buttock

December 54 He drew 6 of the 7 covers for titles on sale this month. And what a great selection.

But then you have to live in the Metroplex.

From around the (issue) 40s through the 60s they were printed on terrible paper. They can be found easily enough, but anything FN or better is almost impossible.

Blackhawks from this era are TOUGH!

Since it's rated "professional" it should be removable. The question is how much is there (small can be quite a bit) and how bad will it damage the book to get it removed. You'd have to have Matt take a look at it. One of the few cases where I would recommend sending it to CCS for his opinion.

My thoughts on most desirable issues of Mystery Men. #2 and #7 will sell for more than #3 as supply is much more limited. #3 is relatively common, #7 is quite rare in any grade, and #2 is very difficult to find in any presentable shape. #2 also has a fantastic interior. I've never owned a 2 or 7. I made a run at the Church 7 and bowed out as it wasn't super high-grade. In retrospect, that was a mistake. With apologies to Tim, in my 30 years of collecting Foxes, he's the only other person than Jon Berk who I have heard say they actually think #3 is a classic cover. I'm sure there are others who love #3, but since it's a bit more common and #2 and #7 are no slouches (nor is #8 for that matter), I think the prices will be higher. That doesn't mean that people like 2 or 7 more than 3, but they will have to pay more to get one.

I'm not sure why you chose to deliberately misquote me.

I assume that's his rationale, but the problem is that everyone knows this, so all the early bids are just tracking bids and not placed with any intent to escalate the price. Also other auction houses don't need these "false" bids to get high prices, so it's clear that they're unnecessary.

Yes, but you can't do that before the auction starts. When HA or CC start, my tracking list is already set. With Clink, you have to scroll through it all another time and things fall through the cracks.

Does it have the crease?

The left arm...

Can you believe someone would let it go?!? I need to come up with a list of the Heath covers with assists. The most unique is the Navy book that's half Heath/half Everett.

I don't know about that. We have had a former employee reporting on in-house shilling and it doesn't sound good. I think it's more that they're the worst platform for selling. Heritage is killing everyone. Clink has predictable results for certain areas (Marvel SA in particular, but they do well with a lot of other stuff). CC is just an absolute crapshoot.

While I'm at it here's October 1954. Pretty soon Heath was doing most of the Atlas War covers, then all of a sudden he stopped.

September 1954

Yes, early on his better faces were from portraits. As time went on he learned to draw faces well, and I think we'd all agree he was better at it than he felt he was. Even when I last saw him a few years ago he reiterated that he wasn't comfortable with faces. I suspect that's all relative because of how outstanding the rest of his work is.

Comicconnect is probably the worst place to sell a book like this. I have such a hard time taking their prices at face value. I feel like if you put the same book on Heritage you can expect 10-75% more with the few exceptions of mega keys, where they do very well.

I didn't look at many tables because of how crowded it was. People seemed to be walking out with stacks of purchased books. The vintage stuff is smoking hot. Glad you had a good show!

Bob, how was Cal Comiccon for you? I saw dealers' walls at the end of the show that were mostly empty. Seemed like sales were absolutely booming.

Master 21 in decent shape with nice paper and no ugly dust shadow is a rare offering. The Supe 14 in 8.0 just sold on HA and may be a reasonable barometer of the GA market. I forget what else stood out to me in this day's auction.

It's a swipe from an older pulp and not based on the war.

IIRC Jon Berk confirmed both were by Tuska by speaking with Tuska directly.