Surfing Alien

That Graphic is a killer cover... another one for the want list... sigh....

Picked up an astonishing copy of one of the founding classic Diversey digests. The seller said it was found in a chest that was closed for 30 years. That might be bullship but it sure looks it. The inside cover and pages are amazing

Some minty Avons 😁

Lesbian themed books have been "hot" in more than one sense for quite a while. This one also has the great Nappi art and Eton's are generally pretty scarce so it's a great combo. The holidays are the best time to buy because most people are buying gifts and generally doing other things, plus the sellers are discounting more than they usually do to raise holiday cash. It's a win win for buyers. I don't usually do auctions because the stuff I go for always seems to get jacked up but bidding was sparse on many of the ones I looked at - many people just aren't in the market in December - so I won some prizes, as well as getting some great discounts on BIN's 👍

Christmas to New Years turned into a buyers paradise for me while I was away on vacation. Few bidders and lots of discounts offered out there, so I pulled the trigger a bit in my spare time. I've got a bit of unboxing to do but here's a wonderful Nappi cover on a tough book.

Congrats! A great group!

Yeah, he's the Gryphon Books on Ebay I previously mentioned to you. I think he's Gryphon209 to be exact. A good barometer for pricing. He always has tons of cool stuff.

In the spirit of torture covers, the "b" version of Avon 272

Oh, she's a Classical Greek Statue for sure, not a lithely hillbilly girl But classic nonetheless, mostly because she was fairly shocking on the front racks in mainstream stores in 1948

THE infamous "nipple cover" ... If that was a comic book it would be worth a thousand dollars....

Bedside Books 1959 first edition of Alan Bennett's "Savage Delinquents" with very cool stylized punk cover art. A scarce JD book published under a mostly "sleaze/soft core" imprint. This has a paper cover so thin you can see through it on the scan - so, very tough in nice condition. I love the back cover blurbs on this "thrill dizzy punks and souped up hot rods are the everyday way of life for today's teen-age beatniks" This is one I saved when I sold the bulk of my original collection. I knew I might not see another one so nice.

I agree, that's better than most of these i've seen. Just like with comics, the dark covers show creasing more easily. The "readers crease" on this one doesn't bother me so much since the rest of the cover is pretty clean and the awesome Maguire main image is un-marred. I do gotta get me one of these as I do not currently have one

Welcome! & share some if you will Quarter Books is a favorite title - another one with paper thin covers that make high grade very hard to come by. I've shared this one before but it's worth another look...

That is a sad picture (both your dad hauling his little wagon of books and the Action #1's tossed in the pile) I agree with your point about the construction of the paperbacks not being conducive to recycling. Also consider that, although we cherish a lot of the "trashy" stuff for their covers, the vast majority of paperbacks were literature and bestsellers that were licensed by hardback publishers to the paperback publishers. The paperback revolution was a revolution in popular literacy, really the internet of the mid 20th century. Hardback books were printed in numbers in the low thousands for the most part and priced at $2-3. Book ownership to a large degree was for the wealthy. A 25 cent Pocket Book brought a vast swath of knowledge & literacy to the masses, so they may have been valued somewhat above newspapers and comics although It's hard to imagine where the old paperbacks all ended up. Hundreds of millions of them were printed in total and they're not all on Ebay lol. They were most likely thrown away after being passed around to different readers. This is all speculation - other than the facts that so many were printed and they haven't all survived.

Likely because the market is so fractured. IIRC, the major catalogues like Warren & Hancer's didn't have blurbs describing these historical notes like Overstreet does for SOTI comics. For whatever its faults are, Overstreet's yearly production created a knowledge base that was consistently updated throughout the years with more of this type of information. I'm sure that collective knowledge was a huge driver in genre collecting.

I don’t think the paper drives have as much to do with scarcity as the fact that the paperback was designed to be disposable. They were passed around, read to death and often thrown away. I’ve only done cursory research into the print runs in the 40’s and 50’s but from what I’ve read, the average print run of a major publisher paperback was around 200,000 and for the popular authors, it could end up being a million with multiple print runs. This is likely why you’ll see so many Erle Stanley Gardeners and Ellery Queens compared to a lesser known author. Pretty much all the major publisher titles are always available somewhere, albeit maybe in well read condition. The real crux on paperbacks, like all collectibles, is condition. If you actually open a paperback to read it, in the non-preservation sense that people did back then, that cardboard cover cracks at the spine and you have the ubiquitous “reader’s crease”. No one was carefully reading them with the covers half-open to preserve their condition. If they got passed around they were completely trashed. Unread copies with no readers crease and minimal corner creasing and spine wear are (generally, there are exceptions) the only objects of scarcity imho. This is especially true when combined with lesser known authors, early books of writers who later became popular, or the smaller imprints that must have had smaller print runs. There’s also a whole subset of books that were cheaply printed that makes high grade difficult. Uni-Books with their thin paper stock covers is an example. The Uni-Books 1st edition of Marijuana Girl is an example of a book that combines it all – small imprint, obscure author, thin paper cover & high demand because of the genre and “cult classic” cover of a stoned out girl smoking in her nightie. If you want any copy you’re likely going to have to pony up at least a couple hundred bucks. I know I did after hoping for 30 years that I’d luck into one for $2 in a flea market or thrift shop lol. I was lucky to get one in pretty amazing condition for the title, those paper covers tear if you breathe on them. This is just what I get a “sense” of from poking around with these things since the 80’s.

No corner creases? Yeah, pretty good lot, here's the rest of it...

Just got a decent lot with a presentable copy of my favorite early Dell

The censor bot removed a word that rhymes with "election" from my quote above. I guess that's a "sensitive" subject

Intimate Novel 32 - 1st printing of the DIgest sized 1st Edition of Basement Gang. This is the infamous "" cover. The boner was covered up with a red sticker at some point in the distribution process and those copies are more common. The image was used numerous times later on both for a Beacon PB sized reprint and for the cover of Stallion Books 213 Reefer Club, but they all had the "problem" covered up in some way.

And this unread African American Literature title that is a serious upgrade from my old one.

And an unread Belarski...

Can't go wrong with minty Earle Bergey Popular Library covers. By coincidence I just picked up this unread green Bergey cover

Very nice selection, I think Avon hit their stride with the Triangle corner number look and really took off as far as art quality and composition in the Bullseye logo era

Yuuuup!