Surfing Alien

7 hours ago, Pat Calhoun said:

Good on you, Surf, for reading 'Enchantress'. It's the best of the 3 original 'Eric John Stark' stories and is another of Leigh's masterpieces.

It's pretty cool so far. I like this era of Planet Stories with the Anderson full length space babe covers. These are some of the best. I just got the first one in the mailbox, i'll post it in the pulp thread. The Black Amazon cover is iconic, i'm going to try to find a nice copy for a keeper on that one.

5 hours ago, OtherEric said:

Loving all these D-series Ace doubles.  There's just something special about them, isn't there?

One of my better copies, although still not perfect:

I've have that one too and yours is better than mine. I think Leiber gets read... and well read

8 hours ago, Pat Calhoun said:

Just wanted to second Hap's sage words on 'Rhiannon'; it's a classic.

I started reading "The Enchantress of Venus" in the Planet Stories pulp I recently picked up. Although it's a stretch on the science (actually, it doesn't really address the science of breathing and surviving on Venus, the characters just do it) it's a brisk adventure read so far, very pulpy. and fun.

2 hours ago, frozentundraguy said:

Those are some sweet copies. I just ran a check on some of the  books I still need, and am finding prices are up in the last year or so, even for books not by PKD. I will have to check but I believe I only have one Ace sci-fi double that appears to be unread. (Posted a while back, but its is D-193 The Man Who Japed) While prices are up these books are quite affordable compared to vintage comic books of the same age.

 

Prices are definitely up, I suspect they will be for very high grade books as they dissapear into collections. I have a few more that i'm pretty sure are unread but i'll have to do some box diving that I haven't done in a while to show them to ya my friends...

22 hours ago, OtherEric said:

That's why I called them "tricky" rather than rare.

If you think the mysteries are rare, try finding the westerns!  I don't have any yet, would like to get at least a couple as examples.

I absolutely agree with you that finding the books in high grade is almost impossible.  I only have 1 or 2 D-series I could describe like that.

I'm not positive, but I might call two of the SF doubles rare, personally.  The D-13 took me forever to find a copy, I suspect that's a combo of being a very early book and it not getting flagged as half of it counting as SF until well after the fact.  And I think I've only ever seen the Conan one out in the wild once.  Probably at least partly being early, and a combo of a) some SF readers rejecting it as fantasy, not SF, so a slightly lower survival rate; and b) Conan & Fantasy fans means more copies are locked down hard in collections.

I have a couple of the early mysteries... they're very tough in any kind of grade...This is my worst one.. it's real clean but has the crease and the spine is twisted but it is still beaustiful IMO

Here's my Cosmic Puppets. Both of these PKD books are survivors from my original collection that I sold in the 90's. I sold 95% of what I had, about 7 long comic boxes of very high grade books that I had amassed over 15 years of searching. But there were a bunch I kept for various reasons, mostly authors and/or covers I loved in exceptional condition. Glad I kept these.

That's very cool. I know there are a few Avon pulps with comics, Out of This World Adventures for one. Are there many others?

On 1/25/2018 at 11:50 PM, Surfing Alien said:

Switching gears... "He undermined their world with mockery!" Classic Ace SciFi

I had a couple dozen Aces that looked like this in my original collection, only have a few now but this isn't a bad one to have

18 hours ago, OtherEric said:

That's why I called them "tricky" rather than rare.

If you think the mysteries are rare, try finding the westerns!  I don't have any yet, would like to get at least a couple as examples.

I absolutely agree with you that finding the books in high grade is almost impossible.  I only have 1 or 2 D-series I could describe like that.

I'm not positive, but I might call two of the SF doubles rare, personally.  The D-13 took me forever to find a copy, I suspect that's a combo of being a very early book and it not getting flagged as half of it counting as SF until well after the fact.  And I think I've only ever seen the Conan one out in the wild once.  Probably at least partly being early, and a combo of a) some SF readers rejecting it as fantasy, not SF, so a slightly lower survival rate; and b) Conan & Fantasy fans means more copies are locked down hard in collections.

Yeah, I recently posted the nice D-13 I found after a long search, it's not perfect on both sides but as close as I'm gonna get. The Conan is always beat up. I used to have a real nice one in my first collection

I posted my Man Who Japes on here a ways back, i'll see if I can find it, it's really sharp.

9 hours ago, OtherEric said:

Just for curiosity, what are considered the tricky SF doubles?  I think I listed most of them earlier, but are any others considered particularly hard to get?  I had the PKD books for a while, since I've been a fan for a long time.  I do need to upgrade my The Man Who Japed, though:

To get back on your question... I don't think any of the Sci-Fi Doubles are "hard"

Sci-Fi collectors go way back and things this recent were always hallowed and well kept by aficionados

They might get "expensive" because certain authors, especially PKD and Harlan Ellison, are so loved that there is always lots of demand but I can't think of any Ace Sci Fi Doubles that can't be found if someone is willing to pony up the cash. The mysterys seem scarcer generally.

Now, "condition", that adds to the equation and if you're looking for copies with no reading crease and sharp corners, that gets much more complicated as all vintage thick PB's got reader creases as soon as the covers got opened. Unread looking Ace's are amazing and not so common.

5 hours ago, OtherEric said:

Just for curiosity, what are considered the tricky SF doubles?  I think I listed most of them earlier, but are any others considered particularly hard to get?  I had the PKD books for a while, since I've been a fan for a long time.  I do need to upgrade my The Man Who Japed, though:

I've been bingeing on "The Man in the High Castle" on Amazon this week and it's almost like they pulled the cinematography atmosphere right off the cover of "The World Jones Made"

5 hours ago, 50YrsCollctngCmcs said:

St. Marks was a great store to in a great neighborhood. McSorley's for beer one block away and the Ukrainian National Home for great food on 2'nd Ave.

Of course my favorite Manhattan comic shop visit was to Supersnipe uptown in the early seventies. My grandmother took me up there. I had little money but bought a copy of Donald Duck #30 that I still own. Don't have a scan of it handy or would post it.

Supersnipe was great, I remember one day buying stacks of mint overstock Avengers Annual 10 & X-Men 150 there back in the day.

Other great Manhattan spots were Village Comics on Bleeker Street, Manhattan Comics under the Chelsea Hotel on West 23rd and a bit later in the 90's, Jeff's Comics and Cards on Sullivan Street (Where I met Howard Rogofsky)

6 hours ago, Robot Man said:

I always made a visit to a small shop in the village called I think, Second Childhood. Full of beautiful vintage toys and some times old comic books when I was in NY. Probably long gone now but man it was cool.

I remember it on the path of my Manhattan pilgrimages. I was never a big toy guy but I dabbled in them. Sadly it is gone as of 2008. I found a very nice tribute to the store and its owner, Grover Van Dexter online here:

https://gvshp.org/blog/2016/08/24/village-people-grover-van-dexter/

5 hours ago, Randall Dowling said:

Hey!  Me too!  As a kid living on Long Island, it was an awesome treat to go into the city and stop by the Batcave.  If memory serves, the front door was a half flight below the sidewalk.  I remember being super excited going down those stairs... 

The Batcave, Forbidden Planet, St. Marks, & Roger's Comic Shop (before he morphed to The Mysterious Time Machine) in the Village, Big Apple Comics on the upper west side were just some of the haunts in Manhattan - there were lots of smaller shops that popped up here and there that lasted a few years at a time.

9 hours ago, frozentundraguy said:

Just acquired this Ace PKD double, filling a little gap in my Ace sf double collection. I have about 2 thirds of them now.  Just checked my list, I have 3 PKD Ace doubles to go to complete that subset.

Sweet copy!

The thrill never goes away - but it's definitely different than it was "back in the day"

I buy very few comics these days, mostly vintage paperbacks & digests because you can still get a relatively cheap old paper thrill in those arenas. I recently bought a pulp for the first time in a long time - which I know you collect for the same reason - vintage thrills at more reasonable prices and un-slabbed enjoyment.

I've been selling off the modest comic collection I gathered in the 70's and 80's bit by bit over the last 20 years - and you bet I slabbed every Golden Age book that was worth more than a few hundred dollars. I've gotten top dollar for those books by slabbing them (and no grading hassles) and learned a fair bit about CGC grading in the process.

The few comics i've bought have been undervalued but cool (to me) things like old Crime Does Not Pay, just to leaf through them and look at the ads - and of course... smell the paper

2 hours ago, OtherEric said:

Sorry you had to part with it, that was a stunning copy.  I really do need to finish off my run of at least the Ace D-Series SF doubles... I've got about 2/3 of them, including all 6 PKD books, the Ellison, the Conan, the D-13 and the D-31...

Thanks. Yeah, part of  the life situation was being a new father though, for which no earthly possessions could surpass

You're well on your way -  and now you've got the toughest of them all . 

I've re-acquired some Aces but i'm pretty picky and cheap so it's slow going

3 hours ago, 50YrsCollctngCmcs said:

I used to buy my comics at the Batcave back in the late seventies and early eighties. Don’t recall seeing that store though! Great story and deal!

This was a small place on Greenwich Avenue, back when you could open a small bookstore in NYC

It was already signed when I got it. An interesting find and a great deal for me. It was in the display case of a (now long gone) rare bookstore in Greenwich Village in the 1980's. The guy had a few other vintage paperbacks and i'd go in there and buy something occasionally and chat with him. He had great stories about the Village and Beats and book lovers. After he found out I was collecting vintage paperbacks we talked about doing some trading and he ended up taking a bunch of lower value but very sharp Ace Sci-FI doubles I had in trade for the Junkie. He was willing to do it because he had it on display for quite a while but no one ponied up the 200 or so bucks he was asking for it and he figured he might do better with some less expensive stuff. We both were winners because I got a spectacular book I could never afford and he actually moved some of those Ace Sci Fi doubles.

On 7/15/2019 at 5:22 PM, OtherEric said:

Here’s today’s winner.  I’m not even sure I can call it a grail, it was just filed as impossible.  My mind is just blown that I now own it:

Congrats! Great pickup. I hope some day to get one back again although I know it will never be as nice as the signed one I had. I have some pics of it somewhere i'll try to dig up.

In a place far away... and a long time ago... there was a man named BOROCK. It was a long time ago and in a place far away that he invented ALL this . But really... it took a nobody like me to mention HIS name. Wow... y'all are really f'd up. I guess crossing the street strips your cred. Pity...

He bought a few books from my table at Greenberg shows back when... he was a tough grader then and all but WOW what a poor reception for his grading up in here... There is NO free speech here so i guess i'll see ya'll later or not at all. I have nothing invested here, just a saying...

This is a pure watering down (non large, high grade only) and up as well (speaking for the Universal only) of the Pedigree label, basically, every rule they have ever made in the past was made to be broken by them for future money streams. I'm not bashing them, i'm a capitalist, but expect more  as time goes on.

As for the ebay deal - that was brilliant. Brand X has made significant inroads (and improvements lately) but this deal, which I assume is an exclusive, immediately stamps CGC as THE authority on the biggest independent marketplace on the planet The other guy can't make that ground up in any way at all. Great marketing coup.