markseifert

Glad to see you back here, Mr. Bailey. For those who don't know, Gordon Bailey was one of the founders of Nostalgia Journal, which later became The Comics Journal after Groth & co. bought it. Always great to hear the stories from those who were there.

There's actually a lot of google hits on the name Paul Mittelbuscher. Lots of his letters in pulps are documented here and there, one fanzine he was involved in was "Fan To See", and I wonder if somebody in in this thread snapped up this item signed TO Paul rather than BY Paul, on ebay last week. edit -- spoke too soon, looks like it's relisted... http://www.ebay.com/itm/SIGNED-Galleon-Of-Dream-LIN-CARTER-1953-Poems-Fantasy-Science-Fiction-Fanzine/111615667840

25 years after Obadiah, things were already going horribly awry...

Yep, I have always loved this book.

Great find!

Whoa. That is nice.

There's a bunch of angles of attack on this overall issue (and again, keeping in mind that this is all just silly fun at the end of the day), but I also find this point pretty interesting. Consider the run-up that Action 1 has had since 2010. There have been some incredibly well-publicised sales over the past 5 years (and... jeez, I guess we are at the 5th anniversary of crossing the million dollar mark!)... ... yet with prices shooting into an orbit that even most millionaires can't ignore, plus the best publicity imaginable, the "velocity" at which census entries are made has increased roughly ONE "issue" per year over the previous rate [as always, keep in mind that a census entry does not equal a comic] That's completely fascinating, I think. With prices climbing to $1 million, $2 million, $3 million... would it have been a huge surprise to see the rate of slabbing double or triple for a few years? Maybe it would have been, but a question worth pondering. Now, that of course implies rarity, but there's probably a bunch of psychological components there too -- fear of leaving money on the table if you slab and sell before you TRULY need to do so, emotional attachment, and other collector-based "reasons" that we all have for doing what we do, etc, etc, etc. Also, of course, there's probably a pretty strong disincentive to slab before you need to sell in many cases, particularly in golden age that has low census numbers. Anyway... we've barely scratched the surface of ways we could look at this, I think. Whether it actually means anything at all is another matter entirely.

All in good fun, I'd agree, and at the end of the day this is all just some guessing and theories which may or may not make any sense at all. When every single person who owns a raw copy at this moment has died (implying every single copy left on earth will have changed ownership at least once), we'll (probably) have a much better idea... ... unfortunately, none of us will be left by then to say I told you so.

A quick perusal of the numbers reveals a mid-60s peak followed by a steady decline through the mid-70s. AND YET, we know for sure that serious fandom was on a sharp rise throughout that period. Which suggest... I don't know... that a more dedicated core fandom was buying a larger and larger part of the run (a scenario we are more familiar with in later decades). [edit -- it also suggests that Goodman timed the sale of his company perfectly, interestingly enough] That certainly could mean there were a larger percentage of collectors and people who bought dupes than we might think. Not sure how to quantify that yet, but interesting to think about.

Heya, good work on this... even if it's just anecdotal, it's very interesting to see what the perception is on these. I finally got interested enough to google some statements of ownership that are relevant (but not interested enough to crack open the books.. maybe later ) There was a very good discussion on probably AF 15 paid circulation here sometime back (linking the gpanalysis archive version as that's what comes up with a quick google): http://cgcforum.gpanalysis.com/cgcforum_thread.asp?pagenumber=392&ThreadID=2486186&forumID=16&threadName=Amazing+Fantasy+%2315+Club Good analysis there, and presuming accurate info that changes our thumbnail calc here substantially, putting paid circulation more likely in the 100k to 125k range (given the book was canceled while books from that year with listed numbers there survived). Have to say this changes my perception on the issue substantially... as some of the upper estimates on extant copies in our thread here (30k range) seem inconceivable. It's just a gut reaction, but it seems highly unlikely that 25% to 30% of circulated copies survived. Given that fandom and collecting was coming on strong by the mid-60s (leading to Overstreet in 1970), I'd still say it's not outrageous to think that ten percent of circulated copies survived. But that IS just a gut feeling, and hard to say where I'd draw the line. 15%? Maybe. 20% is where it starts to feel pretty unlikely to me.

Post of the year.

I almost started a poll asking about the largest non-dealer stashes of AF 15 that people know about. 60 is pretty impressive. Wonder if there are any 100+ copy stashes out there. I know Brad Savage used to go around buying up Avengers 4s in the day (I think we probably sold him 15-20 copies at Chicago con in the early 90s)... wouldn't be surprised if he had hundreds of copies at one point. Wouldn't be a shock if people did that for AF 15.

You might be right... there's a fair chance it's just too early to draw the conclusion I'm trying to draw. But I can't get past the fact that a 5x price increase, (even in low grade!) over the lifetime of the CGC era hasn't increased slabbing velocity. If you're sitting on 4-5 extra mid-grade raw copies, even if you are doing ok financially, at some point it has to give you pause that you've got $100k-150k+ there (or whatever that would be the next year, or the year after). And even if you don't know that, someone who knows you have them knows that. [Although, , there's probably something to be said re tax implications for selling now vs letting them be inherited, in a lot of cases] That means SOMETHING. It may not mean what I think it means. And it may be too early yet. But if you're even remotely right about the number of copies out there, at some point we will see a very substantial increase in the rate that copies are hitting the census.

See, there you go... that explains everything you need to know as to why Aunt May hated Spider-Man so much.

Completely agree. The right casting and nailing the fx for the hair takes them 75 percent of the way towards selling this movie in the trailers.

Oh, wait, wait... is Wild West Weekly larger than "normal" pulp size? It looks larger in that pic. That would be interesting. I wonder what's this guy's story. Is he an author; a reader? We'll probably never know.

Yeah. Without commenting on current price levels, there's a few things in play here: 1) There's a BIG difference between a Marvel movie from Fox and a Marvel movie from Marvel Studios / Disney. It's hard to overstate the importance of that moving forward, unless by some chance Marvel pulls another studio-crossover rabbit out of their hat (like Sony/Marvel). 2) There will probably always be way more high grade 48's on the census than there are 45's or 36's, due to well-known warehouse finds. 3) Because of (1), unless the status quo changes, the Inhumans will be considered vastly more important characters in a decade than they are today, because Marvel has a great incentive to make that so. They have no such incentive for Surfer/Galactus (because they can't make the movies themselves). Certainly, there's the usual movie spikes going on here, but there's also some pretty sound reasoning that suggests #45 > #48 over the long term. It might not play out that way, but I wouldn't bet against it.

THAT is cool. Do you know the provenance of the pic?

WOW! Been a long time since I've been that blown away by some GA comic art I hadn't seen before.

Sake of argument, let's take the middle road of your estimate and say there's 20k. [Ten percent-ish of the initial sell-through, 8 years before the Oversteet era, that number in a vacuum is not outrageous] The question then becomes, how many of those will be slabbed and/or come to public market before they are destroyed? Let's say that all copies of AF 15 both unknown and known will change ownership within the next 70 years. Unknown copies means they are hidden within other property (a house, grandad's old trunk, etc). A large percentage of inherited copies will be slabbed and/or come to market and THEN be slabbed shortly after being inherited. Virtually all "unknown" copies will either become known or be destroyed shortly after the property changes hands. There will be exceptions, but not many. Kind of hand-waving around the fact that some copies will change hands without being slabbed, you're still talking about 250+ "NEW-to-market" copies per year being added into the market in some form. Every year for 70 years. *** That's interesting to contemplate. It'd be interesting to know what would happen to the market if copies were slabbed at much higher than the current rate, for several years running. I think it also suggest that if there are 20k copies out there, very many of them will be destroyed without becoming known. I think we'd be seeing some acceleration of census numbers already, if market forces were efficient enough to bring most recently-discovered or recently-inherited "orphaned" copies (those held by civilians or very casual collectors) to market. The wildcard in all this is hording. Presuming a 20k number, a lot of things that don't make sense now (the fact that a 5x price increase has not accelerated the rate of slabbing AT ALL) become more plausible if there are old-school collectors/dealers out there sitting on 100+ copy stashes and slowly slabbing them as they need money. And finally, if any of the above is remotely true, it also suggests that I should buy stock in a grading company, because they'd have a brighter future than maybe even they imagine.

I started to write a novel in response to this but simplifying: Entries have hit the census at a rate of roughly 160 copies/yr. We know that entries > copies, but never mind that now. Number of entries/yr shows no sign of accelerating even though prices of even low grades have increased roughly 5x (or greater) over the lifetime of CGC. THAT is interesting. If rate of entry accelerated to 250 copies/yr, it'd take 40 years for 10k additional copies to hit the census. Even if rate of entry increased to a whopping 500 copies/yr, it'd take 20 years for 10k additional copies to hit the census. *** You know, I came into this thinking, well... assume 200k sell-through at maximum (and I'd agree that's a safe maximum), and given that this is JUST 8 years before the first Oversteet hit, it's not outrageous to assume that 10%-ish of sold copies survived. But the fact that very substantially rising prices has not had a measurable impact on the rate that copies have been slabbed is more than a little interesting.

First Boy Commandos You'll have to get the #65 at some point if you don't have it. Only S&K cover of the run.

5 (including sig series) Source: http://www.cgcdata.com/cgc/search/comicyearend/1970/label/all/variants/yes/census/150217/censusprior/150217/

Yes, I have hundreds of them. Maybe thousands. I've lost count. Given all we've seen in this thread, I assumed as much. Out of historical interest: Beadles American Novel #45? (1st printing of Steam Man of the Prairies)

Oh... Great stuff. May have missed it previously but have to ask -- any dime novels / story papers / nickel weeklies? I've got about 100 issues. It was actually lots of fun looking through the magazines.