OtherEric

It also requires, if the stories were published before a certain point, they must have been correctly renewed. Apparently most of the Conan stories were not renewed.

My guess, with no evidence, is it's a prototype. The first few books all came out more or less at once; I'm thinking that they were testing laminate or no laminate and decided the 4 didn't show up well. I can't find any other reference to it, but I admittedly didn't look too hard yet. Here's the cover we're talking about, if anybody else is interested:

The one on Bookscans looks weird, in any case... I didn't think the early Avons were laminated, if they are mine have all completely peeled without leaving much damage.

Eh, I figure it was worth grabbing the copy that's been sitting in a local dollar bin for the last several years today...

Today's pickups at the local store. The Avon NN (3) lists 12 titles both inside and on the back cover and has the globe endpapers. So should be a true first; unless somebody knows something about a variant with a dark blue "4" instead of pink? Bookscans has an image with the dark blue 4, but no info on when it came out relative to this. The Pocket 212 is a stated first pocket printing.

Today's dollar bin grab. It may be flavor of the week... but for a dollar, I'll give it a go.

What a great batch of books, Raze! Let me know if you ever upgrade the Mad #17... I could use the cover on my copy.

14 is the one that Overstreet calls the classic Bruce Lee cover by Adams, but I've always preferred the 17:

Some more DHOKF covers by Adams:

Adams did a lot of great covers for DHOKF. Anybody know who, if anybody, the guy getting punched in the foreground and the guy reaching in his jacket are supposed to be? Because that's Stan getting kicked in the head and Roy on the right sitting at the table...

I deeply admire your way of saying the prices on MTU 131 are Mad.

I know 2020 seems like it's been going on forever, but it was only last month...

I think that line needs a date to go with it. They all had their first stories in Astounding in a three month span... Asimov and van Vogt in July 1939, Heinlein in August 1939, and Sturgeon in September 1939. For Asimov, it wasn't actually his first story... I think it was his 3rd? But they all did show up in a very tight span. That's why the July 1939 issue is sometimes called the start of the Golden Age of Science Fiction.

I almost never buy anything from MCS on eBay any more, it's cheaper to go to their own site. The only recent exception was when I had a $25 eBay coupon. I wonder if they've been getting diminishing returns from posting almost everything there?

I would guess some specific store marking; no idea what that might be. Heck, it could just be some kid having fun with a stamp. Admittedly, only one stamp makes that less likely, but still...

Thanks for the replies, I've seen individual books with missing codes before, and I even got at least one book with the wrong code when I redeemed it. What I'm still wondering is if the missing code affected the entire run with the main cover on this issue, or it was just the half-dozen copies at my LCS. The problem was more widespread than a single copy; I was wondering how much.

Is it possible the stamp was already in use on non-comic magazines or something else, and just added to comics at this point?

It surely is a word, but I think you're using it wrong, with mumpsimony being a specific act of some sort. I believe the path of mumpsimosity would be more correct here.

I don't think the star stamp applies to early 40's books in general, but I could be quite wrong. There are some early Dells that exist with and without a printed star, though. As @Get Marwood & I said, a picture would help!

What a bunch of great pick-ups! I was oddly amused by the fact the only two books in the lot that I personally have were in the same picture; although my copy of the Addams is the 60's hardcover reprint. I need to track down the original or at least the Bantam; the later reprints are missing the Boris Karloff forward. The Brown always surprises me with the 25c price tag; the book design and art always looks to me more like something from the 60's than the 50's.

Nice! The 65c version pretty much has to be from EC, not DC; although I've never seen a definitive statement on which printings came from which publisher. We love seeing pretty much any EC's here; so welcome to the thread! I noticed your avatar; we would love to see the entire Cobweb House cover over in the Comics, Pulps, and Paperbacks thread; it's become the general paperback thread in the golden age forums.

Well said. The right material is still red-hot and getting hotter. You mention the sci-fi pulps; I think that may be a good example where people let what they know about comics confuse them about the market on pulps. I saw at least some Planet Stories issues go for frankly stupid prices a few places; I think people were equating it with Planet Comics on some level... and it just isn't remotely the same. It's a fun title with some great covers, but it's pretty common as pulps go and with a few exceptions there aren't a lot of high demand stories in there. (Although, now that I think about it, I can think of worse investments than finding a couple more copies of the July 1952 issue...)

Those weird page counts in 1952 lasted, in some cases, into 1954 on the more popular titles, assuming by 16 or 20 you mean both sides of the page. They're worth noting, but unlike the wartime cut wraps like in the original post, they were just normal wraps with an unusual total page count for the books.

You can count me out on the competition, as I already have a copy. But my suggestion for what the book is missing? Some Feldstein-edited New Trend EC stories. For all that I personally prefer the Kurtzman edited material, the book's 5 EC stories should not be four pieces by Kurtzman & crew and "Master Race" as the only story from the Feldstein side of the shop. Judgement Day and a couple of pieces from Shock Suspenstories would probably fit the bill perfectly.

It's most common on books dropping from 64 pages (+cover) to 56 pages (+cover) that I've seen. I have a few like this. Let us know exactly which book it is and we can help figure out what the count and content should be.