Surfing Alien

Starving artist, a concept as old as time itself

Can't resist... cannot believe... 💞

Those Chartered Mysteries are tough in any kind of decent grade. The cover paper used was thin and brittle

Anywhere from 50-200k by the late 1940's. Most second and later printings of "Round Circle Avons" had printing information inside. Incredibly, "Neon Wilderness" by Algren, with the famous Ray Johnson prostitute in red dress cover, sold a million copies in its various printings, but it's very hard to find today.

Some killer books in that spread

Cool, did you ever get to doing illustration? In the 80's I was pretty well entrenched in the New York City Death Metal/Hardcore punk scene. Played at CBGB's & L'Amours and quite a few other legendary local spots. I was in mosh pits that would disintegrate me now

Now that is the kind of copy I could see asking that kind of dollar for these days, although similar can still be found for a little less.

There and ebay are definitely the largest aggregators of sellers but much top material exchanges without the public getting a whiff

Very nice. I'd bet @moonpool has these as well

I have an entire box of Black Lizards, the first real noir revival, which started when I was still piling up my first collection in the '80's. Those were all filtered properly through author estates when published as far as I know, but the UK stuff I have no idea.

One reason it's so rare and $$$ is there were no modern printings for 60 or so years so anyone who heard the buzz about it had to dig up a 1st or 2nd. The modern noir renaissance is your friend Now a nut like me, since I'm really liking it, is going to have to go all out to find a real nice copy of the 1st, because I have to have nice 1st pbs of books I love

Books on music

Friday Fun today is this reader copy that I got for the reading as well as the collectability. Black Wings Has My Angel by Elliott Chaze. Gold Medal No. 296 Cover artist unknown. I got lucky with this as a beater can run you $100 easily. It's a really tough book in any condition... and tough in the tough noir sense as well, on many "best noir" lists. I picked it up this afternoon and blazed through half of it already and it lives up to its reputation so far. Although it's a rare book, it's one of those that is far rarer in its second edition, "One For The Money" with the Charles Copeland cover, which I posted the other day I don't much of an excuse to post that one again

Pretty sure I posted this one waaay back but none of the keywords are coming up ... but "Hell Yeah"

Such a classic. I don't feel bad for forcing you to acquire it I'd say a step above a beater - the kind of book that, if vintage pbs keep getting collected, could be like lower grade golden age key comics - nice things to have in the long run

Gotta give OtherEric his due, he's a run collector of many things, old school. Ace's and Avons for the most part in the pb world. That's a lot of books to go for but considering you completed the Warren mags, I'm sure you'll take them down in your quietly determined way

Damn, you get to play in the Old Timer's Game too!

Here's a little pre-Friday fun. This white paged beauty should appeal to Avon collectors and Girlie collectors Avon No. 815, 1958

You all are too kind - of course Pat is the OG of this thread - posting on the very first page waaaaay back in 2014 - As I was perusing that page the other day, I did notice that jimjum12 stopped by and commented way back then, so it looks like you had some curiosity but the pb bug sat dormant in you until more recently James . It's a lot of fun to go back and see that folks were talking about the very same things we do today, including CGC grading pulps Mostly though there's lots of great pics that started this muthalode of pb goodness going. I think I started posting around 2017, which is when I was getting my toe wet with some buying again after quite a long hiatus. I'm pretty sure I started out going after Juvenile Delinquency/Gang books because that was always my first love, having acquired some of the big grails in the wild back in the 80's in my first collection. While it's true that you can still find great books for 10's and 20's the increase in competition is palpable and better books get a lot of bids - I see far more 3 figure sales than ever. My advice for anyone has always been to buy stuff you love and you'll never go broke. Prices still vary so widely, you still might find a $100 book in a lot full of drek by an unknowing seller (The only problem with those finds is, then you gotta deal with the drek ) But those finds are fewer and fewer - so my new advice is, go away, nothing to see here

From what I can tell, there will be comics and pulps there as well, although paperbacks are the headliner.

More like a marriage between Popular Library and Charlton, as their execs combined forces to start the line. However, unlike Charlton, they hired some of the best Golden Age PB artists, Maguire, DeSoto, Johnson, Marchetti etc. to paint big Good Girl covers. They also hired quite a few good writers like Gil Brewer, William Ard, Robert Silverberg, Marion Zimmer Bradley to write original material.

Thanks Jeff, you've landed in the right place to see cool vintage pb's talked about

Love Johnson's sense of humor on that one. On this one, not so much humorous but his cartooning background comes out a bit, like on "Suburbia"

Beautiful books I don't think most vintage pb collectors really consider Monarchs as sleaze. Definitely not Popular Library, which was a very mainstream publisher. They did have a lot of sexy covers though. This is sleaze 🙂 Bill Ward cover art