rjpb

2/3rds of 10% down on the median SoCal home will apparently buy you a CGC 9.9 Transformers #1 these days.

To put that in perspective that would be $10K for a 35 year old comic. Of course it was then and now recognized as the supreme key for collectors, even if you didn't care about Superman personally, and there were/are only a relatively small number of copies extant. Contrast that with values on TMNT #1, which is 37 years old, and for which probably about half the meager 3000 issue print run is still in existence, not a lot for a copper age book, but still multiples more than Action #1. For $10K you can get a copy that is in better shape than most Action #1s, but will still be considered a lesser grade compared to most other copies of the book. When you look at it that way, $1800 was not just a steal for the long term, but should have been seen as one then.

1974 was towards the end of my initial collecting phase, but I remember the excitement over the FFEs well. I remember wishing Marvel would do the same with their Timely keys. The murky B/W reprints in the Flashback series didn't cut it.

5.5 was my thought as well.

There have been situations in life where I've tried really hard to be invisible.

You are going crazy.

Man Comics was a genre shifting title of general interest to Atlas collectors. I wouldn't say any of the issues are rare, but like most books from the era, they aren't common in nice shape either. Lack of census copies is pretty meaningless for titles like this, as until recently anything short of high grade wasn't considered worth slabbing by most collectors/sellers. Atlas books are steady sellers, even the more esoteric titles, and as with a lot of GA books have seen interest and prices rise somewhat recently. Your copy looks in pretty nice condition, and I would suspect could fetch between $75- $150 on ebay, depending on what the grade is, and how much auction interest it could generate if sold that route, possibly more with a couple aggressive bidders.

My advice. Don't buy the coverless. Unless it's too good a deal to pass up, you will eventually be dissatisfied with the purchase. Figure out if you would be okay with a post-war Cap as your one Cap. Some of them are still pretty cool, but the world war 2 era books are the essence of the title. However if you want to limit yourself to only spending around $300, you might have start with a lower grade post-war Cap. Don't get hung up on blue labels when looking for a bargain copy, a bit of color touch, tear seals or even a slight trim shouldn't bother you more than a completely taped up spine or a big chunk missing out of the back cover.

Probably, it's a removable insert as I recall.

It has a cover, but a paper one, which as we know is not unusual for giveaways. Squa Tront #7 (1977) has a facsimile reprint inserted. I don't know if the dimensions are exactly the same.

As with any genre, results are uneven. The long established classic covers keep going up, but a lot of the newer "classics", books that went from $100 to $1000 in VG a couple years ago, seem to have stalled out, and maybe even dipped slightly as more copies surface for sale. The run of the mill stuff from popular publishers like Ajax, Merit and Superior still sell, but aren't really "on fire" the way they were a year or so ago. ECs seem to be doing well, as are Gilmore titles, but the less exciting stuff, like Ace books without a classic cover, have less heat than the genre in general. As a side note, one thing really on fire right now are 1930s and 40s pinup mags with painted covers in VG+ or better, especially with Bolles, Quintana and Driben covers, frequently selling for 3 to 5 times what they would have a year or so ago.

GA keys and classic covers have seen major price increases in the last few years already. Even just cool covers that may not be considered "classic", especially if the comic is uncommon, have seen big jumps. Many Timely's, especially Caps, have seen a 50-100% jump in value in just the last year or so. There is no doubt stuff out there that will see further increases, and some stuff that was "hot" a couple years ago, but has cooled a bit (like Timely/Atlas GGA humor books), may be ready for revived interest, but GA has by no means stalled in value as Silver and Bronze have taken off.

I don't doubt the hype surrounding Marvel movie and television properties will fade at some point. Superhero movies may be around for the foreseeable future, but no genre dominates forever. Books that suddenly become "keys" due to such hype are going to be a risky investment, we've already seen books drop sharply after big run-ups, but A-list Marvel characters have already shown decades of longevity in the public consciousness, and I don't see them fading as thoroughly as some Golden Age faves did, or the Pulp characters that preceded them. SA DC does have it's cycles, where suddenly the bigger keys get "hot" again, but it doesn't seem to sustain the way interest does in the top-tier Marvel keys. Sometimes it's just the fact that they are relatively cheap that drives interest. When I was in my early teens in the early 70s, I was far more a Marvel fan than DC fan, but I remember buying books like SC #22 and #34, and B&B #34 precisely because they seemed so cheap for SA first appearances with 10¢ cover prices (which added to their appeal),

Winnipeg, the world of 1,000 Jimmy Olsen 105s

I don't see DC SA keys ever being as popular as their Marvel counterparts. 1) The Marvel cinematic universe has elevated awareness of even 2nd tier Marvel characters above may DC characters from the same era. More people know who Hawkeye is than Hawkman. This could conceivably change, but I'm doubtful. 2) Thanks to the limits on monthly titles until 1968, and Stan Lee being sole editor of the line, Marvel created a sense of an interconnected continuity among its titles that DC wasn't able to replicate. This was also aided by Marvel essentially starting from scratch in 1961 when building its SA continuity, despite later incorporating its GA and Atlas era history into its books. Despite Showcase #4 being seen as the start of the Silver Age, DCs transition into a new era is always muddied by the long standing titles and characters that never ceased publication. Jack Kirby also helped create a visual uniformity to the early Marvel era that DC lacked. 3) Related to the previous point, SA Marvel has long held a stronger position in comic fandom, even though it took most of the 1960s for them to catch up to DC in sales. Comic fandom may have started the 1960s geeking out over their All-Star collections, but without Marvel, its hard to imagine it blowing up the way it did. Marvel comics are a part of the broader 1960s cultural landscape in ways DC is not, with the exception of the Batman television show, which always seemed a bit apart from the comics. You can feel Stan Lee's contributions is overrated, but you can't deny his status as a pop-culture icon that no DC writer or editor even comes close to matching.

It's a True Crime magazine, so they aren't fiction stories, though the writers were sometimes known to take liberties with the details. Nice cover, and exceptional condition! This title is known for it's great GGA covers, many by artist George Gross, who frequently but not always signed his work. I don't know his style well enough to say if this cover was by him.

Marvel SA keys have seen about a 10 fold increase in value in commonly available grades over the last decade, in no small part due to the success of the Marvel cinematic universe, and also following a decade of only modest increases that may have made them seem undervalued ten years ago. For some of the lesser keys the exponential increase has been even more dramatic, and the introduction of any supporting character or villain with longevity warrants a premium, no matter how minor. And with the more popular titles like Spidey and X-men, it seems values have increased 50-100% on just about every issue with a 12 cent cover price in just the last three months. None of this stuff is remotely scarce in low to mid grade, but the market is a seller's market to a degree I don't recall. The blue chip keys may never be a bad investment, but it feels like the wrong time to start collecting SA Marvels. Of course, none of this seems as crazy as what were $10 copies of Eternals #1 a decade ago, selling for a grand these days.

Leave the continuity bound integrated universe to Marvel, which revolutionized the concept of a shared superhero universe with evolving continuity in the 1960s, and successfully repeated it again with their cinematic universe 50 years later. DC's most imaginative series came about starting in the late 80s, when they allowed writers to ignore canon and continuity, and reinvent characters as they saw fit, culminating in the Elseworlds and Vertigo lines. WB may not be able to repeat the success of the Marvel cinematic universe, but they might be able to make more interesting movies if they don't box themselves in creatively by trying to integrate everything.

They hired a director to come in and reshoot half the movie with major rewrites several months after principle photography was finished, and Snyder had completed a rough cut. I haven't seen either version, and am lukewarm on Snyder's vision for the cinematic DCU, but apparently WB had belated misgivings over the "dark and gritty" filmic style that worked for the Batman franchise, but was not getting them the same sort of response on their other films, the more popcorn action movie vibe of the MCU was generating, and tried to graft that style onto the existing project, pushing Snyder aside, who was no doubt to busy grieving over his loss to argue at the time. If the studio had had faith in Snyder's vision, he and they would have found someone to finish post with radically changing the film. Don't kid yourself, he was "taken off" the movie, even if the PR at the time indicated a more amicable agreement.

Take it back, and eat the shipping, and reslab expenses if it is worth it to you to do it again. Unless you shipped priority (which automatically insures for $50), or paid for insurance, you won't get satisfaction from the post office, and even then, it may be difficult if you can't show the packaging was damaged on delivery. If you sell things via the mail, you are going to have to eat some losses now and then, either through scams, goods lost or damaged in shipping, stolen from mailboxes/porches, or just shelling out postage for a returned item. Even if you were somehow insured against every loss, you'd still have the expense of insurance to amortize against any eventual loss.

I totally agree, a big reason today's collectors seek out rather tame stuff, both measured against other mediums of the day, and comics from more recent decades, but that seem all the more salacious as much of the audience for this stuff were impressionable kids. There is also the appeal of pin-up style art in general, which ironically has only grown, even as far more explicit stuff is available. There is always something sexy about the "tease" that is missing when everything gets shown.

One I don't have. I should have hunted one down years ago, but tended to buy the Fox crime on a whim when it made itself available, without much of a want list. I've seen some nutso prices on this book. Sure, a red dress babe showing some leg and cleavage while being trussed up is worth a few extra bucks, but that sort of thing can be found on pulp covers for under $100 every day. Murder Incorporated is one of the better Fox crime titles for covers, and for the title itself.

My latest crime pickup. Nicer than most of my Fox crime which is generally raw 2.0 to 4.0.

Many of the illustrations show up in Secret Identity: The Fetish Art of Superman's Co-Creator Joe Shuster As I recall, it doesn't reprint any the text from Night of Horror. https://books.google.com/books/about/Secret_Identity.html?id=3KgmOgAACAAJ The material is in public domain, and it looks as if at least one issue has been reprinted in a print edition. https://www.amazon.com/Nights-Horror-Gar-King/dp/129109864X/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=Nights+of+Horror+gar+king&qid=1616307108&s=books&sr=1-1

Take 10% off prices on remaining books. Special bunkhouse bundle deal, take both the Leading Western and the Fighting Western for $130 shipped (in U.S.)