markseifert

Yeah, I've got a lot of stories from back then and as my faulty memory recalls them, I will post them! Glad you liked it.

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

We must remember our roots.

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

Yep, I have always loved this book.

Here's another weird, very small subset of comic covers. Covers with comic creators on the cover. Only three photo covers I know of.

 

First is Headline #37 sporting a Jack Kirby photo cover. This is the Crippen copy (if it matters to any one)

 

Great find!

I had posted this in CG but though I would repost here as many do not venture outside this forum. I have recently picked up a copy of the Look Magazine issue from 1940 (see link here) and thought it was pretty cool. But then amazingly enough I was able to pick up a copy of the very rare SS newspaper that was quoted earlier in this thread. Thought I would share the page. So here is the rear page of Das Schwarze Korps from April 25, 1940 with the headline "Jerry Siegel Attacks!" (see the translation here)

 

Whoa. That is nice.

It ain't a Rockford, but I hope it'll do...

 

One point that I think supports less AF15s out there (versus more) is that the census run up hasn't been huge in the last 2 years with the price explosion.......while some people may hoard them, others would want to sell them, and in the internet age, it's easy to do research....those that do will probably consider slabbing the book (I agree people who don't want to sell may have never heard of CGC....but i'm talking about those who do)

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.

this is purely a discussion to me. I am not looking in influence the market in any shape or form.

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.

Since 1965 was the year that folks really started to buy multiple copies for the first time, it's not out of the realm of possible that books only 3 years old...especially Spidey...would have been saved more than usual. Sure, many, many thousands were thrown out...but sales figures for that last issue HAD to be very good for Goodman to allow Spidey to return (they were, after all, about to cancel Hulk), so the odds are better that the book was saved in better numbers than, say, FF #6 or Suspense #32.

 

 

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.

In case anyone is interested, here are how the results to date across my Gold, Silver, and Bronze forum polls about the estimated total copies still in existence for Action #1, AF #15, and Hulk #181 respectively;

 

 

Weighted Average estimated total copies still in existence*:

 

Action #1: 279

AF #15: 15,384 (or approximately 55 copies of AF #15 for every 1 copy of Action #1)

Hulk #181: 82,282 (or approximately 292 copies of Hulk #181 for every 1 copy of Action #1)

 

 

*Note: The last poll option for each poll was "10 x current graded copies or more". For purposes of calculating the weighted averages shown above, I assumed that responses in this category were evenly distributed between 10 x and 20 x the current graded copies. If I were to instead assume that responses in this category were evenly distributed between 10 x and 15 x the current graded copies, we would get the following slightly different results (as you can see, no major change);

 

Action #1: 265

AF #15: 14,081 (or approximately 53 copies of AF #15 for every 1 copy of Action #1)

Hulk #181: 71,220 (or approximately 268 copies of Hulk #181 for every 1 copy of Action #1)

 

 

FYI - Total count of responses for each poll (through 9:00 p.m. CST today):

Action #1: 102

AF #15: 140

Hulk #181: 93

Post of the year.

That con was a loooong time ago. Here's what I can remember. It was a small local con as we used to have often here. Chuck shows up with many box fulls of the Church books. Might have been his first public saleof them. He was asked why he traveled so far for a small one day show and apparently spilled the beans on his recent find.

 

I remember seeing a lot of people by his table so I went over to take a look. He had one table full of boxes of books. Guys were very aggressive and hogging boxes. I remember seeing them grabbing a lot of average GA DC's. I was amazed at the condition as I had never seen old books that nice. I moved to the boxes toward the edge of the table. This was mostly late '40's early '50's stuff (my interest at the time). I bought all the censorship books I could find (SOTI ect). I did get a lot of misc stuff like some Avon one shots, Fox books, a couple Atlas war and crime (very little Atlas and no horror books) and other books that just interested me.

 

I remember guys grumbling that he was charging 2-4 times "guide" but they were so nice we bought them anyway. I spent all the rest of my money (maybe $200) at his table. It kills me now to think of what I had to leave but consider myself lucky to get what I did get. That summer I saw him at San Diego con but by then, the word was out and I didn't get much. To this day, I have rarely seen books so beautiful..

 

You can read his account (which is pretty accurate) in his Tales from the Database on his web site. It is in section 13 of the Mile High collection installment. I don't think he published his list until after the Casual Con show.

 

Unfortunately, over the years, I sold and traded a lot of them away. They wern't known as "pedigree" books back then. There are probably quite a few floating around out there that are unknown. One I remember well was The Dead Who Walk oh, I wish I had that one back... Epic day!

what about if you are sitting on 60 copies, at least 2 or 3 are 9.0++

 

you know what you do, you enjoy them in their raw state with no desire to slab or sell...at least that's what one collector is doing...

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.

I like your reasoning, Mark, but it doesn't work at this time.

 

CGC is only 15+ years old. But, more significantly, there are many, many, MANY copies that are still in the hands of the original or nearly-original owners, and they don't care about either slabbing or selling.

 

Give it a generation plus, then we'll see how things shake out.

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.

Timely's Spiderman... who looked more like Uncle Ben than he did Peter Parker.[/img][/url]

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

I still think Medusa is really going to be the key to this movie being a success.

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 don't remember where I found this pic but this gentlemen was proud to show off his stack of wild west weeklies too.

 

I wonder what's this guy's story.

 

Is he an author; a reader?

 

We'll probably never know.

I guess I could be wrong, but didn't everybody say the same thing about the Guardians movie when it was announced?

 

Until Marvel actually puts out a bad product, I wouldn't bank on any movie attached to them being a lemon.

 

I'm not saying the prices are justified at all, I'm just not convinced that this movie is going to suck.

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.

Speaking of the Quality Comics group how about this photo? It is a large 11" x 14" photo of the reception area of the office. Note the comics sitting around on the coffee tables. There is also a display of some on the wall that look like maybe original art or printer's proofs probably all from the same month. I'd like to visit and get some freebees. Not sure of the year but I am guessing late 1940's. I'm sure one of you eagle eyed boardies can tell us what month and year. Pretty unusual huh?

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.

 

I think Winsor McCay's son did a pretty good job with the strip.

 

Here are scans of the entire story for those who'd like to see it. .

 

There are substantially more than 7,500 copies of this book still extant.

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.

The CGC census currently shows a total of 2,279 CGC graded AF #15s (across Universal, Qualified, Sig Series, and Restored). Due to the CPR game, the actual number of unique copies graded is obviously less than 2,279; perhaps the unique count is 1,750 or 2,000?

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.

This came in this weekend

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.

does anyone know or know how to check to see what other books might exist that are 10.0's before 1970?

5 (including sig series)

Source:

http://www.cgcdata.com/cgc/search/comicyearend/1970/label/all/variants/yes/census/150217/censusprior/150217/

May have missed it previously but have to ask -- any dime novels / story papers / nickel weeklies?

 

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'm amazed you had these (and were able to locate them!)

 

I've got about 100 issues.

 

It was actually lots of fun looking through the magazines.