Surfing Alien

Mail call. Been keeping a lookout for this Charles Williams Maguire cover since Randall Dowling posted his. It's a filler for now but the price was right and picked up a filler of another nice Maguire cover with it 👍

Mail call... @Randall Dowling got me looking all over for unsung Maguires again I don't think I had seen this tailight cover before. He was definitely the master of the full length pose.

I haven't pressed a paperback or digest but I'm sure it could probably be done to non color breaking creases like with comic books. Not sure the heavily glued spines could take the heat of pressing without melting though. 99.9% of paperbacks probably not worth it monetarily anyway. I have tried to lightly clean a few covers with the standard dry eraser method - the wonder bread treatment would probably work as well. As always with dry erasers, you have to go very lightly or you'll take the sheen off, then the color under it. It really only can work for light, superficial dirt. For the most part, it's not worth it.

Not bad taste

Here's another JD related title you never see a crisp copy of...

All 3 criteria are actually within your own current knowledge. You know what your financial reach is, You know how to check if there are a lot of copies on the web. It really comes down to what you consider iconic or just fall in love with. There are so many iconic covers, way beyond the most cited ones. I still come across covers that i've never seen before that speak to me and I have to have them. I post a lot of finds here so you have a sense of what I look for (a little bit of everything it turns out ) Pat's method is great because if you love an author or a story, you never regret a purchase. I'm always looking to upgrade my Heinlein's, even though they are relatively inexpensive, they're still tough to find really crisp. Lion & Graphic are both cool titles with lots of keep-worthy covers. The Graphics are much cheaper in general but there's still plenty that are very hard to find in top shape. Lion's run all the way to near the top of the hobby price point with the Thompson books in there but there are many lesser titles that are worthy of love. If you're picky about condition, that narrows the field down because you can find a beat up copy of most paperbacks but finding a crisp one might be a real challenge. Things i'm paying up for, for my personal collection, is mostly digests. I'm on record plenty on this page that I think they're the best bet as far as scarcity in top condition + I like the larger format art. But move along, there's nothing to see here (seriously people...please don't start collecting digests!) Crisp copies of Falcon Digests, for instance are tough as nails and I'd love to get them all eventually, but they might not be your cup of tea.

I think you're being a little humble here - it sure seems like you know what's good

Robert Gibson Jones. He did many of the Fantastic Adventure covers in this time.

Just unboxed this 212 page fattie with a classic cover. If this was a comic book I probably couldn't afford it.

Great stuff! You get a flavor from these and other 30's pulps, especially the aviation ones, of life where world war was on the horizon, even though it was not yet on our shores. I remember my father telling me about life in that decade and the sense of foreboding in the air.

Maguire time again ... These show how broadly Maguire could achieve excellence

Welcome to ComicCondom

I use a folded Mylar sleeve, you can hold the spine in your hand and flip through easily without your sweaty little palm laying a glove on that cover, or lay it on a surface to read - same concept as a book jacket.

In today: My appreciation for the later Avons has grown since the old days. Avon from the 400's on got much grittier

Score The stuff of nightmares & looks better than clean to me, especially with that all-black cover.

Mail call.... Which would you prefer? Sex? or some Heade?

Safe to say, that is a safe-worthy collection

I just started again a few minutes ago and I'm filling buckets up already I'm reminded quickly that they do take up more space than comics or paperbacks

I know "about" a lot of titles because of the listings in the old catalogs (Hancer, Warren etc.) but the catalogs had few pictures so it's different seeing a good scan or holding one in your hand. I see books I hadn't seen before all the time and there are some amazing ones (that Dell Maguire you showed for example). Berkley's are fertile ground. I never had a lot of them, probably because I didn't consider them really as vintage in the 80's when I first collected but they seem very much so now and there are a ton of great covers, including reprints that have much better covers than the original paperback editions (Like those 2 Clarke's you just showed. The first Avon paperbacks of those two seem quaint compared to the Berkley editions)

I'm kind of amazed at the prices run of the mill 60's soft core books bring, especially if they have Bonfils or some other sought after artists covers. $10-$15 minimum it seems on a lot of them and they go way higher for some outrageous titles. I don't purposefully buy them but every once in a while there are a couple in a lot and they sell quickly when I list them. I don't collect that stuff - I have a teen age daughter so my barometer is "what would my kid think if I croaked and she had to sell my stuff" But if it's sexy "and" classy I'm all over it, like those Maguire's Randall Dowling just posted, or the Schaare and DeSoto Monarch covers (or Heade, or Belarski or....)

I look at it this way now - a brand new paperback book costs $10 these days. A nice clean copy of a 70 year old book has to be worth $10, both intrinsically and for it to be worth it to do the work of finding it and listing it. And today's $10 bill ain't 1985's $10 bill. If it has a cool cover, especially GGA it should be $15-$20. Keys obviously are more. I'm like you guys, I love finding stuff for $1 to $5 a pop like the old days - but times change and circumstances vary. I usually only find those prices in lots, and even those are hard to sneak up on. I've thrown many a "solid" bid at a lot and gone down in flames and it sells for more than the collective value of the lot (to me at least). I still sell a ton of books for less than $10 (in fact, probably the vast majority of my sales) but I like to actually sell stuff. I see many folks listing every book or digest for $20 - $40 and they sit and sit and sit. On average stuff I just want to get my money back and a little profit for my time and expertise. I'd rather have $ sittiing in my paypal account, ready so I can pounce when I see something that I really desire. I've "manned up" for the stuff I really wanted plenty of times as well as lucking into a classic for cheap. When you think about the relative values for other collectibles it's pennies but everybody has their brackets they're willing to enter into.

Nice! Don't get started on Monarchs... you might regret it 🤣🤣🤣

I think several of the Anderson space babe pulp covers are swipes or semi-swipes of the comics . At least the poses.

Pretty much only feebay. Buddha63. I've been a seller since '98 on and off - lately they're giving a lot of free listings so i'm taking advantage and clearing out lots of doubles and trying to whittle the holdings down to a more focused accumulation. The struggle is real though because every time I go to list stuff I end up getting distracted and buying more

These in the mail today. Two of my favorite bizarre Howitt Spider creations.