OtherEric

You posted while I was still typing. I'm pretty sure Derleth made his claim stick by having nobody who particularly cared to fight, and by the time Derleth passed without properly renewing anything there would only be at most 6 stories that would possibly be not in the public domain... The Transition of Juan Romero, Old Bugs, and 4 juvenalia.

His aunt inherited what he had, she died in 1941. Her heirs gave Arkham House the right to reprint Lovecraft's stories, but beyond that details are fuzzy and complicated. Nothing was apparently renewed so everything is now in the public domain pretty much unambiguously. As regards the reprint @50YrsCollctngCmcsasked about, I have little doubt Avon paid a (small) fee for the reprint rights. The copyright statement in the issue shows it was copyright 1928 by Popular Fiction Publishing Company (Weird Tales) and copyright 1939 by Derleth and Wanderi (Arkham House). No clue if Arkham House gave any of the fee to the actual heirs.

I recently lost my affiliation membership, the profit margin was just too tempting. But I enjoyed it while it lasted

Avon Fantasy Reader 3 from July 1947, with a reprint of "The Silver Key".

That was my last issue as well, although I haven't really seen that it's that much rarer than the rest of the run.

Which issue is the last you need?

Avon Fantasy Reader #1, from February 1947. This one has a reprint of "Nostalgia", one of the Fungi From Yuggoth sonnets. Don't worry, other issues of the series have actual stories by Lovecraft, I think this is the only one with just a poem. Lovecraft is in almost half the issues of the run.

Sort of. Generally the outer cover on a square bound double cover isn't actually attached because there wasn't any way for it to get glued on. But I've seen at least one square bound treasury shown on the forums where that happened and the extra cover stayed with the book for decades.

I have only one argument to make... and ironically, it only works because you say you have a full run of them so far: Being able to reference the history of comics over the last fifty years is actually an AMAZING resource. I think being able to track the progress of how the hobby was viewed and the information we knew over that period is incredible. And having built that specific resource, it makes sense to keep current on the updates in that form... even if they're not that useful in isolation, they will still be useful as part of the overall set. Personally, I only get a copy ever 7 or 8 years, when my old one wears out... I still find it useful to have a copy at hand for various reference points, but I don't need a current one in most instances.

January 1947 Weird Tales, with reprints of two of the Fungi from Yuggoth sonnets: The Familiars, and The Pigeon-Flyers.

Nope. I did have one take three months once from a dealer than normally only took a week. I just happened to still have the photos since I sent them to the seller to help him make his claim on damage to the book.

I wish I could say I've never seen something that bad before. All I can claim is that it's rare in my experience... and luckily, I was only dealing with a book under $50 with international shipping, not a classic EC book like that. To the seller's credit, they quickly gave me a full refund. I still have no clue what the heck could have done damage like that:

There are all sorts of books rebound under the Red Circle #4 cover, Showcase #17 is one of the latest books I've heard of with the Red Circle Cover. But while it may be an unique variant in the particular combination of grade and internal issue, it's not a particularly odd one given the general history of rebound books using that cover.

August 1946 Amazing Stories, with the first publication of "Bothon" by Henry S. Whitehead, very shortly before its inclusion in "West India Lights" from Arkham House. Most sources seem to actually place its first publication in the Arkham House volume, but Arkham House ads in Weird Tales show that the Amazing Stories was released earlier. It's unclear exactly how much Lovecraft had to do with the story. It seems that he may have been involved in the early stages of creating it rather than his more normal pattern of modifying a completed story. It's also quite likely August Derleth was involved with the story as it finally appeared, as Whitehead and Lovecraft had both been dead several years before the story was finally printed.

Nice pick-ups all! Cosmic Computer is not my favorite Piper novel, but it still has a lot to like. I get the general impression the end of the book was modified because it was originally released as a juvenile and the original idea was deemed too complex for younger readers.

Super cool provenance on that one, I would love to have one of the Garcia books. I've got a Gary Arlington Shock Suspenstories, a Don & Maggie Thompson Panic, and even an 80's issue of MAD that's a Gaines File Copy.

Welcome to the forums! Always happy to have another EC Fan-Addict join us here.

None that I can find. January 1946 Weird Tales, with a reprint of "Recapture", one of the Fungi From Yuggoth sonnets. I actually got this book sent to me by accident when I ordered a different issue, but it was so beautiful in hand I couldn't let it go and worked out a deal with the seller where I kept this at a discount and he sent me the issue I had actually ordered. Almost certainly the highest grade WT in my collection.

Nice pickups! This one also has "Spectator Sport" by John D. MacDonald and "The Greater Conflict" by Raymond F. Jones, which is one of the three stories that were mashed up for "This Island Earth".

I find it interesting that I had enough assorted pieces of information to make the guess. I have perhaps half a dozen non-comic Goodman magazines in my collection total. Here's the one I got a few weeks ago:

New book out this week. Honestly, Stevens did it better:

In today. I already have the Simon & Schuster reissue of this in hardcover, but it's missing the Boris Karloff foreword. And, of course, having an early Bantam has its own appeal:

From 1945, the Best Supernatural Stories of H. P. Lovecraft. My copy is a 1st print. Since we've already discussed this book in this thread, I just want to call attention to the image on the spine... it looks to me like the specter is meant to look like HPL, specifically based on the "eyes in shadow" version of the picture @RedFuryposted to start this thread:

I have no clue, myself. If I had to wildly guess... first Pussycat?

Marginalia, released by Arkham House in late 1944 as their third collection of Lovecraft material. The highlight here would be the first publication of "The Transition of Juan Romero", one of the last Lovecraft stories to be published.