CentaurMan

That Detective Eye #2 is a tough book, much tougher than DE #1. That's only the 2nd copy I've seen. Great job!!

Ok, so here's a book from 1937 I picked up recently, on a lark, and I don't know anything about it. It's in the Gerber guide (scarcity 7) but it's not in Overstreet (at least, I can't find it). The interior is a series of photographs with accompanying text describing various mysteries, and you the reader are supposed to solve them (with the text solutions in the back). It's a tiny bit larger than a normal comic, and the cover paper is sort of a cardboard stock, with no gloss. The back cover shows an ad for Ace Comics #2, which furthers the comic connection (along with the Gerber listing). How common is this? Does anyone else have a copy?

I'm not ignoring your scarcity questions, I just haven't indexed all the books yet, including Funny Picture Stories. I will say, however, that I think FPS is an easier run to complete than Funny Pages, and I don't think it's that close. I've got 20 of the 21 issues of FPS, while I only have 31 of the 37 issues of Funny Pages. Also, some of the Funny Pages I've been picked were extremely tough to find, while none of the FPS have yet struck me as requiring ridiculous efforts to acquire (although I may have just gotten lucky). The toughest long Centaur runs in my mind, however, are the nondescript Star Comics and Star Ranger Comics. I only have 19 of the 35 combined issues, and I look for these things everywhere with no success. The toughest short Centaur runs are Keen Komics, Comic Pages, Cowboy Comics, Little Giant Comics, and Little Giant Detective Funnies. All killers.

Actually, that's part of the fun of collecting Centaurs. Market value of that book, loosely defined, is such that I'm guessing the BIN may not get popped. If you're patient you can pick up quite a few of these books for under $200 in VG condition. This one is one of the more common KDF's (although it's certainly scarce overall, scoring a 17 on my scale), but the cover is excellent in a quirky way, and I don't think someone would go wrong picking up the book for this price. If this book were on the cover of Gerber instead of the #20, I bet those two would sell for much closer to the same price.

Great book, and a very sharp copy! Definitely worthy of the "grail" designation. Congrats!

I don't know, but I agree it's sure got a unique look. I'm hoping Ryan or someone else experienced in art will be able to give some insight into it.

Here's a real obscure Centaur, one that was on my list of "If I never finish the complete run, it might be because of this book" super-tough Centaurs. Big-time thanks to Stephen Fishler for locating this one for me. I really like how the artwork goes all the way up to the top edge of the book, through the logo. All the other books in this run (which is continued from Funny Picture Stories, as it says on the cover) have opaque logos that obscure the artwork.

Wow, without any new posts in like a whole day, the "Timely cigar" thead suddenly got like 350 page views in a couple of hours, just enough to creep ahead of this one. If I didn't know better I'd think someone really wants it to be the "most viewed" thread. Fun to watch...

Great cover. I like Schomburg's work best when the cover isn't overly cluttered or full of his standard bright red scheme. This one's very appealing.

Beautiful!!! And, another "int" book!

Ha ha, you guys are so funny. Do we have a "flipping off" graemlin?

but a little too close to home as well. It's unnerving how easily those things can be replicated.

I agree. I just don't get the ashcan excitement, nothing against Moondog.

Wow, that's pretty amazing that a cover so prominently featuring atomic bomb research would in fact have no atomic bomb related stories inside. I bet the Real Life Comics message board was furious about this. As for cracking slabs, while I've freed 50+ books, in reality I've personally done it zero times. My buddies october and PedigreeMan (both of whom live very close by) come over for slab-cracking parties. I supply the beer and a constant stream of "Be careful! For the love of God, that's a Church book! Be careful!" comments, while they say "Oops!" every so often just to make me jump. Good times.

Whiz #18 is one of my favorite covers of all time. Nicely done!

Ugh. So I was looking through the Heritage archives at some New Adventures, trying to see if the #19 on eBay now had been sold previously, when I came across these two: Church copy sold in 2002 for $6037, graded 9.2: Church copy sold in 2004 for $12,650, graded 9.6: What's odd is that the penciled Church code on the original book is actually more faded than the one on the second book, which appears to have been traced over with a different pencil. It's more obvious on the super-large scans from the auction pages (here and here). I'm guessing it was cleaned and the code was re-drawn on afterwards.

And it's that one copy that took Millie #2's Windex from 24 to 22. Super tough in any case, as you already know.

Unfortunately, only the first two issues are valuable enough to run the numbers on. Once books drop in price such that a VG copy sells for under $100, the fundamental principles on which the spreadsheet is built fall apart. It's uneconomic to get lower grade copies slabbed, or to consign them to Heritage, or for Metro to list them on their site (vs. keep them hidden in the scores of boxes of unlisted inventory they've got stored away). For all intents and purposes these low value copies will appear non-existent across the board, but I have no confidence whether they really are or not. Sorry about that.

It's funny how many of the actual copies pictured in Gerber we've posted in this thread. The AMF #23 is yet another.

Millie the Model #2 is a 22. That's a very tough book. Much tougher than #1, which rates a 13 (somewhat challenging, but not too hard if you're patient).

VERY cool. Thanks for doing the legwork required to get this project done. I'll definitely be buying it.

That's a critical Centaur, v2#10, with the first appearance of The Arrow hidden in those pages. I liken it to Feature Comics #27, first Doll Man, which also has a nondescript funny cover, also has very few sales data points, and also sells for many multiples of guide when it comes available. Here's my Funny Pages "Windex" ranking for scarcity (higher is tougher): v2#8:....16 v2#9:....18 v2#10:..25 v2#11:..16 CM; Now, that's a really interesting number on the Vol 2 #10. Being such a key issue and in high demand, you would normally expect this book to have a lower relative scarcity number in comparison to the surrounding issues as it should be showing up in the marketplace more often. To me, this could mean the following: 1) This issue IS truly scarcer than its surrounding issues; or 2) This issue is NOT any scarcer than its surrounding issues, but is being retained by collectors in their collections due to its high desireability; or 3) This issue is NOT any scarcer than its surrounding issues, but is being retained by collectors in their collections due to its perceived low price in the marketplace; or 4) Any combination of the first three factors. Anybody else have any thoughts on this book? Excellent analysis. I expect the answer is #2. Here's why it got a much higher score: The issues preceding v2#10 are some of the cheapest issues in the whole run. The entire stretch from v2#1 to v2#9 are very inexpensive compared to the books from volume 1 and the books after The Arrow was introduced. I wouldn't expect them to be slabbed, sold on Heritage, or listed on Metro/CLink with any frequency, as quite frankly you'd need at least a 4.0 to make it marginally worthwhile. v2#10, however, is a very expensive book, the priciest of the entire Funny Pages run. This is a book worth slabbing, and it's a book worth transacting. As such, my spreadsheet has a built-in expectation of greater exposure for it than for the preceding issues. Despite this, it appears with very similar frequency to the prior issues. I don't think collectors are unaware of its value, so I tend to dismiss your reason #3, but I do think reason #2 makes a lot of sense. The fact that it's not any more visable that the preceding issues despite being worth 700% more means that it's a tougher book. Now, for some reason v2#11 really does appear more often. That's also a pretty expensive book relative to v2#8 & 9, and in this case the marketplace behaves normally, putting it up for sale with decent regularity. As for "Windex", Donut, I'll admit that I got tired of typing "the CentaurMan scarcity index ranking" and your name seemed far simpler than inventing some new acronym that I'd have to write out every time I typed it anyway. Thanks!

Not just Detectives. All comics emanate from you. You got that right. Have you ever seen what's in that 3rd floor office above Metro's showroom? It's Stephen, the Gerber guides, a color scanner/printer, and reams of old blank paper (cream to off-white). That's why he solicits want lists, in order to figure out what to print next. Cunning. Very cunning...

At this point, I think there are like 2 or 3 copies of each of Detective #29, #31, #33, and #35 that you guys are just trading back and forth amongst each other, posting proudly each time a new package arrives, sharing kudos, then trading onwards for another 'Tec. Cunning. Very cunning.....

If there was ever a post that called for the icon, it's that one.