Bookery

Though weakened by the loss of his triplicate self, Icelandic crime still cannot rest easy when faced with the awesome power of Duo-Dude.

They did... Jan '41, Mar '41, Sep '41, and Feb '42 issues also had sf themes. In Spicy Adventure, the Aug, Oct, and Dec 1940 issues has sf covers, as did 1941's Feb, Apr, Jul, Sep and Nov issues, and the Jan and Mar issues of 1942.

Of course, per your opening sentence, it could also be viewed as comic collectors being way out of line on what they are willing to pay vs. availability... it's all a matter of perspective. Movies are driving collector values right now. Eventually, the movie fad will move elsewhere. (Far more Tarzan movies were produced than all of the current major comic-hero franchises combined... but eventually the demand for them faded as did high-levels of collector interest). But, I agree with pretty much what you say above. Some things are actually TOO RARE to be highly collectible. This is one of the factors that has kept pulp prices way below their comics counterparts. Despite more gruesome horror covers, more flamboyant good-girl art, more eye-catching SF themes... a copycat-cover on a comic book will bring many times what the original pulp will. And a lot of that has to do with the fact that pulps are just too hard and frustrating to collect for many... and if you're obsessed with high grades... forget it. And movie posters are awkward to display... not much fun flipping through folded-posters in a box... and unless you live at the Biltmore... tough to find wall-space to devote to them.

As one who enjoys paper collectibles across a broad spectrum, even after decades in the business I will never cease to be amazed by these books. I don't believe there is another collectible of any kind that reaches these kinds of valuations with such a large number of copies available. Compared to some collectibles, Action 1 & 'Tec 27 would be considered abundant! With several copies having blown past $1-million, it's interesting to note that a First Folio Shakespeare, complete, can be had for around $2-mil., with probably fewer than 2-dozen copies in existence, and only a handful of those not locked away in museums. Poe's 1st book, Tamerlane, I believe now goes for around $1-mil., if you can shake free one of the 20 or so known copies. I think there's only about 2 or 3 dozen known copies of Tarzan's 1st app. in All-Story... which goes for around $20-k or so... even fewer copies of the 1st edition hardback in dust-jacket... maybe $50-k for a decent copy. There are several KEY movie posters out there with fewer than 10 copies, going for far less than $1-k. The 1st ed. 1st Pocket Book I think has fewer than 20 known copies... somewhere around $20,000 will get you one... if and when one shows up for sale. Weird Tales #1 is not all that rare... but there are still certainly far fewer known copies than Action #1... can be had for around $20k. 1st edition Frankenstein, which was issued in 3 small volumes making it difficult to find whole, maybe $100,000, with I'd guess fewer than 50 existing copies. Others with more knowledge can chime in... but I'm guessing there are not even any classic automobiles, furniture antiques, rare coins, etc., that will bring over $1-mil. with estimated quantities of 200-300 in existence?

Odd... the collection was never offered to me, and we're one of the largest shops in the world. There's also a large shop in Northern Kentucky you'd have thought they would have tried as well, before hauling them that many miles. (However, to be honest... I'm not sure how excited I'd get over Star Wars. Half a dozen issues sell instantly... the rest sit here with multiple copies in stock). There seems to be an odd fact with comic collections... really good stuff... golden-age rarities, prime books, etc., will often just be sold for a fraction of their worth to the nearest small dealer available (esp. true with estate collections, where the owners don't bother to know what their relative collected, or what it's worth). Then the folks with very little, or at least fairly routine collections, will spend big $$$ traveling all over trying to eek out top-dollar, or refusing to believe dealer after dealer who explains what they have isn't worth that much.

So few people ever take this into account. I have a flea market dealer who has bought from me for years. He will often buy a book for $100, and gets excited when he flips it for $110. He can't stand to hold onto anything. If it doesn't move within 2 weeks, he'll turn it over for a loss. I actually rather regret selling him good books, because he won't make the effort to make something more substantial from them. He never has more than $200 - $300 to spend, because his profit margin never lets him build on his available funds. The books I sell him could bring $150 for that $100 with just a bit of effort, or more in the case of bulk items he buys cheaply. To top it off... he drives a round trip of 2 hours to get here, so he actually loses money on travel costs. But it makes him happy, so I shouldn't care, I guess. But unfortunately for me, he will never build over time into being able to acquire larger deals.

No. Now... I've nothing against flippers... in fact I couldn't exist without them in today's market, as the majority of my collector sales are to flippers and dealers. But they are not technically the same thing. As a dealer, I've invested over half-a-million dollars in downtown real estate, and much more in upgrades, repairs, and renovations. I pay $10,000 per year in property taxes. I collect and send to the state tens of thousands of more dollars per year in sales taxes. I have employed dozens of people over the decades. Flippers are generally solo-agents, and I don't know of a single one that pays a penny in taxes on their earnings. A dealer is part of a community, which, I know, in the age of all-internet all-the-time is pretty much meaningless anymore. Dealers are generally in it for the long haul, if they can survive. It's a career. Most flippers have other jobs. Often they do this only for a few years and then move on. Both transact comics, and both are useful to the hobby, but they are not the same animal.

Wasn't me. My only post pointed out the title of the comic.

Best Comics (1939)

One of the problems is that the industry itself has over-promoted the idea that old comics are valuable... especially the OPG. People don't get this false sense with used paperbacks or other modern-era items. The paperback price guides over the years don't include last month's Stephen King novel. Few expect their 1990s issues of Time Magazine to be worth a fortune. Nobody complains when the hardback they spent $24.95 for is available next month at the used bookstore for a third of that or far less. But there's this weird idea out there that all comics books will be worth cover-price or more down the road. The OPG should remove any comic from its listings that's valued at less than $10 in NM (maybe then it could increase the font-size to a readable level for us oldsters)!

I published a pulp price guide back in 2005... "Bookery's Guide to Pulps". It's a bit dated now (though I'm working slowly on an update). Though out of print, there are still dealers on ABE Books and Amazon that carry copies. Pulps have historically been graded like books, with 3 grading tiers... good, very good, and fine. The good and very good grades are actually pretty similar to comics, but the "fine" grade would be closer to a "very fine" in comics terms. In a numerical system, the 3 main grades are probably close to comic equivalents of 2.0, 5.0, and 8.0. Pulps grading higher than 8.0 are very rare (except for some digests), but some pedigree copies do turn up. Keep in mind, the science-fiction pulps are what you will come across most often. Many of these have spectacular covers, but they are also among the more common pulps... so be wary of over-graded and over-priced copies at flea markets, or from comics dealers who aren't overly familiar with pulps. If you come across a copy of the pulp guide, in "general", SF pulps probably haven't changed too much in value over the past decade (except for true high grades), hero pulps are fairly stable except for rarities, and detective, weird menace and good-girl covers have risen since last publication. Like comics, over-the-top cover art is in increasing demand. Be prepared to be frustrated as a pulp collector... you can buy an Action #1 tomorrow if you have the money... but you may search for years for a $50 pulp to fill that gap in your run! -- Tim Cottrill

Many years ago one of my regular customers brought it in. He was one of the panel speakers at the 1966 science-fiction WorldCon. He won it as a door prize at the Con (probably asking himself what the heck is this, and who is Ed Wood?). I have all of the mailing materials that came with it. It came from the offices of Greenleaf Publishing (Earl Kemp) and was mailed directly to the WorldCon president. The book was released at the same time as the movie, and maybe it was some sort of cross-promo thing? My customer was a regional film rep at the time, and his job at the Con was to promote the new release of "Fantastic Voyage". He passed away a few months ago in his late-'80s. He rarely got rid of anything in his collection, and the fact that he sold this indicates of the many things he hoarded away, this apparently held little significance for him.

Here's a good-girl cover... with extras. This is Ed Wood's "Orgy of the Dead", complete with pre-production unbound copy, 2 sets of galleys with corrections, and Wood's original manuscript, with numerous corrections in Wood's hand and the editors, plus Forrest Ackerman's original manuscript for the book's Introduction.

Speaking of Karloff... I have this lobby card from 1921 I picked up at auction. There are two other cards from this movie that have surfaced, but both of those have Karloff turned away and less recognizable. Otherwise, from what I've been able to research, this may be the earliest movie poster image of Karloff there is. This is his 11th film, and most of the previous roles were bit parts (crowd scenes, etc.) where he's not likely to turn up on a card or poster. Not quite a serial card... but it's tale of villainy in the Far North has a serial kind of feel to it.

Thanks! When I get a little closer to finishing I'll get back to this. I may also be seeking some input from these boards on sales prices, especially of the rarer and more obscure stuff, that may not show up in the usual searches and sites. Neat Populars, btw.

Thanks CC!

Your model is surprisingly close to my own. Only I don't even do shows. I sell here at the shop and that's pretty much it. That may seem highly restrictive, but we're near the crossroads of I-70 and I-75 -- two of the world's busiest highways -- so we get a lot of out-of-state collectors and dealers in. I sell stuff pretty reasonable so that a good portion of our business is to dealers... but I save on all of the hotel and table costs, so if I take less than I might get at a show, it all works out to about the same. But I don't negotiate. I have my own 600-page pricing guide I've put together, and I pretty much stick to it (though of course adjustments need to made on volatile books on a regular basis). I have some customers and show promoters tell me I'd do so much better if I did shows, or put books on eBay. But I don't know how, since my sell-through on anything halfway decent is pretty much 100%. The only things that are hard to move, even at large discounts, are the things that are slow everywhere... Disneys, Classics, old westerns, etc. And even then I generally move them here eventually. There 's no trouble selling stuff. The trick is getting to buy it. The one thing no one has mentioned is that for every customer that wants you to match or beat an eBay price, there is a seller expecting the same thing. "Well, this is selling for $50 an eBay, so unless you give me $50 for it I'll just sell it there". Basically, I'm supposed to pay $50 to match the eBay price, and then turn around and sell it at $40 to beat the eBay price. No thanks. I grade tightly and price fairly, but that's it. It sells when it sells. And like G.A.tor... on the big books anyway, it's generally the same deal... tough to make much more than 10% - 20%, so really there's no choice in the matter.

I haven't spent much time tracking down price data yet... mostly just get general reports from some of my clients and dealers. I did see not too long ago some Weird Tales at Heritage seemed to be going for healthy prices... but I don't recall how nice the grades were. There was a gorgeous copy of Weird Tales #1 listed at Heartwood Books a short time ago... it was described as a solid "Fine" and may well have been the best copy in existence. It was priced at $12,000, and I was thinking that seemed like a very reasonable price. I was seriously considering it, but then wondered why it was still available... maybe I'm thinking WT prices had softened? But a few days later it was gone. It's one of those over-thinking it situations... if it's available, then it must be too expensive. If it's gone, then it must have been a bargain! I'm holding out for Schroedinger's Pulp... it's both available and sold simultaneously!

I will still employ three price columns in the new guide, but I was already planning to move to a 10-point grading scale (pulps don't really need the half-grades at this point, I don't think). But it's particularly confusing now with pulps being included with comics at some of the big auction houses. Traditionally, a pulp in "Fine" condition is about as good as it gets in most cases (equivalent to perhaps an 8.0 or better in comics). But when someone lists a pulp as "Fine", a comic collector may assume it's only in mid-grade. But oddly enough a "very good" in both pulps and comics is roughly the same. Factory-trimmed pulps are obviously much easier to find in higher grade than traditional "overhang" pulps, and should be priced at a different spread, as should most digests. I'm leaning toward 2.0, 5.0 and 8.0 columns, with of course an introduction defining the other grades. But it might go 2.0-4.0-8.0. I'll figure it out later. Of course... if I acquire the next "Church Collection"... all pulp-guide plans could be put on the back-burner...

Print-on-demand may indeed be a possibility. But the old-time pulpsters are not much into computer uploading, so it's hard to say. If all else fails, I may find a way to attach it to my website, where it could possibly be made available for free. It's not like one gets rich publishing reference books anyway. But again... it's not the same as a nice professionally bound book. -- Tim Cottrill

This is the first place I've mentioned this, but after 12 years I am finally working on an update to the guide. I'm not putting in the hours on it I did for the first two, so it's moving along slowly, but then again there's not as much new work to be done at this point. It could probably be done within the year if I pressed myself on it. Am reformatting it slightly... it will be a bit easier to use... with most titles now getting an overview paragraph of the type of material to be expected. Prices will be the last thing I get to and update. The big problem is... I'm not sure there's anywhere left to publish it. I'm not interested in self-distributing it like the last one. So even if I finish it, it may be a moot endeavor. HOWEVER... in the meantime I can give you a general sense of prices since 2005. Pristine copies, as with comics, have become a world unto themselves, and may bring serious premiums. Otherwise, basic science-fiction pulps really haven't changed that much in the last dozen years. Some hero pulps have actually dropped in value... later Docs and Shadow pulps have been impacted by the reprints. Detective pulps have definitely been on the upswing, and are getting much tougher to obtain. These have probably risen to various degrees across the board in the past decade. And also as with comics, the more over-the-top covers seem to be in ever-increasing demand, particularly in grades above "vg". Authors are less important than they used to be... now it's all about cover art. The rare stuff seems to get ever-rarer, at least in terms of being seen out for sale.

Exactly right. I'm in more of a position to know than most... I spent 2 years putting my own 600-page guide together (for my own buying and selling purposes -- not for re-sale) and update it regularly. OPG may be too low on a number of "key" books, but is way inflated on the vast majority of GA. In fact, the dirty little secret that is seldom talked about is that most GA issues have been gradually falling in value over the years as newer generations have no connection to it. Except for certain highlight issues, the majority of Dell, Fawcett, Quality, Lev Gleason, western, romance, movie tie-in, and other lesser known issues sell for well below OPG, and generally then only if they are marketed as a bargain in comparison to OPG prices (30% off guide, 50% off guide, etc.). I'm talking mainstream grades here... 2.0 to 8.0... as pedigrees and ultra high-grades are a world unto themselves. Even most non-key DC books sell for under guide at present. The dilemma for OPG however, is that many of these comics sell at all only when seen as a "bargain". If OPG lowers a $100 western, say, to a more realistic value of $50... does the new market value immediately fall to $25? Lower it to $25, and is it now $12? It would be difficult for the guide to keep up with the ever-changing prices brought on by the guide's very attempt to come into line with the market. Yet that said, I believe there is more need for published price guides now then ever. EBay is not trustworthy on scarcer books... too much manipulation and also fears that the seller isn't describing the book properly (page count, etc.). Analyzing GPA is a science... one few folks take the time to learn. The "free" online guides are worth what you pay for them. There is still a need for a learned well-thought out guide/guides in the marketplace to properly assess values and trends for those who can't or don't want to take the time. (When I put the pulp guides together years ago, it was a challenge to make sure I didn't over value books because of a few sales that turned out to be the same two guys battling each other for books... once they obtained them, prices again settled back to previous levels). OPG is a wealth of data. No price guide can keep up with certain volatile items in a given short period, but I think if OPG dropped all of the "cover price or less" material out of the guide and concentrated on actual collectible issues (with a larger font that could actually be read), and dropped its fear of showing downward movements, it could rise back to being the primary go-to source it once was.

Fast shipping, secure packaging, tracking updates... all around just great service. Thanks!

In Captain Marvel Adventures #41 (1944), Cap' visits several landmarks in Dayton, Ohio, and battles Nazi saboteurs at Wright Field (now Wright-Patterson AFB).