PopKulture

But they are "amazing" grey-tones!

Thanks for including some of those beautiful splash pages!

Really great personalized books, especially that Panic! Man, it was almost as if Bill Gaines was anticipating it somehow all those years earlier... I know you've mentioned that there's some collecting blood that runs in your family, and not unlike the Verzyl's holdings, I hope your heirs see fit to hold back some of these uber-personalized books when you pass them on - many years from now.

Your interaction sounds like the exception, but it would’ve been disheartening for me to meet someone in such a mercantile manner, being herded along and what not, almost ensuring the most generic of experiences for everyone else.

I thought the silver age were very suspect as I perused them. Even if some of those 6000 are CPR candidates which were double counted when people didn’t send in the label, I’m sure there are that many still raw in people’s collections, putting the number closer to 10,000. For books that weren’t yet thirty years old at the time, they seem to have missed the mark with the silver age estimates.

When I get a chance, I’ll post a group shot of some of the various types of these early fiction series for a better sense of scale.

It’s good that institutions are preserving these because the interior pages are becoming more and more brittle with time. The covers generally fare better as they are printed on slicker, better quality stock, which helps the beautiful lithographed artwork really pop. Here's a link to a few I scanned some time ago: http://www.ipernity.com/doc/305029/album/1287886 The first fourteen shown are nickel weeklies while the latter nine are commonly referred to as “thick books.” They are digest-sized and between one-half to an inch thick.

As is my habit, I was recently revisiting an old Overstreet annual and noted the estimates they gave back then for both total copies in existence as well as those in near mint or mint. The annual in question, the 21st edition, also had this very compelling list of key books up to 1943 and rated them from none to six stars for the most important books. While that list would make great fodder for another topic, it’s the estimates I thought might prove interesting to compare to todays CGC census numbers and see how close they came. If somebody would care to contrast these examples to the census data, I’d be appreciative: Action 1 - 100 total copies, 4 in Nm/mint All-American 16 - 50 total, 3 in Nm/m All-Star 3 - 150 total with 6 nm/m All-Star 8 - 150 total with 6 nm/m Adventure 40 - 70 total and 3 nm/m Amazing Fantasy 15 - 1400 total with 45 mint Batman 1 - 300 total with 16 nm/m Captain America 1 - 180 total with 8 nm/m Detective 27 - 100 total with 3 nm/m Famous Funnies 1 - 30 total with 2 nm/m Fantastic Four 1 - 1400 total with 65 nm/m Green Lantern 1 - 200 total with 8 nm/m Human Torch 2(1) - 190 total with 10 nm/m Marvel Comics 1 - 100 total with 5 nm/m More Fun 52 - 70 total with 3 nm/m Pep 22 - 150 total with 7 nm/m Superboy 1 - 275 total with 15 nm/m Superman 1 - 190 total with 3 nm/m Tales of Suspense 39 - 2100 total with 55 nm/m Walt Disney Comics and Stories 1 - 245 total with 12 nm/m Whiz 1 - 135 total with 4 nm/m X-Men 1 - 1900 total with 60 nm/m

Collectors of this type of early fiction refer to these as “nickel weeklies” to differentiate them from their earlier cousins, dime novels.

I think it would net a 3.5.

I think it’s a 4.0 and a nice key!

I’m in that 8.0 range.

I’m also at a 4.0 and just love this era DC!

Only true on odd-numbered days!

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Not at all! That's a great Christmas cover. If I didn't already have one, I would grab it too.

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Who would think anyone still wants these crummy old Four Colors?

If you hadn't, I would've (Brownies)

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