Flex Mentallo

...so today, leading on from Steve's interesting question, how would you guys rank issues #1 to #10 from rarest to most common?

definitely 10 10 for sure. Below is my 10. In collecting Planets for about 10 years, I have had the opportunity to purchase #8 in 7.0 or higher 5 or 6 times. The 10 I have is the only one above 7.0 that I have found. For clarity, I did find one other 10 in 8.0, but I did not buy since I thought it wasn't real. Turns out earlier version of one of the 8's on the cgc census showed on the cgc label 'small amount of glue on cover' in the scan, but scan sent to me by seller did not have this. I didn't believe seller was "real" so I passed. Later talked to cgc and they confirmed that owner sent that book back in, glue was removed before submitting and therefore did not display on new label with same cert #. I digress... 10 is tough Here are the two scans, just for fun..... your 10 is wonderful, deep colors! The #10 Kelly refers to is mine. Like Kelly I've had several copies of #8, upgrading each time. Still not as sharp as Steve's! But going back a decade it was thought to be one of the scarcer issues between #1 and #10.

I have to say, your 4 and 5 have made me very pessimistic that I'll ever own a copy of either issue due to the discrepancy in color. I've seen some 4s out there with nice reds, but I've never seen a 5 comparable to yours. Jon Berk has a deep one.

#37 is one of the first issues I acquired some 25 years ago. I'm on my fourth copy now. Always loved the artwork in this period!

my 4: The red is no where near as strong as yours, but the blues and yellows are pretty strong. Is the red on mine faded?...or is this another case of the red ink plate running out and it is printed an orange. Seems strange to me for only one color to fade. Oft debated, never resolved. Steve's copy has far deeper reds than mine. I've heard one theory that it is the plate running out of color. I'm hardly an expert, and I don't know how often they re-inked them but if that is the phenomenon we observe, it could mean that adjacent copies successively 'oranged-out' until the plate was reinked. Then a deep red one would pop up again and the sequence repeated. That makes a kind of sense. There are FH books where the red isnt uniform, which tends to back this up I think. But it sure begs a question about quality control. So I also think it is possible that the colors are in layers - that to achieve depth, they overlayed red onto orange. Maybe they only did this for part of the run as it would have added to the costs. Or maybe the overlayed colors arent color fast like the base colors. Neither seems quite satisfactory - but with respect to the reds, violets and carmines, I dont think it is fading. That's a more random factor. As for blues, I'm not sure whether or not they sometimes fade to a steely grey. But they also seem to take on a greenish hue when the reds are strong. I think this is just because adjacent colors affect how we see them. Add to this the way different scanners read colors, and it becomes difficult to read the signs. So now I just say, 'red good' and leave it at that. Unless there is a surviving FH printer out there, we may never know.

Sexy robot. Or perhaps not.

I'd hate to tell you what boardies suggest I do! Ja da Ja da da da da da, ump-a, ump-a, ump-a, ump-a 'N that's just for starters buddy!

Oh! by Jingo, that one's a corker! In the land of San Domingo, Lived a girl called Oh! by Jingo, Ja da Ja da da da da da, ump-a, ump-a, ump-a, ump-a, From the fields and from the marshes, Came the old and young by goshes, Ja da Ja da da da da da da, ump-a, ump-a, ump-a, ump-a, They all spoke with a diff’rent lingo, But they all loved Oh by Jingo, And ev’ry night they sang in the pale moonlight.

fabulous!

Of these early ones, #4 is my favorite. sacentaur has a stunning copy of this issue.

Copies of #7 consistently seem to have fairly strong colors, so far as I have seen. The pre-Zolnerowitz covers seem to belong to a different age.

'Sneaky difficult.' Love that! I would say #6 falls into the sneaky D category as well...

#16 doesn't get the love like surrounding issues, even though it is GGA ('Good God Art')

Nice one, Karl. For years I thought that #32 was also a yellow cover as standard, until I happened to search for Planets on Heritage and to my amazement discovered a huge variation from one copy to another. A lot of covers don't work well when the colors are less layered, but in the case of #32, it works pretty well regardless.

This cover has all of the classic ingredients and I like the yellow background. I really like the run from #17- #29.

Check out the census, guys. It looks like they've been graded now.

As far as I know the run is still essentially intact. What I was thinking, but thanks for the coroboration. I have wondered if we might eventually see them all in a CC auction... It would be cool. To my knowledge the run is missing a couple of books but I don't know for certain. #15

As far as I know the run is still essentially intact. What I was thinking, but thanks for the coroboration. I have wondered if we might eventually see them all in a CC auction...

Electric

Wow!

My turn! Shall we start discussing trade? Busted!

Here's another one of cheetah's ex's. Very misleading scan makes the book look miscut - in fact its the microchamber paper peeking out.

Yes, it sure looks a lot nicer than 7.5.

Nice one!

My turn!