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About this journal

Are you a collector that seeks variants of your favorite comics?  How extreme is your condition (this must be a mental disorder)?

I've always had an attraction to scarce comics.  I also have an attraction to the artwork of Matt Baker (among many other artists, of course).  I set a goal for myself of obtaining every St John Publishing standard titled romance comic featuring a cover by Baker (the qualification of "standard" put there because St John would rebind remainder/return comics with a new cover and try to sell them again - and these particular books are quite scarce and the demand is high).  For example, I collected the titled "Teen-age Romances", but not necessarily any of the re-covered guts of those issues ("All Picture All True Romances" is an example of a re-covered set of "Teen-age Romances" comics that were unsold).  I began spending "substantial" (the prices were seemingly high back then) amounts on comic books around 2006.  If you follow Matt Baker comics, you may know that prices for Baker comics are selling for much more since then.  While I'm not "priced-out" of obtaining the last few issues I want to achieve my original collecting goals; I am certainly unwilling to pay the costs for upgrades to any of the books in my collection or to seek the highest graded copies.  I only need one more book to achieve my original goal.  Yet, I still want to collect more.

Why am I shifting the goal-posts?  Shouldn't I just get that last issue and be done?  Perhaps due to seeking out the books I "need", and having stumbled upon the odd curio comic which featured art by this artist -  my malady FORCED me to buy it.  On other occasions, I mistakenly bought a Canadian Edition of an issue I needed that looked nearly identical to the United States counter-part.  You have heard that saying, "it's not the destination - it's the journey"?  Yeah.  Let's go with that.

So... I have accumulated a bunch of non-USA Matt Baker comics and wanted to share them.  This is ultimate niche collecting and I am certain only tens of collectors even care.  Therefore, presented here will be the Baker comics I could not leave behind.

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Entries in this journal

Diary Secrets #2

This may have been the genesis of this collection... I obtain this Diary Secrets #2 in 2011 direct from Canada (if you sold it to me, please drop in and say "hello"!). I recall posting it on the Baker Romance thread and being told it was not the Blue Ribbon Comics #4 (St John Publishing - June 1949) that I was looking for, and that CGC was unable to correctly label either book anyway.  CGC had been labeling BRC #4 as "Diary Secrets #4" (terrible image below, but I don't know wher
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