vaillant

Off topic, but personally I never thought for a minute that Kav was a shill. He had too much genuine personality, he was just… um, original?

Yet another reason to not pay too much attention to the PQ. Agreed. Yes, it appears to be pretty inconsistent. I know when I would assign a CR/OW and more than often the few books I deslabbed had a better page quality than stated, or slightly worse. I would personally stick with OW, but if it is an early SA Marvel, I can settle as usually the cream part is a bit around edges, and not bad at all. I am more worried about paper degradation of the cover (especially tanning on the spine), which you can easily tell from a picture of the book.

The April 1940 and December 1940 covers are wonderful (for different reasons). I will surely make an effort to show you some cool italian editions: we must definitely start a thread devoted to novel covers!

Love this thread! David, did you know that the early editions of Monopoly, produced in Italy during fascism, use fascist street names some of which no longer exist (they have been changed in post-war editions). I discovered this just recently and found it awesome!

I thought it was the ones with the blank UPC space because the bag they came in had the actual UPC on it. Peace, Chip Cool, so I seem to get the difference is just that instead of an UPC crossed by a bar (direct market) the Whitmans have the UPC box left blank.

Isn’t the one with the rhombus a Whitman distributed copy? Do they coincide?

Man, these are BEAUTIFUL! Awesome grab, Pat – and I absolutely love the Famous Fantastic Mysteries: wonderful cover!

Ah, so VU = Velvet Underground?

No hard feelings at all, and I am really sorry you did not win. I had to choose, and it was hard to choose between a final selection of 3-4 bidders – as I explained to think I would have favored dead_clone since the beginning entirely goes against the idea behind the thread and besides this I barely know most of the final high bidders (including him). I also saw your points but really I think it is unlikely someone follows my idea to get monetary advantage in some dishonest way. I would be more curious to hear why Sqeggs considered your observations "spot on" and in which sense, as besides the point you raised about "shady areas" of which one could take advantage of the rules I still can’t see much risk for future auctions with variables added. My screen name derives from this french-belgian comics character (not sure the car posted is closely related to him as he is a F1 racer):

I’ll pay that for ASM #98 and 99.

Medusa…

Wow, great, many thanks for showing! What is teh VU? I surely enjoyed the Spider-Man issues dealing with the theme, not as much as the O'Neil Green Lanterns, for different reasons.

Meteor was on my wishlist, thanks for reminding me, I must have a look to see if I can find the whereabouts of the first italian edition (I love first editions, especially if they are great editions). If I find a minute I will scan and post the italian Hordubai: no big illustration, but the editorial package is fascinating. BangZoom: great to see the first edition of the Adam Link novel. I love the character, and I am just trying to complete the set of the redone stories in Creepy, also by Binder/Orlando. Thanks for posting the original one from the ECs, I already saw it but it’s always a pleasure! (thumbs u

I am still missing the Fantastic Four and Marvel Comics ones… These Indexes have been something which changed my collecting, in fact they were one of the reasons for which I decided to collect original editions. Those guys took Marvel age seriously and eventually went to produce the Official Indexes for Marvel. Hats off! (thumbs u

The ASM #129 reprint is very nice, and I would settle with it, but having a low grade copy now, and a low grade copy of the original #129 I must say that the Marvel Tales reprint is printed a lot worse, as it came out in the late 1970s, the worst period ever for the printing quality of the insides. The #129, being from the early 1970s is printed in an excellent way. That is, if you care to read the story in its best shape.

I have the first italian edition of Hordubai (and others): Capek is a great writer and essential for the science fiction which would have become "mainstream" later on. What is most amazing with his novels not dealing with fantasy (like Hordubai) is how he manages to paint the unseen, and what is more essential in man’s existence, without being pedant or philosophical in a boring way. His novels are enjoyable and lively as popular science fiction but also novels in the highest sense of the term as well.

Dragon Man… Gideon storyline…

Sweet centering! (Besides the amazing grade and Pedigree, which maybe has something to do with picking great centering too).

Interesting brush and pen work. I looked it up: George Tuska inking himself. Thanks for the appreciation. I love this cover, and these issues are… Tuska was definitely a great, with his own limits but a great. He and Don Heck must be among the most undervalued Marvel artists, their pre-Marvel work is often awesome.

I agree. I would not pay so much for a single book, also because the current pricing is determined by speculation bubbles. I have had a hard time to pay about $260 for a graded FF#65 because I truly love that issue, but personally I would not pay the ongoing prices for FF#36, 45-47, 52-53, 65, 66-67 etc. – they are artificial. That was (and is) one of the reasons for my "games", clearly I can’t determine how much a person loves a book or cares for it, but I hate the idea of someone having to give up an issue of his favorite series just because there are a number of speculators which would buy and sell a million times just to squeeze $5 more out of a "hot book". I know I have to be grateful to sellers which are not greedy, that was also my "provocation" if people allow…

And you have to explain me your Hustruck comparision, as I entirely miss it. Would Hustruck have sold a book to a lowest bidding seller? I don’t think so, as he was mostly doing business to get as much possible money from the books, not to have fun. Aside from this, as "screwed" as he might seem, he always sounded like a young person not entirely conscious of the inherent dishonesty of many of his decisions. Just saying…

Now, let’s make one things clear, before people start reading unlikely things in my auction, where there was none to bein with. My intent was clearly stated, there was nothing against the rules, and I just cared for the participation of dead_clone as he often expressed interest in finding a nice #67 to choose from for his keeper copy. I barely know him, as we just got acquainted in the PGM thread and in some Warlock threads, so there was no preference at all set beforehand. If you want to be fair, you will notice I encouraged both Andrew (1Cool) and Columbia Comics to participate. Both would have clearly resold the book, but I like them because they are straightforward people: Andrew is passionate about commerce and Brock is a professional dealer, so as long as they’d have brought out nice stories they were more than welcome. Brock in the end decided not to bid. I don’t like the fact that you think I expressed a personal preference based on previous facts, because first is a bit insulting about the motivations, and second it does not correspond to reality at all, and it always shows you pretty much missed my point in doing this auction, despite all the explanations. I recall we talked briefly when we met first here, about collectiong from abroad, and also there you missed my point about spending a lot for a single issue: it is a thing I don’t like much in the current collecting market, and that auction was also about this. And yes, I like to be "infuriating" at times when I am strongly convinced about a thing and when people seem to prefer to think in a very partial way. I would not read comics in a language that is not my own if I wasn’t… That’s all.

Heavens to Betsy !! It’s not Betsy, it’s Susan!

And you nailed it. Wolverine could not have done so better… (thumbs u