jlee

I love the Falcon series. Seems scarcer than most of the other digests and the covers are amazing.

Wish I had a nicer copy, but who wouldn't love this cover!

Those are some really great covers Pat. Thanks for sharing and always providing wonderful information to help reinvigorate our collecting spirits!

This is one of my all-time favorites.

Another classic. I have been lucky to find multiple copies of this over the years:

Previously posted in another thread:

Really interesting about the Sixth Street Pulps being resold at a loss. You make some great points and I only collect random pulps so I have minimal knowledge of the market. I do think that the Sixth Street Collection has brought greater overall awareness to the Pulp and Paperback markets and I would strongly suspect that some comic book collectors crossed over and bid on some of the Spicys with the lurid covers.

In general your comments apply to pulps, but not paperbacks. Paperbacks are still being published (just check out your local Barnes & Noble). In fact, there are far far more potential paperbacks to be collected out there then there will ever be of comic books. Paperbacks have plenty of familiar characters... first, every famous hardback has also had a paperback edition, and many characters were created for paperbacks originally. Like Dark Shadows? There are a couple of dozen paperback originals out there. Star Trek? -- hundreds of paperbacks. Same with Star Wars. Or James Bond. Or Doc Savage. Or Tarzan. Travis McGee started in the paperbacks. Louis L'Amour's 1st books were paperback originals. Mickey Spillane. All of Philip K. 's early works were paperback originals. As were many from Marion Zimmer Bradley, Jim Thompson, Harry Whittington, Dean Koontz, Harlan Ellison, Robert Bloch, Richard Matheson, Jack Vance, and on and on. Nearly every major movie ever based on a book (which is most of them) has a paperback edition out there somewhere. The public is well aware of paperbacks... they just aren't aware of them as something collectible. Part of that is just the way things are marketed. Marvel makes sure that when you watch "Iron Man" you know it is a Marvel product. When they make (and re-make) "The Killer Inside Me", there's no financial motive to play up it's based on a 1950s Lion paperback. Newspapers and magazines make Jack Kirby, Steve Ditko, Frank Miller, and John Romita familiar names. We don't hear much about the giants in paperback art -- Rudolph Belarski, Robert Bonfils, James Avati, Robert Stanley, Rafael DeSoto, George Gross, Robert Maguire, Lou Marchetti, Robert McGinnis, Barye Phillips, etc., etc. (The exceptions that have moved into mainstream recognition are Frank Frazetta and Jeff Jones). Still... who knows? For all of the fuss about comic books, they are still very much a niche market... sold to about 1% of the population and available only in comic shops or on line. Paperbacks are still in every K-Mart, pharmacy, grocery store and Wal-Mart (for now... though the format is probably going to give way to the larger trade softbound). AIt will all depend on a breakout auction sale or two. If a paperback sells for $100,000, or the news makes a big deal out of someone discovering a collector horde hidden in their walls, than the floodgates may open. Otherwise... probably not. So I let my own personal preferences and biases color my comments. Of course when looking at the overall paperback market, all comments above are correct. I was thinking about the fairly narrow range of collectible paperbacks and digests from the 1950s with their lurid good girl, drug-related, and wild covers. The Archers with the amazing Heade covers or the unbelievable Falcons, Venus, Avon, Beacon, etc... like Junkie, Girls Out of Hell, Helen of Troy, etc... Sorry for not being clearer. On a separate note, I will try posting some of my favorite digests and paperback covers from my collection in the coming days.

I have been actively collecting Comics, Paperbacks, Crime and Girly Magazines for the past 20 years and agree that the prices and demand for Paperbacks and Pulps compared to Comics seems quite low. That being said, I believe there are several key drivers: 1) Lack of Information and Visibility - Before the Internet and Gerber's Photo-Journal Guides, you could pick up incredible pre-code horror and good girl art books at great prices. Paperbacks frankly lack enough visibility. There is confusion about first prints, reprints, different titles and publishers, and of course, value. A price guide by itself is not enough to move the needle. 2) Lower Collecting Interest - since paperbacks and pulps are not published today, they lack the collectability of still published comics and there is no movie, TV, or other media x-over appeal. It is hard to collect random paperbacks as opposed to saying I want to collect the first 100 issues of X-men. 3) Readability - People like to read comics, plain and simple. Reading paperbacks and pulps takes a lot more time and effort. And without familiar storylines and characters, it can be a lot less interesting. 4) "Sponsorship" - we need the Heritage Auction houses and the Nick Cages of the world to bring more attention and demand to raise the bar on paperbacks (less so for pulps). Action 1 would not be a $2M book without this so called sponsorship. On a final note, I have seen Pulps begin to close the gap. Some of the sales prices on 6th Street Pulps have been very high.

Great pick-up! Thanks for sharing.

I used to not see what all the fuss was about Matt Baker... Seeing covers like these completely opened my eyes. Thanks for posting these! I find it interesting that on a lot of these later Romance covers, Baker starting adding additional facial lines near the cheekbones that gave a more realistic and older appearance on many of the people.

I actually never saw a copy of this in the 90s and only recently picked one up from Heritage. This is a very cool giant with another great Baker cover. Congrats on the copy!

Took me a while to find it, but here is my copy of Teen-Age Romances 9.

I also looked at the GCE 13 and debated on whether it was worth it. For me the decision came down to the cover. It is cool, but not one of my all-time favorite Baker covers. Still, a rare GCE and a must have for all Baker collectors.

A beautiful copy. Is this from the Sixth St. collection? Some fantastic Baker romance books surfaced from this recent collection. I just picked up the GCE # 13. Still some books available. I picked up a couple as well. The guy selling them on eBay is asking some pretty strong prices, though. I just had to grab one of these, too. (And I very nearly bought that sweet TR 33, instead...) The colors are amazing, really fresh and lustrous. For high grade Baker romance, the offerings in this collection are among the best we've seen in the past ten years. Besides many "Highest Graded" examples, a number of the ultra rare and HTF books are present, as well (like the 100 page rebound giants, and the Diary Secrets digest.) His prices on the non-highest graded copies are high, but not impossible. But $1,700 for a 7.5 Pictorial Romances 17? I have a raw copy that I'm pretty sure would grade at least that high -- particularly with a press. If I had had that one graded and it had come back, say, 8.5, he would probably be pricing his copy at maybe $750. So anyone buying at the current price is spending in the neighborhood of an extra $1,000 for the distinction of owning what may turn out to be only briefly the highest graded copy. Again, that Diary Secrets 9 is great, but $3,300 for a 6.0? I would be surprised if there is anyone willing to pay half that. I feel a little torn about some of these prices. On one hand, it feels like the collecting community is finally realizing how rare these books are in Fine or better and how much more desirable they are than a Walking Dead 1 in 9.8. On the other hand, the guide has been very very low on most of these books for a long time and it feels a little bit like price gouging, I guess only time will tell if the new pricing tier on these books brings out more high grade copies or if what we are seeing now is as good as it gets and these prices turn out to be pretty sweet deals.

Seems like every copy of that DS 12 has that staining.

Beautiful book!

Whoa! Great score for $100. eBay? Awesome!! Reminds me of the good old 90s when Baker was available at a good price. Congratulations.

Thanks! I am really glad that Baker collectors are so passionate on these boards and that many are pursuing his tremendous Romance covers.

One supposes a warehouse find. I got my high grade copy off ebay years ago from a fellow boardie, for (gulp) $30.00. Ooh! Nice grab! I was thinking a warehouse find or maybe a temporary positive hiccup in St John's spotty distribution. Even Edgar got his hands on a copy! I don't know for sure, but it seems like there was probably a small warehouse inventory of the book. I do know that there was a comic store in Massachusetts I used to frequent in the mid-90s that had a ton of rare Holyoke books including multiples of Captain Aero 26, although in low grade. I also remember there were warehouse finds of Thing 16 and Great 1. I lived in Philly for about 10 years and that is where All Negro 1 was supposedly published. I cannot remember where I saw it, but one comic dealer or collector had about 7 copies of the supposedly super rare All Negro 1. Paper was brittle on all of them but the condition wasn't too bad. I wish I had bought one of them. Finally, there were a few publisher finds where local printing press workers had saved multiple copies of the same book. I found a small collection in the 90s that had multiples of some Romantic Marriages 23 and 24 with Baker covers as well as some copies of Farmer's Daughter and Strange Worlds. So in conclusion, I would say that is probably the case here. Nevertheless, a great pickup and congrats!

I feel like this is a bit underrated:

Have not seen too many copies of this one:

Is this Romance or Horror?

Very cool personal connection.

This is another late Baker favorite.