Oor Wullie Book/Annual 1954 DC THOMSON FILE COPY RARE BROONS VG/F (phil-comics)

	£		876
	$		1,479

Our current auctions offer nearly 500 vintage British comics from the 1930s to 1990s including first, special, Christmas and regular issues, full years, bound volumes, annuals, free gifts and artwork, plus our aptly themed Beano & Dandy Christmas Covers Book - signed and unsigned. Our star lots include an original 1940 Beano Book and 1939 Dandy Monster Comic - landmark first annuals!

As these are our last auctions of 2014, may we take this opportunity to wish you a very Merry Christmas and we hope to trade again in the new year!

This UK only auction is for:

Oor Wullie Annual 1954 - Genuinely rare former DC Thomson employee file copy

This genuinely rare book was the sixth installment in what has been for decades a national favourite of Scotland, an institution in fact, having previously been published for 1940, 1942, 1948, 1950 and 1952, being published every other year, alternating with The Broons.

The hard-back editions were created for in-house editorial use although over the years and perhaps on an odd occasion a staff member took home a personal copy as a keep sake and so very rarely do they find themselves onto the collectors' market.

Robert Low (RD Low) was the Editor of the Sunday Post Fun Section for over 20 years. He used to let any DC Thomson staff scriptwriter submit scripts to Oor Wullie and The Broons which led to a very eclectic set of story sources being used. Low would use his harder wearing hardback file copies to keep track of story ideas that had already been used and for reference purposes so as to weed out any overused script situations from one bi-annual to the next. The annuals were indeed a collection of reprints of those strips that appeared in the weekly Sunday Post.

Whilst on the subject of annuals, it is interesting to note that initially the books were perceived as crossing the children's / adults boundary. Thus DC Thomson did not want to market them in the same format as their hardback children's annuals (such as Beano, Dandy, Wizard, Rover etc) and so published them in softback format, much like the very popular Annie Swan annuals, published up to 1942 and aimed at women.

(An acknowledgement should be made to Ray Moore for the above information).

Very few of these DC Thomson file copies come on to the market - we know of only two each from the years 1950-1956, including this copy.

As seen in the pictures, what distinguishes this book as a file copy is the hardback covers, whilst the regular, mass produced books for the general market were softback.

The thick board covers are very bright with a light coloured cloth spine. The binding is very tight and square. There are some light surface marks to the covers but they do not really detract from the vibrancy of the colours. Hardly any wear to the boards. A very neat fountain pen "1954" has been written to the lower right front cover corner and a biro "1954" down the top spine edge.

The pages are in very nice shape with medium tanning. A couple have a very small edge nick but overall no other tears to report.

A VG/Fine example of an extremely difficult book to find.

£11.95 - UK Mainland Postage (Special Delivery)

Due to the likely value of this item, this is a UK only auction.

Please view the picture/s of this item above and email with any questions.

Our Grading Guide is summarised here: Reader (R) - Fair (F) - Good (G) - Very Good (VG) - Fine (FN) - Very Fine (VFN) - Near Mint (NM)

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We buy vintage British comics like this one - from single items to entire collections.