't they just reprints of strips from weekly titles? Thomson titles from the period full of original material don't go for anything like that.

I suppose it's because Lucky Charm (and its boys' equivalent Red Dagger) featured complete collections of serials. However they were quite plentiful and they're only a couple of decades old so I'm amazed some sold for £30 each. Perhaps it was just a rich eccentric who thought he really was buying lucky charms, as interest seems to have waned now if Ray could pick up the entire run for £30.

Lew Stringer wrote: I suppose it's because Lucky Charm (and its boys' equivalent Red Dagger) featured complete collections of serials. However they were quite plentiful and they're only a couple of decades old so I'm amazed some sold for £30 each. Perhaps it was just a rich eccentric who thought he really was buying lucky charms, as interest seems to have waned now if Ray could pick up the entire run for £30.

Yes, I suppose you probably couldn't give issues of Lucky Charm away at your typical comic mart, yet there's bound to be one or two people in the UK prepared to pay a fortune for any title (like the bidding couple who were paying around £30 to £55 each for any individual issue of Look-In featuring The Sweet a year or two ago).

Whether they're actually worth that much though, may be down to whether they'd actually sell for that kind of price once the one or two eccentric millionaires have completed their collection!


Presumably the Lucky Charm material is totally reformatted and maybe even edited, so I'd have thought that would make collectors prefer the original strips.

Raven wrote:Presumably the Lucky Charm material is totally reformatted and maybe even edited, so I'd have thought that would make collectors prefer the original strips.

There was some editing here and there, Raven, given that serials of different lengths were to be presented in a 64-page format, but there is something really quite attractive about the book-length format of the thirty chosen titles for both Lucky Charm and Red Dagger. Furthermore, they are not at all as plentiful as Lew suggests. Distribution seemed patchy at the time, as I recall, in comparison with the weeklies. In any case, if a particular serial ran for say fifteen weeks in Bunty or The Victor, it would not be too outrageous to be paying now £2 per issue on eBay, and that could easily reach a figure of £30 for the desired serial. It's also worth remembering that other relatively recent reprints have become collectable in their own right, such as the Howard Baker bound volumes of issues of The Magnet and The Gem, as well as Classics From The Comics.

Phoenix wrote:Furthermore, they are not at all as plentiful as Lew suggests. Distribution seemed patchy at the time, as I recall, in comparison with the weeklies. .

Newsagents around my way never seemed short of them or Red Dagger so perhaps it depended on where one lived. One newsagent in particular would order every comic, but being independent he perhaps had more choice than those who were under Smith's distribution.

Distribution was indeed patchy as to this day, I still haven't read either issue 24 Flying Fury or issue 28 Cast, Hook And Strike and I lived in the heart of DCT country!. I have now read issue 11 The Smasher and issue 29 Braddock of Bomber Command as I have picked up both issues in recent years. At least one is thanks to the generosity of one of the members on this site. . I still keep an eye out for them but as I have seen individual copies of Red Dagger easily pass the £10 mark, it's the economics of buying several comics or one.

colcool007 wrote:Distribution was indeed patchy as to this day, I still haven't read either issue 24 Flying Fury or issue 28 Cast, Hook And Strike and I lived in the heart of DCT country!

You obviously didn't heed the commands of the comics to place a regular order with your newsagent!

Raven wrote:

colcool007 wrote:Distribution was indeed patchy as to this day, I still haven't read either issue 24 Flying Fury or issue 28 Cast, Hook And Strike and I lived in the heart of DCT country!

You obviously didn't heed the commands of the comics to place a regular order with your newsagent!

I never had my comics delivered and quite enjoyed looking at all the comics I didn't buy when I went to buy them, but I always panicked going on holiday and I was right to, as I never found any of my comics for sale in Devon or the Isle Of Wight, why I didn't have them delivered I never know.

Did anyone have their comics delivered?

steelclaw wrote:
Did anyone have their comics delivered?

I did - through the letterbox they came, inside Monday's newspaper.

But placing a regular order just meant they kept one behind the counter for you at the shop. Remember all those tiny coupons? "Dear Newsagent, please reserve ... "
Did anyone ever actually cut out and hand one of those things over in the entire history of comics?

Raven wrote:

steelclaw wrote:
Did anyone have their comics delivered?

I did - through the letterbox they came, inside Monday's newspaper.

But placing a regular order just meant they kept one behind the counter for you at the shop. Remember all those tiny coupons? "Dear Newsagent, please reserve ... "
Did anyone ever actually cut out and hand one of those things over in the entire history of comics?

Oh I see what you mean,about the placing a regular order, I didn't trust my Newsagent to keep a copy for me.

Raven wrote:

colcool007 wrote:Distribution was indeed patchy as to this day, I still haven't read either issue 24 Flying Fury or issue 28 Cast, Hook And Strike and I lived in the heart of DCT country!

You obviously didn't heed the commands of the comics to place a regular order with your newsagent!

My brother had them on regular order as he bought them from his pay. but for some reason, he missed those issues. Admittedly after the first initial flurry of interest, the issues did come out at random intervals.

Raven wrote:You obviously didn't heed the commands of the comics to place a regular order with your newsagent!

I think this was only really necessary during the war.

colcool007 wrote:Admittedly after the first initial flurry of interest, the issues did come out at random intervals.

As far as I can recall, they were monthly.

Phoenix wrote:

Raven wrote:You obviously didn't heed the commands of the comics to place a regular order with your newsagent!

I think this was only really necessary during the war.

colcool007 wrote:Admittedly after the first initial flurry of interest, the issues did come out at random intervals.

As far as I can recall, they were monthly.

In fact after the first two, which came out simultaneously, they were published bi-monthly one at a time, which may be why Col has the impression that they came out at random intervals.