Bookery

I know, I'm late to the party. But it's been gnawing at me. So... .

I assume it was mass-media that in the past year started referring to all of this as AI. I'm not a techie, so correct me if I'm wrong, but I was under the impression true AI still is in development and doesn't yet exist, i.e. a continually evolving program that learns and becomes in some form self-aware. Everything most people talk about are just advances in specific programs and CGI. But it sounds scarier and more ominous if the media refers to it as AI.

Of course, if there was some magic price and everyone everywhere was expected to meet it, then comic book prices would never rise, or fall, over time. The "market" would cease to be and forever stay stagnant. On the other hand, I always thought it was a bit weird that con prices tend to be higher then elsewhere. In a normal world, it would seem if you bring a bunch of dealers together into one place, competing directly with each other, often with a lot of the same stock, it would drive prices down. But it doesn't seem to work that way with collectibles.

If you use your Cole's cash and discount coupons, you too can have a wardrobe like that pretty cheaply.

Agreed. Heritage chose the cover because they had the original art in their possession for an upcoming auction, and could capture the art without having to edit around text on a pulp cover. I was okay with it, because it's an eye-catching piece for a reference book and I liked the overall "red" color theme. But I'm not sure it's a cover that most people had considered as "classic".

I thought I was not going to make it... masters of deception and great liars... burn his pulps... collapsed and died... the big house... rabid... might be dead... lives of quiet desperation... march on to the bitter end where we will eat dirt in the boneyard... I'm confused! I thought I was looking at a pulp thread, but apparently have wandered into some first-hand account of life with the Cartels!!!

Hard to say if it's that, or it's just comic collectors thinking that it should be priced like a comic with a similar cover? Either way, uninformed buyers leaping into the pulp market are going to likely get burned in a big way down the road, and that's not good for the hobby. Though as a rule, pulps are harder to obtain than vintage comics, it's not always the case. A science-fiction pulp from, say, 1942, is probably much easier to come by than comic books from that year. As for the science-fiction reprint pulps of the '40s and '50s... Famous Fantastic Mysteries, A. Merritt's Fantasy, Fantastic Novels, Fantastic Story... these are among the most common pulps there are. I'm in a small Ohio suburb, and I've had hundreds of them over the years. Even in high grade, they aren't all that scarce.

Well, it's likely that really isn't FMV (again, whatever that means). No dealer prices a book at $51,000... that tells me you're looking at an auction result. If that's a single result, by definition, FMV would be somewhere below that, since $51k is the highest price anybody was willing to pay at that moment in that forum (if it's a big auction house like Heritage, that means it's the most money even the "big boys" who play in that arena were willing to pay, all across the planet). If you're looking at an average price for a given period (a month, a year?), then it's still the average price the big auction house players were willing to pay. Also, did that price represent a book that's been escalating, or one that has been falling in price (most likely the latter if you're looking at recent results). Also, is your copy identical to the one that sold. Or is it white pages vs. off-white copies? Even with equal grades, different buyers will accept or reject certain flaws. I have one customer of golden-age who will turn down any book with a staple-pull, regardless if it looks otherwise near mint. The next guy may be fine with a staple-pull, but won't touch a book with a corner-bend. But they may grade the same. It's likely if Heritage sold a big book in its auction for $51k, the realistic price for a show or shop dealer is probably going to be closer to $45k. If you're just going to charge the same as a billion-dollar auction house, why should a customer buy from you? Now your $37k offer is actually more like 82% of FMV. And that's assuming the book can be turned quickly before it possibly drops even more. Maybe a dealer is content with a quicker turnover at $40-$42k. I could make nearly $2k on that $37k just by putting it in a CD right now... with no risk whatsoever. There are bonds and stock dividends out there that pay even more. Maybe $37k is low... if it's a truly hot book like SpMan 1... but it's probably not ludicrously low. If it's a golden-age book that's showy but is going to take a while to move, then it's probably more than fair.

And some of the spicys from the same collection...

Here's a few scans from the lady's collection... I apologize for the price labels which are quite annoying... I was going to take time to properly scan them after I graded them, but word got out and the sold so quickly I never got back to it...but you can still get an idea of them, and how it's a shame we don't know more about them (or who has the rest of them that they sold in the '80s!).

Yes, sorry... forgot that he talked with you. BTW... I spelled the name wrong above... it's Von Crabill (confirmed on on old ad from the TV station he worked at). Tom also confirmed that at the time, the books were not referred to as Strassers (they were just called "those pulps that Von picked up") The Strasser connection was made later from names written on them. The confusion I made with Spicys vs. Shadows was from the fact that around the same time, from this same area, another collection of very high grade pulps was discovered. The two collections were polar opposites... the Strasser collection had none of the "girly" titles or covers, while this other collection was almost nothing but. The second collection would definitely have merited pedigree status, but too little is known about it. A couple had bought it out of a house and began peddling it to dealers, and eventually at one of the PulpCons. I was talking with Tom again today, and we suddenly realized we were describing the same collection that I purchased pulps from 30 years later! In 2018 an elderly woman (80s) brought in 2 batches of pulps... one was very high grade Weird Tales, the second was Spicys, Horror Stories, Terror Tales, and even one Saucy. There were about 75 pulps total. I assumed from the condition they were her husband's original-owner collection. But no, it turns out they were bought second-hand by them, and they sold most of them decades ago. But when moving, she found one box they'd forgotten about, and those were the ones I picked up in 2018 (and they were still in magnificent condition!). Which, to dovetail back to my original point, showcases just how hard it's going to be to ever pinpoint true original-owner pulp pedigrees. Strasser, Yakima, maybe one or two more will be determined. But they are just so old and fragile... the combination of original owner, high grade, and a selection of keys usually necessary to what we think of as pedigrees is going to be tough. Even the Yakimas, being latter-era science-fiction, wouldn't have a lot of what we think of as significant "keys" in them, most sf keys being from the 20s and 30s ( a few classic covers aside).

My error. I meant Shadows. I'm not saying they aren't a pedigree, just wondered how many could be identified after the fact. And you've answered that. My information, such as it is, comes from a friend of Crabell's who dealt with him regularly. He was probably one of the first to see the collection and purchase books (only about 30-50, I think, as that's all he could afford at the time). That was before they ever made it to any shows. CrabelL was a rare book dealer who never dealt in pulps until he purchased this collection at an estate sale on a whim (his wife was furious that he'd done so). He apparently filled his Cadillac with them to the extent that he could barely see to drive. I was at his house only once with my father who was also a rare book dealer at the time, doing some purchasing. Unfortunately, I don't recall if there were pulps there or not. There were lots of old books in the basement of the house, as well as in a separate shed-barn out back. That's about the extent that I personally remember. But my customer was there with some frequency... I'll have to ask him how many pulps were there when he last saw them, since he had a direct interest in them.

Yes, I forgot about the Strassers, but in all fairness, they have been little known until recently outside the hardcore pulp community. And is there any real listing of them? They were discovered so long ago (late '70s I think, by Von Crabell right here in my own area... I visited his home about that time, but wasn't paying much attention to pulps then)... this was way before anyone was tracking or even thinking in terms of pedigrees. Crabell didn't keep a list to the best of my knowledge, and they were dispersed early on (one of my local customers owned a number of the Spicys for a time). I know you've spent a lot of time tracking them down, but will there ever be a real way of knowing just what actual books belong to the collection beyond shadowy memories of some of the early buyers? Or am I wrong, and did Crabell maintain an inventory listing?

It's not a matter of denying pedigree status... I'm just not sure there are collections that qualify, is my point. Yes, Yakima has been accepted, and they probably will put it on the ones for which records have been maintained. But by traditional definitions, a pedigree is a collection that was put together by a single buyer fresh off the newsstands and then maintained in high quality ever since. Since the heyday for collectible pulps was the 20s and 30s... going to be much more difficult to have surviving original collections. Plus, the paper was generally inferior even to that of comics, so high-grades holding up for going on 100 years is tough. I think the emphasis for pulp collectors will be on collections that have carefully been cultivated, even if second-hand or later, or come from famous collectors (Frank Robinson, Jim Steranko, etc.). I'm sure such collections will be noted.

There really aren't any pedigrees in pulps like there is with comics (at least so far). The only one considered a pedigree is the Yakima books, but even they were primarily from near the end of the pulp era, so nothing like the Church collection in terms of scope. There are probably more likely to be provenance collections (like the Frank Robinson collection) than actual pedigrees like comics (i.e., purchased off the newsstand by a single buyer).