SOTIcollector

He died in 1981, but according to several issues of Tales from the Crypt I've read, he could be brought back...

Seduction of the Innocent, by Dr. Fredric Wertham, the book that nearly killed the entire US comic book industry. This is a FIRST PRINT. You can distinguish a first print by the "R" colophon on the publication page, and the absence of a "SECOND PRINTING" notation inside the front flap of the jacket. This copy does not have the original bibliography, so I have included a photocopy of the bibliography for your reference. Originally, all first and second printings were printed with a bibliography page (pp. 399-400). However, the publisher buckled to pressure from comic book publishers who demanded the removal of the bibliography. So the bibliography was physically removed from almost all copies prior to distribution. A few copies with the bibliography did make it out, but most are like this: there's a stub where the bibliography used to be. Condition: the book is clean and completely unmarked. All typical pages are present, including all 16 of the illustration pages in the center of the book. The dust jacket is worn but complete. It has lost some paper at the head and tail of the spine, with smaller paper loss at the top and bottom of the folds and a small piece on the FC. $295 Payment via PayPal. US shipping only (included). Returns accepted within 10 days. No HOS or probationites. in the thread trumps any negotiations.

Love that family shot! Yup, that white spine is pretty common on this book. Pictured left to right: 1) Slabbed copy 2) paperback reprint off of Amazon, made from downloaded scans (published by somebody who can't even spell Wertham's first name correctly!) 3) Raw copy 4) My new color photocopy one

Yes, the cover is cool, and the interior is even better. The cover's not as notorious as #3, but still one of the best crime covers of the GA.

And the problem is resolved to my satisfaction. The seller's ID is zita345. The seller didn't respond to my inquiry immediately, probably because it was the middle of the night Aussie time when I posted it. This morning I found a full refund in my PayPal account, so he resolved the issue as quickly as he could be expected to. I received a message that explained that older US books are not his forte and he apologized for the issue. He invited me to keep the book, given that a coverless one isn't worth much. If he had been aware of the issue, I'm convinced we'd see him offering other questionable books. Maybe we'd see him offering other books worth a few hundred bucks, for which restoration issues are not so obvious. Nope. There is nothing about this that makes me think he was aware this was a fake. I'll offer him something for the book anyway. It's not totally worthless, and I'm happy to have a coverless reader that saves wear and tear on my originals.

Yes, I have filed the claim. Ebay pretty much makes filing a claim automatic. When you choose the option to "contact seller", it prompts you with questions about why you're contating them. If the answer is something along the lines of "significantly not as described", it automatically opens up a return. That's what I did within 15 minutes of opening the package. More in a moment...

Thanks. It's definitely my favorite crime book, given that it was THE book that was criticized more than any other single book back in the day: It's the only book that rated mentions in SOTI and Love & Death and Parade of Pleasure and the 1951 NY Legislature document and Ladies' Home Journal and the Saturday Review of Literature... and the list goes on. I'm interested to see how the seller responds. Judging by their unsold and sold auctions, it's somebody who sells a lot of books, but rarely (if ever) anything of this caliber. They sell mostly Australian editions of US books, selling for around $15 a pop. It's plausible that they are just inexperienced and had no clue what to look for on a repro cover.

Lots of great responses here, but so far nobody has pointed out the thing that I missed in the original photos on eBay, and I feel I should have spotted. It's the white dots at the staples . In retrospect, I should have noticed them. There's no way that aged, yellowed, 70+ year old paper will have bone white insides. The white is the result of poking staples through a photocopy on white paper. Of course, with the book in hand there are lots of other dead giveaways and problems. White edges to the cover, a really sloppy reassembly of the book that has the leaves very uneven, an uneven cut on the top edge. The staples are likely replaced, but do look to me like the correct size. And there are tear seals (with rice paper?) to rips on the last page. Somebody put a lot of time and effort into this piece of garbage. It's pictured below along with one of my copies for reference. In the last picture, there's a backing board behind the cover to show the sloppy cut to the top edge of the FC.

Actually, no. The moire pattern is just on the scan. It did get me wondering, though... Perhaps somebody with more familiarity with moire patterns can answer this. As I understand it in this context, the moire pattern is the result of a digital scan of a digital reproduction, where basically the scan lines don't align 100%. If something is scanned and the scan shows the moire pattern, does that mean that by definition the item being scanned must have been produced digitally? Could the fact that the moire pattern shows up on the scan have actually been considered as proof that it's a digital print?

If it were just restoration, that might be feasible. But I can't imagine the seller would want to give, say, an 80% to 90% refund for a book that's coverless, with replacement staples and sloppy tear seals.

Yes, at about $250US, it could have still been a good deal with minor restoration or trimming. However, the cover is a poorly-trimmed repro, meaning it's just a coverless copy (that also has resto work and replaced staples).

Yes.

I typically don't buy raw books for hundreds of dollars from international sellers. But this time I couldn't resist grabbing another copy of the most dangerous comic book ever made, True Crime #2. I placed the winning bid on eBay, and anxiously awaited the book's arrival. It arrived pretty quickly, for a book coming to the US from down under. Today I opened the package and within seconds I knew I had to send it back as significantly not as described. I had been a little suspicious of the book all along, and in retrospect I should have known about its most significant problem. I'll post the full details and the seller's name after I've heard from them regarding my return request. Here's the book, advertised as FN, using the pics from eBay. Here's a quiz for you. What's pictured that should have told me to stay miles away from this book? Edit 3/6: Seller ackowledged the error and immediately sent full refund.

The advice I always give to people who are contemplating buying comics for resale is to buy only things that you know well. If you do not know the comics very well, then you don’t know the market for them and could easily lose a lot when buying things that are unfamiliar. Based on the way your question is worded, and the way you listed the comics (for example, including a cover price, “ind”, and date rather than indicating which series they come from), it is clear that you are not terribly familiar with them. I don’t mean that as a put down in any sort of way at all. Everybody has different levels of knowledge about comics, ranging from zero to expert. You are wise to ask for advice. My advice is to make an offer you feel is reasonable for only the ones you personally want to collect, and wait until you have more knowledge and experience before you risk your hard earned dollars on flipping.

The good news: if it’s only a reholder, and the integrity of the slab is certain, then they don’t re-grade it. The not-so-good news: there’s no guarantee of the lack of Newton rings with the reholder.

I love the GA giants and annuals, and I'm happy to have acquired a few Fox Giants over the years. However, I'm curious about the contents and hoping one of the more seasoned collectors here can enlighten me. I'm quite familiar with the fact that a typical Fox Giant is made up of four coverless Fox books, rebound, with a new cover added, and then trimmed on three sides. The guts of a Fox Giant are typically described as "remindered" books. I'm also familiar with the fact that back in the old newsstand distribution days books were not necessarily returned whole. Instead, a news dealer would slice off the logo, report the books as destroyed, and send the logo back to the distributor for credit. At least, that's what happened to some comics in the 60's, which is why we sometimes see Silver Age books with the logo sliced off. The term "remaindered" makes me think that the books are unsold copies that were returned. Which brings me to my question. Where did the books come from? At the time these Giants were created (from about 1945 to 1954 or so), was it common practice for entire unsold comics to be returned to the publisher? If so, then mystery solved and it's obvious where the remaindered books came from. If unsold books were not fully returned, and only the covers (or portions of covers) were send back when books were unsold, then where did Fox (and EC and St. John) get the "remaindered" books from which they built their giants/annuals? A Google search didn't get me my answer, and a search of the boards turned up this old thread about Fox Giants, but I was still left scratching my head and figured I'd put it out to the wise and helpful crew here.

The answer is no. That page lists the items that do grade. Little Golden Books are not on the list. Therefore, they do not grade Little Golden Books.

As you can see from the date inside the front cover, the mini comic that you found is not from 1963. It is a 1990 miniature reprint of Amazing Spider-man #1, which was published originally in 1963.

Thread closed. Thanks to the buyers and offerers!

I'll start by saying that your partner has plenty of options. He could go to the trouble of selling them himself, he could hire a stranger to put in the legwork, he could give the lot to MyComicShop for one of their auctions, or he could let you do the thing he doesn't want to be bothered with. Every one of those options has a cost to it. Financial dealings between friends and family can be complicated because there are feelings involved. It's never "just business." Tell him you'll calculate a "just business" cost, maybe cut that by a little bit as a favor. Then acknowledge that if he doesn't like that cost, he's welcome to try a different option and there will be no hard feelings. To avoid hard feelings, come up with a justifiable formula for what you want. If he doesn't like the figure, he's welcome to go elsewhere, but he can't get mad at you for doing math that shows you're coming from a very reasonable position. To present a justifiable formula, I'd recommend starting with really good estimates of how much time it will take, and how much your time is worth. How much is your time worth? Perhaps the time you'll spend is time that you'd otherwise be sitting on the sofa watching Netflix. Maybe it's worth $5 an hour to you to work on selling comics at the same time. If so, $5/hour times the number of hours is the amount you want to make out of the deal. Will you be turning down consulting jobs that pay $150/hour just so you can sell his comics? If so, you'll probably want to net $150/hour for your time. I suspect you'd really be okay with a figure >$5/hour and <$150/hour, but that's entirely up to you. Will you be giving up free time that you'd rather spend doing something you love? Calculate how much it's worth to you to give up that free time. Then calculate how many hours it'll take. You could estimate that, but doing some trial sales would give you the most accurate, supportable data. Perhaps you want to take a stack of 40 books and offer to sell those. Tell him you'll sell them and take only a nominal cut (10%). Sell them for him, and track every moment you spend. Include all the time you spend with online listings (if that's how you're selling), buying packaging, weighing, shipping, etc. Calculate all the time it takes to sell 40 books (or 40 lots, if you're making multi-book lots, which you'll probably want to do with some of the common items), and use that to extrapolate how much time you'll spend on the whole collection. Number of hours times $ per hour = How much you want to net. That's what I'd do, anyway.

It’s anybody’s guess. The Overstreet Guide prices are becoming increasingly irrelevant in an era when people have instant access to real time sales data. The fact that Overstreet lists a raw 9.2 at $175 is virtually useless information. More realistic is actual sales data. To find a fair market value for a 10.0 I would look for similar sales. Is it a high demand book from a major character but lots of people will want? Look at sales data for other high demand characters and books of the same era in 10.0. You might not find sales data for a 10.0, but you are likely to be able to determine that a 10.0 has sold for X times the value of a 9.4, or something like that. Is it one of those things like a comic about tooth decay or in Aurora model kit comic? One of those things that wouldn’t see a huge demand if were not a 10.0? Then compare values to what similar books have gone for.

Thanks for all the interest! PM's sent to winners. Thread closed.

Thanks for all the interest and the sales. I'll be closing this thread tomorrow, 1/20.

And here’s another possibility to consider. Google the seller’s eBay name and real name. If it is a seller who is known for scams involving switching books, there is a good chance that a Google search will reveal that. It might even reveal a thread on these message boards about the seller.

That’s easy. Unless the listing STATES that you will receive a different book from the one pictured, return it. Even if the sellers listing claims “no returns“, you can still return it if it is not the one the seller promised you. Just open an eBay return indicating that it is not as described. if the seller provides a reasonable explanation as to how they sent you a different book, and they are very apologetic, and if they send you the right look at their expense, you can leave it at that. If the seller does not have a plausible explanation for how they sent you the incorrect book, or they insist that it is the correct book, I would also leave negative feedback to warn others of the seller’s shady practices.