Surfing Alien

Just in. Murder Will In by Carolyn Wells. Atlas Mystery (NN) Cover art by Peter Driben I would love to collect the Atlas Digests in VF condition but have been stifled by their seeming lack of existence in the sale market

I just can't do 900 page sci-fantasies any more. It would have to be so electrifying to keep my attention and it's tough to feel that when you're a little older and had your fill of Tolkien, Dune and other long epics when you were in High School. Reading Woolrich and the whole school of Gold Medal type sub-200 page PBO writers can also galvanize you to the urgency of a well plotted read you can do in a day or two.

Yeah, I'm a zombie now, at least for the big 3 Warren titles

I had a long streak of good luck but the past year has been pretty bad - sometimes on the PO's part, sometime on the seller. Mag's have been mostly the PO, since mag owners seem to mostly be comic/collectibles people who know condition matters. Paperback sellers are all over the map - even people who advertised that they were picky collectors have sent stuff loose in manila envelopes, loose and bouncing around in boxes, taped between boards in a bag, but not having the paperback in a bag itself so the tape got on the book etc etc. - those vintage paperback collectors must just be stoopid

Couple more early Warrens I needed. The writing on Eerie 3 is fairly unobtrusive and I'll live it for now since it was part of a lot and the others were way nicer than the price. It's so smooth and flat otherwise, I may just call it a PayCopy 9.0

Happy to add a stack to the Vampi pile but seriously bummed that the PO managed to drop this double boxed package so hard on one corner that it dinged the corners of several books. I can't really blame the seller, he double boxed them. Just po'd because they were great deals at the grade they used to be in Fortunately the 112 escaped damage

"the beast needs to be fed " This will be the new secret saying of the boards Killer copy of that Pinnacle ERB Pat! When you've been collecting American editions for 40+ years there's still some sense of discovery in these UK editions and that's a sweet one

Yeah, they don't like the "D" word around here lol. So we call him PKD. Prices are all over the place for him (and vintage paperbacks in general) Booksellers price truly Fine/Very Fine copies of his first edition paperbacks at $30 and up - The Man in the High Castle 1st PB is tough to find in high grade and I've seen them go for $100+ at auction. But you can get lucky from an inexperienced seller (or get them in a lot) on ebay for a couple of bucks - *if* you get lucky. The Ace's are fairly common so you see quite a few of them, although, like all vintage pb's, they are pretty scare in unread, uncreased condition.

A couple more nice ones in today The Big Caper by Lionel White, Gold Medal 470. First Edition, First Print with cover art by Barye Phillips. His second Gold Medal novel. With this pickup I'm nearly complete on the early Lionel White pb's. This one has been really tough to find in any kind of decent condition so I had to pony up for this one among some pretty good competition... I keep picking up nice UK editions lately... partly because I have so many of my USA wants/needs and the beast needs to be fed Live and Let Die by Ian Fleming, First Print of the First Pan paperback. Very nice cover art by Rex Archer, which was what drew me in, and the condition and color strike were excellent.

Speaking of Ace's, I just got back from a few days off taking our daughter back to UF and there was a nice box waiting at the door Included were a whole bunch of Ace books that I got very reasonably. The condition was mixed but there were a bunch that I needed, including D-7, the last of the "Big" early doubles from the 1st series that I needed, the scarce "Vice, Inc." and three PKD firsts

I posted the first paperback edition, Ace A-8, earlier with the Jack Gaughan cover - this one appears to be the second Ace edition. ISFDB says this cool cover is by Walter Velez who I don't know much about although he did a ton of covers starting in 1979. I recognize a few from the list on ISFDB.

Some cheap fun recently picked up. Mostly the only kind I can afford...

"Still there are quite a few true classics and some pretty costly - Willeford books for example." Thanks Pat.. perfect timing A rare book and part of the fun of collecting Beacons!

They're kind of all over the place - depending on condition and the issues. The early ones have always been considered "classic" but almost all of them have covers re-cycled from Uni-Books and other digests - some classic - some are kind of "meh" for me. Still there are quite a few true classics and some pretty costly - Willeford books for example. The later ones are very interesting - similar to the Monarchs - many of the late Beacon's have covers by the great good girl artists like Maguire, Johnson, Stanley, Chiriaka, DeSoto etc. but almost none are signed and they have to be known and attributed for anyone to know who they are. We identified 12 by Johnson on our recently published checklist for example. I'm a buyer all day long at $10-15 for high grade copies on the late ones with great art. The one you showed looks like it is possibly DeSoto by the woman's face - but I'd have to have a much better scan and get some other opinions. Here's a copy of one of my favorites by Ray Johnson

Opportunities are few and far between for me but I grab them when I can.

Filling in some holes in my Savage Sword run

Nice "Girl". Here's a few more I just picked up for my "Girl" collection. It seems like a lot of high grade Beacon's have surfaced lately and I've been scooping up what I can but there's a few tough bidders out there.

Those are quite sharp sir!

True, and it's true these would be a lot more $ if not for those finds, because Heade is so incredible an artist that any collector in his/her right mind wants them so demand is there. But those finds were 40 years ago now and most of them are scattered to the wind from what I can see. I had many of them in my "first" collection, but putting together runs these days is pretty tough and getting pricey again (I've been slowly trying) It seems like mostly the same ones show up in decent shape, and there are still many that you never see (or saw) because they must not have been in those finds.

Here's my 2 cents - I also used the Warren Index to grab the titles when I took my notes - makes life easy.... The Smell of this issue was awesome - it took me back 50 years to the bookshops of my youth 4. cover: Gray Morrow (July 1966) Excellent composition & upward motion - darkly colored and quite “eerie” 1) Eerie’s Monster Gallery No. 3: Zombies! [Archie Goodwin/Roy G. Krenkel] 1p [frontis] Nice illustration – I like the whited out eyes (kind of like what Frazetta did with that Creepy #9 cover) 2) House Of Evil [Archie Goodwin/Jerry Grandenetti & Joe Orlando] 8p [art credited solely to Orlando] Cool splash – nice turn at the end – when I was a teenager I couldn't figure how these would go ahead of time but when you've read so many over your lifetime, you just have to enjoy how they unfold 3) Hatchet Man [Archie Goodwin/Gene Colan] 8p Very nice art by Colan – again predictable but fun 4) Gnawing Fear! [Ron Parker/Rocco Mastroserio] 7p Rocco is underrated, the drawing in this story is great - there's always a Rat story in these mags no? 5) Shrieking Man! [Archie Goodwin/Steve Ditko] 7p Really well written to me – and Ditko's art is different from his usual but fits the story 6) Undying Love! [Archie Goodwin/Donald Norman] 6p I didn't know Norman was Nodel, the art was pretty good, 7) Island At World’s End! [Archie Goodwin/Gray Morrow] 10p My favorite in this issue – I really like the atmosphere the artwork brings to the story

*THIS* !!! I don't have my copy of Creepy #9 yet so not commenting on this issue, but I have Eerie #4 and almost all of the issues coming up in the next couple of months so I feel like I can chime in here. Half the fun for me is leafing through the actual issue and allowing that aroma of old acidic paper to waft through the senses. E-reading is just not a book experience for me. Call me old fashioned

Probably one of my favorite Falcon Digests... Cover art by George Gross.

Signed by George Gross - tucked away on the toe-kick molding between the back chair legs

A Vampi 1 9.2 and 9.6 coming up on C-Link - I guess we'll see where the wind is a blowin' ! I sure wish I bought a higher grade copy right off the bat when I started flirting with Vampi's again!

Thanks! I started reading Eerie #4 last night so I'll try to make a few notes... maybe even re-read Creepy #9 if I can get to that box!