Ghost Town

It works. But can't you do it with any nice books?

Great book. Great cover.

Fresh from Sarasota. Finally found some decent Two-Gun Kids and a few other tough books.

Some recent buys: I don't love the c-ow pages on the Our Love Story, but I'll learn to live with the horror of it. The romance books have been very tough for me to find.

Very nice. A Curator copy too. Gotta love that.

That is a killer book. I've seen 9.8s that don't look that nice.

I do that too. But occasionally, C-Link's servers have been slow and it made it hard to get in a last second bid. So when it's something I really want, I'm more of a last 45 second kind of bidder.

Wow, Mitch. You need to explore your collection some more. Most of us have to buy stuff. You just dig through your old boxes and pull out beauties.

I think I started trying to assemble a full run of the 25¢ Picture frame books in 2007. I already owned most of the superhero books by then and figured it would be a fun to complete the run in high grade. I liked square bound books and I liked picture frames too. It's just 31 books from the 1970s. How hard could it be? Little did I know just how freaking tough it would be. I started out wanting 9.6s but I quickly realized that it was pretty unrealistic with some of these books. It's almost five years later and today I finally completed the registry set with a 9.2 copy of My Love #14. I'd still love to get them all in 9.4 or better, but that might take another five years. So in the meantime, forgive me while I show them off. (Thanks to JiveTurkeyMofo, joeypost, and Spiderman-on-Tilt for hooking me up with three of the tougher books.)

Just back from CGC:

A couple recent arrivals:

Separated at birth?

Great books, MC. I knew these Sgt. Furys would be more difficult to find in high grade than superhero books, but I've been surprised how hard it is to find nice copies. The #105 and a few others are beasts. Anybody have a nice #101 or 103?

Great book, Jason. Neal Adams, Picture Frame, Twin Cities, 9.6, white pages. It doesn't get much better than that.

Great book. I don't think I've ever seen a nice copy before. Kane and Palmer always made a great team.

Great stuff, Joe. Some really tough books there. The Hero for Hire #3 and the Marvel Feature #4 are particularly hard to find in 9.6+.

+1 I was thinking the same thing, that the Reese-inked cover is grittier and more modern. The faces have a very weary, shellshocked, battle-hardened quality. Very intense for a mainstream, early 70s cover - for me far superior to the published version. To me, it looks like something Paul Gulacy and/or Gene Day would have done in the late '70s or early '80s.

I think the Ralph Reese version was probably about 12 years ahead of its time. It wouldn't have been strange to see it on the spinner rack in 1984.

Not bad for a five minute back-issue bin dive. Imagine if you had ten minutes.

I feel much better now.

It was a little under $300 with the tax and shipping. But I'm trying to rationalize it because of the Romita cover. Don't know if it's working.

And a Heritage win. I still can't believe I paid what I paid for a My Love #19.

Just back from CGC. As much as I want 9.6 or 9.4s, I'm finding it's really hard to even find 9.0s of some of these books. The Chili #19 is the only graded copy. I'm sure I spent more on the slabbing fees than what the book is actually worth.