News in Brief – including one of only 30 known copies of The Beano No 1 emerging at auction

The Beano Comic No 1 sold for £15,000 at Comic Book Auctions.

05 Sep 2022

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First Beano takes £15,000 at auction

A copy of The Beano No 1 – which went on to become the world’s longest-running comic weekly – sold for £15,000 at Comic Book Auctions in a timed online sale ending on August 28.

While it did not quite hit the heights of the record for this first issue, it was only £200 below the sum paid by a Scottish collector in September 2015 also at London firm CBA.

The Beano Comic No 1 is a trophy item for most UK comics collectors. Priced at 2d, it came out on July 30, 1938. The comic was an immediate success, selling roughly 443,000 copies.

With only around 30 copies known to exist, the example on offer at CBA had bright cover colours and some minor tears to right-hand page edges and one tear to the spine. The vendor had it in his collection for some 40 years. On an estimate of £2800-3500, it was hotly contested, taking 92 bids in total to reach the hammer price (plus 19% buyer’s premium). The buyer was an English ex-pat living in the US.

The £15,200 record example was offered with the four-page promotional flyer that was issued with No 1 and No 2 and slipped inside copies of Hotspur, Adventure, Rover, Skipper and Wizard.

Smith takes role at Mellors & Kirk

Daniel Smith has joined Mellors & Kirk.

Mellors & Kirk has appointed Daniel Smith as the specialist in charge of its rare books department. Smith was previously at Bamfords, where he worked for the past nine years, during which time he established specialist book sales.

Mellors & Kirk was founded by owner Nigel Kirk and Nicholas Mel lors in Nottingham in 1993.

The firm also operates from a consignment and valuation of f ice in Bridgnorth, Shropshire.

GB Antiques owner Blackburn dies

Allan Blackburn, the founder and owner of GB Antiques at Lancaster Leisure Park, has died aged 75.

Born in Clitheroe in 1947, the great-nephew of television pioneer John Logie Baird, he followed his grandfather into antiques dealing.

The business he created (named GB after his wife Gloria Blackburn) is based on the old Hornsea Pottery site on Wyresdale Road in Lancaster. It achieved fame in 2003 when an escaped bull went on the rampage inside the centre.

Two of his three children, Jimmy and Dawn, followed their father into the family business.

Stanley Gibbons Group goes private

Stanley Gibbons Group, the stamps and coins dealership and auction firm, has got the green light from shareholders to go private.

It announced its plans in July but needed the support of shareholders. The major shareholder, Phoenix Asset Management, which now owns more than 78% of the group, provides all its debt facilities. It said there are “clear benefits” to going private.

It will now remove its listing from the Alternative Investment Market (AIM) – a junior sub-market of the London Stock Exchange – on September 7 and Phoenix will continue to buy up shares at 1.5p a share.

Baseball card sets sports record sum

The 1952 Topps Mickey Mantle rookie card sold for a record £10.5m at Heritage.

A baseball card has become the most expensive item of sports memorabilia ever sold at auction.

The SGC Mint+ 9.5 1952 Topps Mickey Mantle rookie card, regarded as one of just a handful of the player in nearperfect condition, took $ 10. 5m/£9.03m (or $12.6m/£10.84m including buyer’s premium) from an anonymous US buyer at Heritage Auctions of Dallas on August 27-28.

Mantle played for the New York Yankees in the 1950s-60s.

The result beat Diego Maradona’s 1986 World Cup ‘Hand of God’ shirt sold for £6m (£7.14m with premium) at Sotheby’s this May.

This Mantle No 311 card was originally unearthed by Al Rosen, also known as ‘Mr Mint’. Heritage said: “His father, he maintained, had been a delivery driver for the botched distribution of Topps’ 1952 issue and a case of unused product had been sitting in the basement for over 30 years.”

That was in 1985, and Rosen sold the ‘Rosen Find’ almost instantly, with this Mantle No 311 card changing hands for $1000. Rosen then bought it back six years later in 1991 for $40,000, and quickly ‘flipped’ it again, selling at $50,000 to Anthony Girodano, a New Jersey waste management entrepreneur, the vendor here.

In Numbers

£650,000

The hammer price at Silverstone Auctions on August 26 for a 1985 Ford Escort RS Turbo S1 once owned and driven by Diana, Princess of Wales. This is believed to be the only black version of the car ever made – the publicly available range on sale at the time was all-white.