tb

> Glad you pointed that out. I was shocked at the Whiz 1 just laying there, you should have seen the fexibility test he demonstrated on the book. I was cringing in horror.

I remember moondog describing such a "flexibility" test that ended in a disaster and decade-long traumatic experience.

Wasn't it also John Snyder who color touched many of the Church keys?

> Yes, I would say that is the Crescent City copy.

No wonder it dropped from a 9.6-9.8 if John Snyder handled it like the Church Whiz 1. That picture hurts to watch.

Thanks again for all the info! I had been asking around about this collection for years.

-------

Very sorry to hear about Nick Kronfeld. I lost a fried the same way in the 90s after his wife left him for his best friend. Takes many years to recover from something like that. I can imagine how you must have felt, TGA, especially given his age.

I've collected Disney comics all my life and these pictures are literally the most amazing I've ever seen! If those books were 9.0 on average they would still be so far off the scale that ... well, nothing I've ever seen or heard of would compare to them. I'm stunned, speechless, and very thankful for getting a glance at them.

I guess Geppi would be the only potential buyer for the WDCS 1, but the breadth of the rest of the collection is much more impressive to me. The demand for these books would be crazy today. I lost a WDCS 2 CGC 9.0 with a $15,000 bid earlier this year and several post-war Four Colors in the 9.2+ range have sold privately for well into 5 figures. Any WDCS < 100 in CGC 9.4 would easily break $1K on eBay. I've spent the past 6 years assembling a set of WDCS 1-31 in CGC 8.5 or better and still only have 12 books.

Did Snyder/Geppi tell you anything about the Poughkeepsie file copies, which I guess is the only thing that might come close? Many of us are afraid that the market suddenly would get swamped with dozens of NM copies of the Duck Four Colors etc. I know one New England seller ended up with all the FC 9s, most of which were later dispersed, but I believe Geppi bought a large fraction of the other PKs?

Btw., is this the Crescent City copy? It is on display at Diamond Galleries; the picture is from the CGC gallery.

Welcome to the boards! Those pictures are unreal - wow!

I'd be very thankful for any information you might be able to share

about the Disney comics in the Crescent City collection.

hkp

> Canadian reprints

You can see some Canadian Four Color submissions in the CGC census. Listed under "Wilson Publishing" or something like that. I'm sure someone here has a complete list.

> Nice book! (why the screename change?)

tb from my eBay id (timrous_beastie). A bit more incognito since everything posted here goes on permanent record.

Here's another book I think is cool. This '39 giveaway is one of the most fragile Disney books ever - very hard to find this nice. Mickey Mouse Mag V3#3 for comparison.

Just got this back from CGC. Bought raw from Metropolis in spring of '05 as raw "VF/NM" . Census has one other 9.0, none higher.

Unfortunately, I got blown out of the pond during the floor bidding on this Taliaferro Sunday from '36 (went for $23,000 incl. fees). Still, it's one of the nicest pieces of Duck art I've seen for sale this decade so here's a permanent pic.

Does anyone know more about this variant? I have not noticed it before.

CGC 9.0.

Congrats, psi! FC 408 was the first US Disney book I ever owned (although much lower grade). Beautiful book with a great cover!

> I think the chances of this book ending up in the US are very slim.

The back cover of a book that hasn't been posted yet. File copy

before it got a CGC 9.0. One grader was leaning towards 9.2 which

I guess would have raised the value another $5,000. Got to keep this

beauty for a few days last fall. Sadly, it was not for sale . Will

see if I can get permission to post the front as well.

Here's a better look at a book from the January Heritage auction - the

last issue I needed to complete the run. Very rare in this shape.

I have a handful of issues around FN:

V1#1, V1#2, V5#5, V5#6, V5#8,

and another below VF:

V1#3, V1#5, V5#2, V5#3, V5#11 (CGC VF-).

I'd grade the remaining 50 VF or better. Any help finding the books above would be greatly appreciated. I am particularly interested in a VF/NM file copy of V1#2 that Metropolis sold a couple of years ago for $2,700 (will pay $10,000 for it).

A big congratulations on completing the Church GGA Blue Beetle run! I can't believe you were able to reunite these.

Although I completed my Mickey Mouse Magazine run recently, I'll continue to upgrade. Won the copy below on eBay last week and am waiting for it to arrive. Trying to upgrade a raw high grade copy is always hit and miss. I've bought quite a few books that turned out to be lower grade than the copy I already had.

New copy :

My current top copy:

From "Mickey and the Gang" p. 94.

> Did you see all the Mickey Mouses in the previews for Heritage's next Signature Auction?

Yes, some are very nice. Unfortunately, I already have better copies of all of them.

> Andrea's book.

Ed didn't have any info but would ask around.

> 1st Gyro

The character seems to have been invented as a fun punchline to emphasize Gladstone's luck in this story. Sadly, to my knowledge not a single panel of original art featuring either Gyro or Gladstone has survived. I think there may be a surviving (rejected) cover from the early 60s with Gyro standing behind a fireplace but I can't find any references to it. Could be wrong?

Almost 11X guide! The appetite for high grade Ducks right now seems insatiable.

Another post-war Barks Duck is currently being offered privately. Last I heard, the bids were approaching $20,000.

Anyone knows more about the book. What should we expect to see / gain from it?

Don't know Andrea personally but he was the previous owner of the "Silent Night" page that I posted last fall. He sold his collection of Barks originals in the late 90s. To my knowledge the nicest to come up for sale since Barks "sold" his artwork in the 60s and early 70s.

The president of the Carl Barks Fan Club, Ed Bergen, will be visiting me next week. I'll ask him about the book.

I can't say that I'm a fan of the non-gloss comics which is one of the biggest problems with "Christmas on Bear Mountain" among others. The flimsy March of Comics with the dull paper covers keep them from being highly collectible. Plus the promotional status as not being "real" comics.

I've always felt the same about giveaways. The difference in visual appeal between an FN and a NM MOC is not even comparable to that of glossy Four Colors or WDCS. By far the main attraction of the Barks MOCs is the interior. I used to have a VF+ish MOC 41 that I enjoyed reading and browsing through many times. Have to admit that I don't have the guts to do that with my CGC 9.2 copy, but it really is a crime to keep midgrade, readable giveaways in sealed holders.

Very nice book btw! 6-7 years ago, someone listed a bundle of 100 perfect copies of MOC 70 or 71 (Tom & Jerry) on eBay, still wrapped in brown paper. I believe it sold for $1,500. Made me wonder what would have happened to the market if this had been MOC 4s instead.

Congrats getting the 48!

As always, very impressive with the mags. Question: Do you find that the magazines are more common than the first 30 issues of WDCS? In any grade or in high grade? Neither really show up on ebay and never in high grade.

For some reason, very few high grade copies from V5 have come up in the time I've collected. The only set I've seen was a run of file copies that sold in the mid-90s. The V5#12 from that was graded VF- (later bought by Geppi) and chances are that the 9-11 above were from the same set. I'd rate WDCS 1-10 the most challenging to find, followed by MMM V1 and MMM V5#9-12.

I was able to get the V5#9-11 for just over $3,000 incl BP and consider this an absurd bargain given what other, much more common Duck books are selling for.

I'll have to work on my skills as a photographer.

Just completed my run of Mickey Mouse Magazines this past week. V5#9-12 marked the final transition from magazine to comic book. These 4 issues are some of the most interesting and challenging Disney books in my mind. Never thought I'd see them all in this shape. It took me 7 years to find nice copies of V5#10 and V5#11.

#9: CGC 8.5 file copy

#10: CGC 9.2 file copy

#11: CGC 7.5 file copy

#12: Raw, very likely best existing copy.

I need to find a way to take a picture of the whole collection. I now have all 60 issues in FN or better, 50 in VF up, and around 35 in VF/NM up (+ many duplicate high grade copies).

In 2004, a good friend of mine paid almost $10,000 for a raw Disney comic from this gentleman. The book was described as NM unrestored but was clearly overgraded. It later came back from CGC as a 4.0 with purple label. Mr. Uthe declined to do anything about it (except for an offer to trade the book for another copy in even worse condition) and stopped replying to courteous and constructive e-mails. My friend wrote off the book as a complete and very bitter loss. He sold it for a tiny fraction of the purchase price just to put the bad experience behind him.

 

Sorry, but anyone who would send that kind of money to Germany, without seeing the book first other than in scans should consider having his financial transactions supervised.

 

you'd figure that if some dude had $10K to spend on a book he'd fly out to germany to kick his bleeding arse.

I agree this was extremely naive. So does the buyer and he is much more careful now. Still, I really hate it when scam artists are preying on inexperienced collectors, no matter how wealthy they are (Wilhelm Uthe was lucky that my friend didn't think pursuing the matter was worth his time). Uthe has also offered me books in private e-mails several times after seeing my bids on eBay. I just want to chime in warning other collectors against him.

In 2004, a good friend of mine paid almost $10,000 for a raw Disney comic from this gentleman. The book was described as NM unrestored but was clearly overgraded. It later came back from CGC as a 4.0 with purple label. Mr. Uthe declined to do anything about it (except for an offer to trade the book for another copy in even worse condition) and stopped replying to courteous and constructive e-mails. My friend wrote off the book as a complete and very bitter loss. He sold it for a tiny fraction of the purchase price just to put the bad experience behind him.

I did not want to mention this before to stay out of trouble, but I'd like it to be on his record for future searches.

Keywords: Wilhelm Uthe, Germany, Disney, scam, fraud.

I recently received a great book from Gemstone and wanted to post a short review. I had mixed expectations when I ordered it but was positively surprised.

"Mickey and the Gang" is centered around the whimsical Disney pages by Hank Porter, Tom Wood and others that appeared in "Good Housekeeping" magazine in the 1930s. While it covers the complete run through 1944, it is the earlier pages that stand out and justify a book on the topic. These are more than possibly the most beautiful examples of Disney art ever.

That's what I expected when I ordered the hardcover. However, the really cool thing about it is how it systematically relates the pages to lots of other promotional material for the early Disney shorts and movies. This is one of the best illustrated books I've ever seen. The collections of sketches, toys, posters, books, comics, and magazines that it draws upon are absolutely incredible. For every GH page, the corresponding short/movie is summarized, often with illustrations from the little known (since they hardly ever surface on the market) but extremely beautiful storyboard drawings. It is fun to see how the artists went about the task of compressing an 8 minute short into just 5-6 frames and a poem. Beyond that, the book compares with the summarized stories published in Mickey Mouse Magazine, Walt Disney's Comics and Stories, and other early Disney publications. Every page also has an entry for British (and sometimes other international) references to the story.

Gemstone deserves a lot of credit for all the research that went into this book. The consistent and systematic approach makes it far deeper than most "look-at-all-the-cool-stuff-in-my-collection" books. The text has a lot of interesting trivia. For example, I would never have guessed the only known merchandise appearance of the title character for the 1935 short "Who Killed (unintentionally censored word) Robin" (sadly, he was shot about ten seconds into the short and spent the rest of it stone dead with a huge arrow sticking out of his cadaver).

On the negative side, the book wastes a good chunk of pages on remarkably unremarkable reprints of illustrated children's stories and gradually becomes less interesting as the quality of the GH pages declines.

Overall, I'd very highly recommend it to anyone interested in any aspect of Disney shorts and related promotional material from the 1930s. Having read it, I can't wait to order the old Disney shorts on DVD.

The hardcover is a little pricey at $145, but it really is a beautiful coffee table book and I think it is well worth it. It also has 10 fold-out reproductions of the original art for some of the best early stories (outstanding stuff!). There's also a much cheaper softcover without the reproductions.

Great Scrooges, tth2! Just bewildered myself into the Water Cooler for a moment - are you a Liverpool fan? First team I ever supported back in the late 70s when they were fantastic (Keegan, Souness, Dalglish, ...). Just saw the Man. United game on cable her in California.

Here's a pretty giveaway I just sold. Thought it should have been a 9.4. Still, bought raw for <$100 on eBay back in '99 so I can't complain.

Perhaps the FC 79 9.6 will show up in the May auction with its little friend FC 13 9.4?

If anyone has a pile of dusty WDCS 2s in 9.0 lying around in a corner, send me a PM. I'll match the price and save you the Heritage fees. Initially, I was actually considering going to $20K for this book, but since the cover art is not particularly attractive and since it doesn't have any key stories/art, it faded a little on me. I set my limit at $14K, but unfortunately someone else got the even Ks.

Does anyone know how "cut bid"s work at Heritage btw.? They asked me about this on the phone. Could I have gone $14,600 and raised the next increment to $15,200?

This MMM V5#9 was the only decent copy I'd seen until a CGC 8.5 appeared in yesterday's auction. I knew I'd win the latter so I had my own certified - just came back from CGC today. Bought from moondog in 2001.

This issue was the first of 4 (V5#9-12) with an experimental decal cover design that was abandoned from WDC&S 1. In my mind, these 4 last issues are all very cool Ducks that are so undervalued in the market it's not-even-funny-books (sorry). In fact, for several years V5#10 and #11 were the last two issues missing in my otherwise complete FN-up run. I finally was able to get both this month through Heritage .

Btw. my internet bids at Heritage's site were _much_ higher than what I ended up paying. Also, I tried phone bidding for the first time and it worked out very well for all the lots I signed up for (just wish I'd placed _one_ more bid on the WDC&S 2 ).

Welcome to the boards, gaute!

I remember reading the Danish editions of those great books to death when I was a kid. Wouldn't be suprised if they are rare today. My favorite was "Sheriffen i Seksloeberdalen" (FC 199), which came out in Denmark around 1977. Thanks for posting the pics!