Yellow Kid

You've got such beautiful books!

The ad suggests that they put one of the gift pictures on the back of each World's Fair volume while the standard bound volumes I have seen over the years are always left blank. This would apply to the Tip Top Comics volumes but I have no idea if they did the same thing to the Comics on Parade volumes. Oops! I just looked at the ad for Volume 1 ($6,500) on the Metropolis web site and the gift picture seems to be on the front cover with no advertising on it. Maybe they put it on the back cover, too?

I have enjoyed collecting Golden Age premiums and ephemera for many years. One of my favorites is the notice that Dell Comics sent out to tell someone that they had received a gift subscription for Christmas. They are most common for WDC+S, but I have also seen them with the New Funnies characters and others. While I think many of them are rarer than the comics they were associated with, not many people collect them so the prices are fairly reasonable. Tip Top Comics sold bound volumes of the first three years of the title at the 1939 World's Fair. They are quite rare today, and are sometimes referred to as annuals. I don't have any of them, but I keep looking.

In addition to the comics themselves, I have always enjoyed the various forms of ephemera that were produced. There were lots of subscriptions offers, especially later from Dell Comics. However, I have always been interested in the prints and spinners offered by the United Features Comic Group in the late 1930's. Tip Top Comics gave a set of four 8 1/2" x 11" color prints of Tarzan, Li'l Abner, Ella Cinders, and the KJK's as a subscription premium and also made them available by sending in coupons to be cut from current comics. I am attaching a picture of one of their ads from the back cover of Tip Top Comics #18, graciously provided by BZ. Next are the first two pictures in the set, and I only got them yesterday. The missing two prints and the spinners I am going to mention next are on my Bucket List if you ever see them and don't want them for yourself. Through their Single Series title, UFCG advertised a set of six spinners with the above characters plus Ella Cinders and Fritzi Ritz. Once again, BZ came to the rescue with a copy of an ad. The only one I have ever seen was the Tarzan spinner, and in spite of a very generous bid, I didn't come close to winning it. There are a lot of Tarzan collectors out there waiting to feast on rarities. I am sure that very few prints or spinners have survived, and I am delighted to have the two I just obtained. I hope that you enjoy seeing them as well.

What a wonderful task to have on your Bucket List!

Merry Christmas to All Duck Lovers! This is the best thread on the board for me. I hope that we can continue to enjoy and learn from each other's posts in the coming year. Thanks to all! Richard Olson

MACBETH, ACT 1, SCENE 3, PAGE 4 No fair using Shakespeare to help you define your position. Just say, "I don't want to be king!" You are too nice to be a king.

That picture is just obscene--it is more incredible than most people dream of, and yet it is real! Congratulations on having a great game plan and following it!

As far back as I can remember, FC #275 was the most difficult DD to find of its era. And I never saw one as nice as this--just beautiful.

It is always a joy to see such beautiful books!

Great article, beautiful book! It always intrigued me because it had the "old Dell" logo even though it was no longer a Four Color Series II comic. It has always seemed to be a little more difficult to find nice copies of this issue than most other DD's from the same era.

Mr. Bedrock got the Four Color #300 from me. I just want to clarify that Gator sent the book to me in a timely fashion, and that Mr. Bedrock's comment meant that I received it shortly before the show, not that the delivery was tardy.

Unbelievable! You did a fantastic job. Thanks so much for your labor of love.

Congratulations! The MOC #4 is a genuine rarity and the trio make a very nice set. Nice books!

I'm with you 100% If you have the patience to wait and watch for these gems, you can build a beautiful collection at a reasonable price. Great find!

Thanks everyone for your kind comments. It really has been exciting.

Now that Jeff has shown me the easy way to insert pictures, I would also like to share my Yellow Kid easel back collection. The pins were published in a variety of formats, but the most unusual and popular are the first 39 published with a wire rim and an easel on the back to let them stand. It has taken many years but I have them all now except #2. If anyone can help me find a #2, I would really like to complete this set.

Yellow Kid original art is extremely rare and today I was very fortunate to have a generous person give me this piece of the original art for the 11/22/1896 Sunday paper. She contacted me a few days ago and said she had found it in an old family scrapbook and contacted me because of my Yellow Kid web site. We exchanged a few nice emails and the next thing I knew, she said she would like me to have it and it arrived today. If you have the Yellow Kid book by Kitchen Sink, it is plate No. 50, which shows the Yellow Kid in ten different situations. This is the upper right hand corner of the page. My best guess is that Outcault cut out the ten poses and then signed each of them to give to friends and fans. Yellow Kid Sunday tear sheets are fairly rare, but the original art is extremely rare. To have such a nice piece hand colored and signed by Outcault is something I never dreamed would happen and I wanted to share it.

Just a quick note to announce that my copy of the eagerly awaited Dark Horse publication of Tarzan, The Sunday Comics, 1931-1933 arrived today. It is big, about 15 1/4" x 20 3/8", and beautiful. Dark Horse even designed a special shipping box for each copy to protect it. Suggested retail is $125 but Amazon has it in the low $80's and some of you might know where to get an even better price. The bottom line is that if you like Tarzan and/or old Sunday comics, you will want to get a copy. It really is nice.

Paul was easily one of the very best sci-fi/fantasy artists. I really like his art.

Great book! The MM series has some beautiful covers and stories, but they always seem to get overlooked (except The Phantom Blot) because Barks was so great.

Diamond had a special party for coin collectors when the ANA was meeting in Baltimore, which featured a display of 1913 Liberty Head nickels, to encourage comic collecting by coin collectors. They had a package of several gifts for attendees, one of which was a CGC graded copy of Donald Duck Adventures Maharajah Donald. I didn't attend but received one of the gift packages and it was very impressive. Naturally there were lots of Uncle Scrooge items in the package.

I bought it off of the stands when it came out, thought it was fantastic, and it is still one of my favorite books!

Very cool!

I used Photoshop to magnify my file 3200% and the pixels are purple, which surprised me. However, that would more readily support the idea that "the purple ran out."