Dr. Love

+1 USPS Registered supposedly won't lose the box, but good luck collecting 40K if the box gets crushed. I think chances are higher that Santa drops by your house this Xmas with replacement books. CIS is an insurance company. It's what they do, and have for many years, covering many different collectibles. You'll have to take out riders on some of those books, and if something happens provide some comps for value maybe - but you'll get your check.

Not only that, but all the content in #9 is a reprint from #7. Difference being the photocover was replaced by an interior panel as Ron said. The digest Teen-Age Diary Secrets #7 has more original Baker art than any other St. John romance issue.

That's a good question. Depends first on whether youve got coverage eh 20k shipment hope the OP has something to back stop a disaster. You can shake your fist at CGC till the cows come home, in this life stuff happens

the "Wall of War" ah, the smell of Salidas in the morning! "Reading comics, eating pizza" - two activities separated by a swath of time and maybe two townships if I'm not mistaken! And watch out for ink transfer from that big thug on the right!

Congrats, Rick, on your latest purchases. You've got a good eye and great taste, and when you go in, you go in relatively strong. There goes the neighborhood - but in the best way! And congrats to you and the HA team on a fantastic Romance Showcase Auction. Well done. HA has been a forerunner in bringing the romance goods to auction. The Valentine's Showcase Auction from earlier this year set a high bar in terms of slabbed romance - a very diverse offering of 24 publishers, 181 slabs with an average grade and sales price of 5.8 and $534 respectively. Bakers figured prominently, however, with 35 slabs generating 40% of the total $ in romance slab sales. Two huge St. Johns alone accounted for 31% of the total $ in romance slab sales. So, Baker sells - and sells well. This we know. If you back the Bakers out, you get a better picture of the state of the genre in market terms at that time - 23 publishers, 146 books, $254 slab average on an average grade of 6.3. Now it's 8 months later and we just finished the newest Romance Showcase. One in which there was no Baker, none at all. Instead, it was billed as featuring LB Cole. How'd it go? Tightly focused, it involved just 4 publishers - Ace, Atlas, DC, and Star - offered 119 slabs with an average grade of 6.5, so pretty much the same as the Valentine's Showcase in that respect, but averaged $470 in slab sales price. That would be almost double. And this wasn't on huge Cole representation. In fact, with only 13 slabs, the Star portion was the least of the publishers. With a whopping 65 slabs, the biggest chunk was from Atlas. This actually could have been called the Atlas Romance Showcase (including some LB Cole!). And for romance collectors like me - it was a dream come true. Bakers and Coles abound in the census and in the market. PCR (Pre Code Romance, trademark pending!) Atlas, on the other hand - you could wait a quarter century for some of these books to surface (and I have) - in grade, which for romance means 7.0-7.5 - and still have nothing after all that time. And then keep in mind that of the 65 slabs, 75% were the highest in the census, and often the only one in the census. Another 20% were the 2nd highest in the census. That was NOT the case in the Valentine's Showcase, not by a long stretch. And lest I forget, there was a huge grail non-Atlas book in this auction as well - Falling in Love #1, highest graded impossible all black cover 8.0. In fact, this book starts the SA for romance - in fact, according to me and my imaginary friend, it starts the entire Silver Age! Yup, I just said that! Anyway, it was a great two day treat. Hopefully the start of more sweet graded romance to come. But allow a little time to recuperate, please!

Speaking of which @BaltimoreLauren

Back to the Biggest and Baddest of them all. Death and Destruction personified. Not Our Friend - if only we understood it better. Not capable of understanding sign language from a little 10 year old girl. Feels like a slow motion pivot is going on out there.

Seems like a desperate last minute attempt to make it seem as if this movie is a Captain Marvel movie. Action oriented. Not Captain Marvel adjacent, with humerous song and dance numbers. Testing is probably showing it's not connecting with any demographic, particularly the young women they were counting on. "Oh well we still have those guys. We can always get them into the theater!"

I just read that the movie is undergoing a big rewrite, extensive reshoots, with the diverse "dwarves" getting the boot. Replaced by CGI dwarves as pictured. Well that explains the image. Disney using the press to advance test the waters.

I appreciate your forbearance, Ron, and in general if you could stay the frack away from books I'm interested in, and in this auction there were many, I would appreciate it! Unfortunately many others did not get that memo and have bid very strongly for these books. Dang it! I'll post my thoughts and a rundown on this extraordinary auction sometime soon.

That doesn't surprise me. But this does Hollywood Reporter using an image depicting Zegler with seven (admittedly animated, but still) white dwarves. Image supplied by...Disney. What the what

yeh its a classic Colletta cover - but no interior work by him in this issue Lovers, what a great title - retired pretty much with the code, seems fitting photocover -> Rule -> Hartley and Pike and Colletta, the most wonderful cover progression

just now on Ebay - and that's for the lowest graded, behind a 4.5 and a 6.0 pent up Atlas pre-code romance demand? or is it the "Blissard Blessing"? hmmm

you can run but you can't hide from...the slab

Security is one thing, insurance is another Get insurance

what's the cert # on that slab?

How'd you lose on the #2? It went for the same amount as it did last year.

Rare Sushi sighting!

Essentially eh? Lol. Here's a question for someone who ponders these things - why do you think Gaines wouldn't include even one copy of even one romance issue? EVERYTHING else was there, in all their multiple glory. And love you laying into Edgar! Chuck was amazed and dismayed at the utter disregard (at best) his family had for his lifes passion. So funny if our most revered collector, the OG OCD OO himself, turned out to be a bit of a monster. At the beating heart of it - are comics toxic??

If BA is said to begin more or less with Green Lantern 76 in 4/70, and seen as offering darker, more realistic story lines that were socially relevant - romance couldn't really jive with the new direction to a large degree. To the extent it could, it was through the representation of interracial romance. DC romance was right there with that. Lois Lane 106 11/70 "I Am Curious (Black)!" set the tone and the newly appointed romance editor for DC, Dorothy Woolfolk, got the memo with Young Romance 171 4/71 and Young Love 87 7/71.

Yeh DC has it dialed in. Can you pick a book where you can say here romance BA begins? And for the sake of discussion, include Charlton in the mix

I know what you mean

A warehouse load. It's taken many many years for romance to appreciate to the point where it's become financially feasible to slab most of the 329 Harvey romance line and put them up for sale and make a profit. But that's where we're at. Possibly. We'll see next week in CC's latest auction.

yeh, always liked this book a bunch. Great cover by Alice Kirkpatrick. There's a sole 7.5 in the census. Here's the Crippen copy from 17 years ago. My god has it been that long? According to HA, I didn't bid on it, though for the life of me I can't figure out now why not. A VF/NM that went for $41.

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