the comic book shop spokane

Photos of another 24 Baker books that I am sending in to CGC this week - some primary and some secondary, demand wise. I am slowly working my way through the alphabet and made it through the L's - the handful of 'T' books were a quick special request. They are posted at: www.cbsspokane2.tumblr.com

Just found a few more Bakers that are heading to CGC -I posted their pics at http://www.tumblr.com/blog/cbsspokane2 I found 3 of the four Exotic Romances too but they are water damaged and wont be sent in. I will post more pics if I hit any more Bakers. Craig

No, the case is not cracked - I just checked and its some filaments from the edge of the plastic case like little hairs that came right off. The only thing now affecting the cover is now the fold on the corner.

You are in luck then! My CGC account shows that one of the shipments that they are sending now all have off white to white pages! Teen-Age Romances 9, 10, 17, 18 and 19! They are not tanned or brown yet but maybe if I hold a blow dryer on them for a bit....

I put up the Baker books I just got in on the tumblr site http://cbsspokane2.tumblr.com/ If you scroll down, you will see some of the other Bakers I have had and sold. Craig

Mine are generally a bit on the extra expensive side but you can always crack the case yourself. I just sent a book out that the new owner had me open the case and just send the interior one as he wanted to read the book - Football Thrills #2. There were only two graded copies in the census and I had both. Now there is only one still actually graded.... As for eye appeal - everyone of these books are beautiful. Even the 4.0 presents itself very well. I prefer being able to look at the interior myself but its much easier for me to have them graded and then just list them when they are of particular note like Baker, Cole or Frazetta. There are 39 magazine boxes full of books from this collection that will not be sent in and will just be shot and listed. There may be more in the future too. The family just brought me another 1,500 40's and 50's magazines which means after a dead four months of nothing new, they are back to working on the houses. Craig

I just got back another 60 Sixth Street books from CGC (another 60 on the way next week I hope) and this group had 16 Baker books in it. I am not offering them for sale here and will only sell them on Ebay where they should start going up within a week mixed with the other books that came in - user name Lexcorp1. 'w' indicates a grade of White Pages True Love Pictorial 6 5.0w, 8 5.5w, 11 6.5w, 7 8.0w, Crown Comics 7 7.0 Blue Ribbon 5 7.0 Teen-Age Temptations 2 7.5w, 5 6.0w, 3 7.0w , 4 6.0w Texan 11 8.5, 12 7.5 Teen-Age Romances 35 6.0w, 38 6.5w, 31 4.0w Teen-Age Diary Secrets 8 8.0, If you prefer I not notify this group when more Baker come back please let me know. thanks! Craig

I dont know a whole lot about the original owner. I know he was is construction and built at least one of the three houses that this collection sat in. All I have is speculation - I got bits and pieces from the family but thats about it. They were very nice but not overly forthcoming but that may be due to them just not really knowing - I dealt primarily with a granddaughter who didnt have much interest other than the money aspect. I am not sure that she really knew her grandfather very well and her mother who would have had the most information pretty much just dealt with me through her daughters. The books were stored in the basement with the coal fire furnace. There were shelves built along the walls and the books and pulps and magazines were just stacked floor to ceiling around the perimeter of the room. When the books would arrive at the shop any that were at the top of a pile were black with coal dust. Literally. We had to use a feather duster just to see the covers. I think they may have kept the comics upstairs until they got in the way and then just added them to a shelf as there were varying degrees of coal dust in the piles but the ones that ended up on the top when they moved to start another pile were the worst. If you have seen any of the pulps from this collection you can still see strings of coal dust on the uncut sides that couldnt be brushed off. They were filthy but the dust did protect them to a degree. When we swiffered it off, the colors were fantastic and many of the covers looked like the day they were made. You are right about the certificates - I did it for the original Green River Collection but was always worried that someone would just copy them but as far as I know that didnt happen.

I think so - CGC was pretty receptive when I talked to them which was probably by the end of May. If I remember right they had something like 4 initial criteria for recognizing a pedigree and I was able to hit 3 of them with no problem even by that time but I just couldnt give them a list. It was frustrating but I understand the reasoning - someone wouldnt be able to tack on additional books after the fact and claim they were part of the collection. They told me to note Sixth Street on the CGC forms when I submitted books in case anything changed in the future so they could track them but thats where it ended. I think at this point I have submitted well over 400 books (I am too scared to add it all up and times it by the submission charges...). I have 180 or so in my possession and another 130 still at CGC. There are another 36 magazine boxes full which are all bagged and boarded and still waiting for me to put them in order. Which of course means.... I still dont have a list.

Hi, CGC requires a complete list of every book in a collection prior to issuing a pedigree and I could not give them that list because of the way the collection was being sold to me. The books came to the shop in groups of 30 to 50 or so books at a time, sometimes two times a day, 7 days a week (my wife loved me having to run in on my days off) in boxes or Walmart bags or just carried in by one of the family members starting in May and not ending until the beginning of November. Sometimes it would be comics, sometimes pulps or paperbacks or movie magazines from the 20's and 30's. My intention was to wait until I got all the comics and try the pedigree route but I was paying out so much money every day and the family refused to let me make an offer on the entire estate as they decided that they were making more money parceling it out to me that I was put in a position of having to sell some of the books to get more money to funnel back to the family to buy more of the books which killed the idea of a pedigree. Quite a run on sentence huh? I was also in a position of paying a lot more than I normally would have for a collection because I really didnt want them to take the books anywhere else. I couldnt say much about the collection either as it was still coming in and I was worried about someone coming into the area to try and track it down. Sound paranoid? When I did make a couple of minor announcements some of the people who contacted me within 24 hours gave me the royal creeps and I wouldnt have put it past them to get on a plane if they sniffed any opportunity to ferret out the books. There were about 100 books that went to another dealer early on and those were resold very quickly out of the area. I told them to hold on to them and I would try for the pedigree but they just flipped them the next day. The family was very nice and they wanted to do the deal their way and thats the way they did it which was their prerogative. I wish it had played out a bit differently and quicker but in the end I got some amazing books but no official pedigree. Craig

Hi Michael - I found 46 of those Dime Mystery and Dime Detectives you were asking about. I am pretty sure there are a quite a few more in the mix too. Some really nice covers mixed in with the more mundane ones.

I thought you might like to know.... The Comic Book Shop in Spokane Wa has acquired an incredibly cool collection which contains a substantial amount of Pulps. Included are over 70% of the entire runs of Spicy Detective, Adventures, Mystery and Western plus numerous other titles we are still indexing like Super Detective, Secret Agent X and Black Mask. I will be releasing them slowly into the wild through Ebay and you can view the current list under our Lexcorp1 seller name. Please no calls for particular issues, my poor employees wont know what the heck you are talking about. If you have any questions please e-mail me at cbsspokane@gmail.com. The overall condition is beautiful. Many covers have no tears or creases of any kind and the colors are spectacular. Interiors range from bright to tanned or dark edges due to where they were stored.