Comics UK

There are two sellers on eBay at present trying to flog copies of Beano No.1 and advertising them as the genuine original. Presumably the sellers believe they are the genuine comics. However one is obviously the recent reprint from Sunday Post (or a well preserved one from the DC Thomson Firsts book), whilst the other seems to be a photocopy.

Incredibly, people have been bidding on them!

Some people were bidding on copies of Solo last week with four missing pages! My mate Steve told me Solo no. 1 and Smash no. 1 are on ebay now.

Lew Stringer wrote:(or a well preserved one from the DC Thomson Firsts book)

I'm not sure whether you are aware of this or not, Lew, but all the number ones that appeared in DC Thomson Firsts were also made available individually at the same time by the book's publisher, Barry Posner. Norman Shaw had a stack of them, and they were freely available for £5 each at The Vintage Magazine Shop in Brewer Street in Soho, which was Posner's shop. I can't remember exactly when the shop relocated from its Shaftesbury Avenue premises, so they may have been there as well.

Did you flag these up as counterfeits to Ebay, Lew?

Don't forget the reprints that were packaged with the Beano Annual at Sainsbury's last year. Facsimile issue 1s are very easy to find. Anyone who thinks they're getting a bargain original are just like Smiffy!

We get a lot of phone calls into the office (well, a couple a month, maybe) from people who think they have hit the jackpot and have a copy of ish number 1. Sadly, every one so far has been a reproduction - usually the one given away with the Sunday Post a few years back. It's horribly disappointing when people realise what they have isn't going to net them a small fortune. Apart from paper stock, the number of pages is a giveaway. The Sunday Post reproduction was 24 pages rather than the original 28 - I assume because at the time we had to print in banks of 8. But I do live in hope that someone somewhere will look in the attic and find a pristine copy of Beano number 1.

We all assumed the four missing pages were because of a non-pc page that meant a whole leaf (4 pages) had to be removed. Otherwise you'd have had that annoying single leaf that still happens in the Times Review broadsheet section on Saturdays.

Lew Stringer wrote:There are two sellers on eBay at present trying to flog copies of Beano No.1 and advertising them as the genuine original. Presumably the sellers believe they are the genuine comics. However one is obviously the recent reprint from Sunday Post (or a well preserved one from the DC Thomson Firsts book), whilst the other seems to be a photocopy.

Incredibly, people have been bidding on them!

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/Beano-Issue-No-1- ... 2eb44d9fdf

Is this one of the ones you're talking about? Currently at £285. I see how some of the creases are actually completely white - surely creasing the comic wouldn't leave pure white marks behind? And even if it did, you'd think they would have yellowed with age, like the rest of the comic has.

And I know I don't own a copy of Beano #1 to compare it with... but staples? Was the first issue of the Beano really bound with staples?

I think it's the cellophane fronted bag it's in that has the white creases!

I don't know, what about the last picture? Really looks like it's on the paper.

Jon wrote:I don't know, what about the last picture? Really looks like it's on the paper.

The big giveaway is the photo of the centre pages. Not only are they pristine white (at odds with the tatty yellowed covers) the strips are printed in black ink! The real Beano No.1 used red and navy blue ink on those pages.

Lew Stringer wrote:The big giveaway is the photo of the centre pages. Not only are they pristine white (at odds with the tatty yellowed covers) the strips are printed in black ink! The real Beano No.1 used red and navy blue ink on those pages.

I don't have the actual issue, needless to say, but this is page 14 (left hand centre) of The Beano, as it appears in DC Thomson Firsts, which clearly supports Lew's statement.

The entire issue is on beano.com - all 28 pages of it.
http://www.beano.com/retro-beano/1930's

It was also reproduced in History of the Beano, again in full.

I wonder why the 24 page facsimiles used black ink instead of blue?

Black ink is cheaper!

I've just checked my official "The History of The Beano" book (nice xmas pressie from the mother-in-law last year - still going cheap in Tesco!) - In it they do a page by page dissection of number 1 and it's clearly stated that the centre pages were first inked and then coloured in blue and red.

I've emailed the seller to let them know, obviously they are just going to find themselves in trouble with a PayPal dispute and losing that 100% feedback - surely just a genuine mistake on their part? Is it too much to think that even a non comics fan would not seek to double (and triple) check that what they possess is the genuine article? Selling a replica "Roy Race gets shot" issue from the Guardian as the real deal is one thing, but THE BEANO number 1??