Surfing Alien

The Heinlein "Past Through Tomorrow" I recently posted, at 830 pages, is mine. I'd buy a copy of the Shirer book if I found a condition rarity but it's not a genre I collect or a painted cover so it would be have to be relatively cheap and nice as a conversation piece.

Sorted out pretty much all of my drug books this weekend. I know I need "Hooked" by Will Oursler but have most of the other well known American ones otherwise. "Reefer Boy" is British, which is a whole 'nuther can of worms.

Most of these look pretty nice to me. I don't think your memory is as bad as you think

Top 5 to me, along with, what I consider to be it's companion and superior, probably #1 in my Maguire list... "The Last Days of Sodom and Gomorrah" Signet paid better and I have no doubt Maguire wanted to impress the art director at this point in time. What a masterpiece of pb art it is...

It sang to you then and sings to us now. Some books you just know are great the first time you see 'em

This is a book that I have, what I call "Fallen behind on the chase" - meaning I've wanted a very high grade copy for a long time, but I kept not wanting to pay the freight on a very high grade copy, hoping for a bargain to land in my lap. Because I used to see nice copies for $50-100 four or five years ago, but never pulled the trigger, looking for a bargain, but it never happened, and now, any copy is $100 and really nice ones not coming to market So I'm chasing it but keep falling further behind or "Falling behind on the chase" for not ponying up when the opportunity arose as it keeps getting harder/more expensive to find. I get two lessons out of this - trust my instincts, if I love the book for many reasons, so will other collectors, second lesson, pony up if you can when you see a nice one it may keep getting further away from you

Moved our daughter off campus for the fall semester at U.F. this weekend Was tough to say good bye but I came back to this nice piece of unsung Hillman GGA in the mailbox. Fits roughly into my "Girl" set as well Real Detective, February 1947. Also this slight upgrade to the magnificent Maguire cover to Jim Thompson's 1st Edition PBO of "Wild Town", Signet 1461 from 1957. Signet mostly published reprints so this one has just about everything going for it and has really disappeared from the market.

Nice set I may have one of them but not the cover story. I really need to try to get that one as one of my "achievable goals" for collecting pulps when I got in was to get all the Conan Weird Tales cover stories. I have most of them, but not "Red Nails" - it's a beauty!

Been concentrating on upgrading and/or acquiring higher end vintage paperbacks but I threw a thrill bid on this and won it for $31. One of the few Frazetta's I don't have any copy of at all and decent enough to display but still readable.

Over the moon on this very high grade copy of the November 1934 Weird Tales with the conclusion of "The People of the Black Circle" that arrived today. I have a nice copy of the September opener but still would like to hunt down the October middle issue.

Scrape? What scrape If you're talking about that area at the middle spine with white coloring, I'd think that's either minor color rubbing or color skip from the press. Minor either way and nice book regardless

Just got in this hallucinogenic Clark Ashton Smith story in the April 1933 Wonder Stories. Cover and interior Illo by Frank R. Paul I haven't picked up many pulps since the boom but I've picked off a few of the CAS appearances in Wonder Stories since they still are occasionally overlooked by sellers who have otherwise booted prices way up.

Speaking of Kayo, I managed a slight upgrade to this killer Maguire cover from their website last week. It's not a common one in any grade and this is the best I've managed to find so far.

These are not 1st prints but are cool anyhoo. Glory Road is an early, but not 1st Avon, with the second cover, which is more interesting than the first one. It is credited inside to Paul Lehr, who did the first cover, but obviously a mistake as this one is clearly not his (it is uncredited to my knowledge) Citizen of the Galaxy & Space Cadet are 1st pb editions from Ace but are both 2nd prints. I still grabbed them for the condition was killers!

A couple more Heinlein's in. Berkley 1st print pb of The Past Through Tomorrow. 830 page book with a spine and edges like that? Good luck 1st print pb of Farmer in the Sky is a Dell. Most of his "Juvies" 1st pbs are Ace books, Berkley 1st print of I Will Fear No Evil is not quite as high grade as those two but it's a tough black cover book that is also very thick so tough to find nice at all.

Those are cool as hell. I don't really collect comics anymore but my older brothers had lots of Quality titles in their collection and I always loved the art in Police, Plastic Man, Blackhawk etc.. These are such a cool mish mash, and I guess, expected for a foreign market to sell already paid for material ?

Had an exhausting day driving up to Gainesville to move our Gator out of her summer dorm and into storage for a couple weeks until she moves into an off-campus apartment for fall semester Tough watching 'em grow up Small consolation was finding this nice Heinlein 1st PB in the mail when we got back. Making moves on the Heinlein pb's Pyramid G642, 1961. "6 x H" is basically The Unpleasant Profession of Jonathan Hoag excerpted to paperback. The Robert Engle cover art is pretty unique and the color scheme is awesome.

It's actually a "middie" - halfway between the short ones and the tall ones like Singing Widow and Murder With Long Hair. A Blonde For Murder and Looks That Kill are mid size as well. My bottom shelf there has the three sizes in a row - Looks That Kill (Mid-size), Final Appearance (Short), Death Goes To A Party (Tall)

Some Friday fun. @Pat Calhoun is always subtly reminding me with his posts that I need to keep plugging away at those 1940's Atlas Digests. Here's three for today, including two with the elusive Atlas logo on the front cover. There's not too many with it on the front to make them really resemble the comic books. The Atlas books really pack a punch when displayed together - super colorful and Golden-age looking

I'm in with this copy for now. It's not as nice as nice as The-Collector's, or my old copy but a pretty nice upper mid-grade that I'm happy with for now. I'd love to grab a high grade some day if the situation is right but there's many other books I need before upgrading this one. Junkie is always available, it's just a matter of how much moolah you are willing to part with.

THAT is a proud copy! Bravo

Fresh out of the box today, some more concentrating on some spaces I've neglected... I finally found a nice copy of the 1st PB of "The Queen's Gambit" by Walter Tevis. It's not usual for me to gush about finding a 1980's book but this one is really tough to find at all, let alone in decent condition. I'm sure that was abetted by the success of the Netflix mini-series and the surge of interest in all things Tevis. It's a victim of the Giant Font craze that killed paperback illustration but I'll pass on that criticism because the chess graphic scheme is pretty cool and the book itself is so good. That rounds out the "big four" of his six novels imo. I thought "Mockingbird" was tough to find, and it is, but Gambit was much tougher to find than the others.

Congrats That's amazing

Great stuff. I have a fair stack of his pulps and digests, just glad I grabbed a decent copy of his 1st appearance while it was still doable. I believe this is also Virgil Finlay's only cover for Astounding.

Here's a few more, mostly the early Signets, which were my favorites.