sarvaj

Another auction of Canadian golden age comics, hockey cards, toys, premiums, pulps, original art, and sundry by ICEcollectibles ending this Sunday-- well worth a look. https://www.ebay.ca/sch/i.html?_trkparms=folent%3Aicecollectibles%7Cfolenttp%3A1&_ssn=icecollectibles&LH_Auction=1

Another auction of Canadian golden age comics, hockey cards, toys, premiums, pulps, original art, and sundry by ICEcollectibles on Ebay finishes up on Sunday--well worth a look. https://www.ebay.ca/sch/i.html?_trkparms=folent%3Aicecollectibles%7Cfolenttp%3A1&_ssn=icecollectibles&LH_Auction=1

You outbid me for that copy in that Bellville auction. I stopped because I already had a lower grade copy. The character on the cover is The Hangman and it's taken from a Pep splash.

I am currently working on a book of covers from the Canadian war time comics along the lines of Gerber's Photo Journals of American Golden Age Comics. I've managed to source out 97% of these covers and obtained hi-def scans of them. Some members of these boards have already helped me out. I still need 16 hi def scans of covers to complete this project. I am asking if members might have copies of any of these books that they might be able to scan at 300 dpi and share the scan with me for my project. Here is a list of the covers I still need: Grand Slam Comics Vol. 2 No. 3 Grand Slam Comics Vol. 3 No. 7 Lucky Comics No. 33 Robin Hood Comics Vol. 1 No. 4 Rocket Comics Vol. 4 No. 30 Spy Smasher Vol. 1 No. 5 Spy Smasher Vol. 2 No. 2 Spy Smasher Vol. 2 No. 5 Spy Smasher Vol. 2 No. 6 Spy Smasher Vol. 2 No. 8 Spy Smasher Vol. 4 No. 11 Three Aces Comics Vol. 1 No. 11 Three Aces Comics Vol. 3 No. 2 Three Ring Comics No. 2 Whiz Comics Vol. 1 No. 2 Jinx Comics (coverless) nn Hoping some of you can help. Ivan Kocmarek

Large auction of Canadian golden age comics coming up. https://www.comicbookdaily.com/collecting-community/whites-tsunami-weca-splashes/first-annual-canadian-comics-auction-on-i-c-e/

A quick announcement that beginning on June 18 and ending on June 28 there will be an Ebay auction of strictly Canadian comic books and related material. The auction will run on Big B Comics Ebay seller site under the seller name “internationalcollectiblesexchange” (all one lower case word). Proceeds from the auction will go towards helping fund 80th Anniversary of Canadian Comic Books projects such as the reprint of Better Comics No. 1. More than two dozen war time Canadian comics have been donated including items such as Super Comics Vol. 2 No. 6, Canadian Heroes Vol. 1 No. 5, Triumph Comics No. 23, Commando Comics No. 11, and Triumph-Adventure Comics No. 4 (coverless) with more items coming in. There will also be a number of Anglo-American books, both black-and-white and in colour as well as a good number of reprint era books, including a handful of Canadian EC reprints. Get the word out! Get ready to bid on these hard to find Canadian golden age books.

Thanks for putting this up, Stephen. However, it still doesn't establish the fact that it is a Canadian publication. A comic indicia usually has the full title of the publication and issue number along with the Publisher's name and city of publication among some other things. This is only a copyright statement and it's a New York-based company which I've never heard of before. I would have thought that the copyright should have been Timely. There is no indication that the book was published in Canada and I think the resolution of this is still a mystery. CGC didn't state it was a Canadian edition. Something definitive needs to come out so that we can go one way or another. The assumption is that. because the interior is in black-and-white, it must be a Canadian publication, but I think that this is an unwarranted assumption. We need to know more... Here is the indicia for Better Comics Vol. 2 No. 10 which is probably from around the same time as these 'Timely' annuals came out.

You know, there's no direct indication that these books were printed in Canada. Most people assume this because the interiors are black-and-white, but they have no indicia and no marking to link them to any of the Canadian publishers that were in operation at the time, or any other indication that they were printed and distributed in Canada. Even the CGC labels choose not to call them Canadian editions. I can't call them Canadian until we have proof that they are and I wonder if we ever will...?

These just in...

Just in case anybody from Comic Link reads this. The Dime 34 in the auction that starts Oct. 12 is listed as a "Canadian White" with that long vague paragraph trying to define what a "Canadian White" is. As most of us know this is a comic from 1952 that uses the old Dime masthead but is actually a reprint of the American Space Squadron #4 (Dec. 51). I hope they can fix this in the next few days. Thanks for Jim Finlay for bringing this to my attention.

Thanks for the update, Jon. I'm sure things will be in order when the auctions starts

A few of us have noticed two glaring CGC slabbing errors in the books being offered for the August CLINK auction. First, the Victory #1 is not a comic book. It is a Canadian pulp with a Ted Steele cover. The CGC description should list it as a pulp. Second the listed and CGC labelled Freelance #1 is actually a Freelance Vol. 1 No. 12. Bidders and buyers who only know a little about golden age Canadian books are probably going to be misled and bid inappropriately. Hope somebody from CLINK or CGC reads this and gets it fixed before the start of the auction.

Am I mistaken or do all the CLINK WECA books put up for the August auction have the faulty new CGC holders? I guess this won't have any effect on the auction because you can just send them back in for re-slabbing. But certainly puts a wrinkle in it. Maybe CLINK will still send the books back to CGC to get the fixed slabs since there seems to be enough turn around time.

Thanks, I've stopped writing the column for Comic Book Daily due to an editorial conflict but we are revamping our "whites" website, Canada's Own Comics ( http://canadasowncomics.com/ ) and the new iteration should appear sometime in July. I'll be doing my column there and we'll have a "whites" forum or two on the site as well and some other features. As for the WECA Comics Price Guide we're working on, the consensus was that we should plow ahead on it and get it out by Labour Day for Fan Expo in Toronto and not wait for the Clink auctions. No matter when we put the guide out, the prices will be outdated on the day that it's published like any other price guide and since it's main purpose is to be the first real informative checklist of these books we shouldn't be hung up on the prices listed as the main thing.

I know what you mean, I finished grad school 35 years ago at a time way before the internet and google... when all my references and connections were on index cards and in ledgers but the air inside midnight libraries and archival labyrinths is of a special nostalgia for me--like that wonderul musty smell of comics just fished out of a basement.

I know Bell had a deal with a distributor in Manchester in the UK as you can see with the 9 pence price listed under the 10 cent price on the cover, but I've never found any evidence that the Bell books had a distribution deal in the states like Anglo-american had through Fawcett with it's later colour books from late 45-46.

Even though this contains American reprints, I still consider FBI 2 to be a WECA comic and it appears in our coming price guide.In 1946 Cy Bell wanted to trademark and copyright register a handful of new titles such as Red Hot Comics, Jet Man Comics, The Brain Comics, and FBI comics and ash can black-and-white copies of issues No. 1 of all these titles exist at LAC. These were all intended to have new Canadian material in colour but everything collapsed. The cover for the FBI ash can is an unpublished new Fred Kelly cover that few people have seen. The ash can mock ups had the interior pages of already published WECA books such as Triumph Comics No. 29. When the bottom suddenly fell out, Cy Bell's plans collapsed and he put out issues No. 2 of Red Hot Comics, Jet Man Comics, FBI Comics, Nitro Comics with American reprinted colour contents. I regard these as the transition books between the WECA and FECA periods. Ivan

Here's LAC's Dime 26 cover:

Don't know if you guys know yet but the Library and Archives of Canada has digitized their collection of Bell Features comics and has had them up for a couple of months on line. Go to their Library Search page at: http://www.collectionscanada.gc.ca/lac-bac/results/lib?FormName=AMICUS+Simple+Search&PageNum=1&SortSpec=score+desc&Language=eng&QueryParser=lac_amicus&Sources=amicus&SearchIn_1=&SearchInText_1=dime+comics+no.+1&Operator_1=AND&SearchIn_2=&SearchInText_2=&Operator_2=AND&SearchIn_3=&SearchInText_3=&ParaUserView=UserView.Lac&Publication=&SourceLanguage=+++&Format=&MaterialDateOperator=after&MaterialDate=&ResultCount=10&MaterialSource= and put in a title such as "Dime Comics" and you get a link like this which list further links to each of the issues they have of that title: http://amicus.collectionscanada.gc.ca/aaweb-bin/aamain/itemdisp?sessionKey=999999999_142&l=0&d=2&v=0&lvl=1&itm=16526995 It's been a long time in coming but they've done a great job and now everybody gets to see these great issues in complete form. (hope those links work--they could have made it a lot easier but you know academic archives....)

Jimmy, please read my article in Overstreet #44 on these comics we are talking about before you do your broadcast.

The author of the Hamilton Spectator article quotes me a saying that Better 1 at $100,000 US is "...worth every cent." I never said this when he talked with me and it looks like he came up with this quote from a faulty recollection of our conversation or out of a desire for some sort of melodrama in the piece. --Ivan

It's in US $ and has to be to relate to the overall market.

Brian, I know Walter very well and so do Jim, Tony, and Stephen. The reasons for the listing of Better 1 at that price point is not at all a malicious one or an attempt to manipulate the price. The four of us working on the WECA Price Guide are doing so in a completely sober atmosphere and greatly value our integrity and don't want to compromise it in any way in the Price Guide. I'm sure that Walt will write everything up on Comic Book Daily in a week or so. We planned the guide to be ready for Fan Expo on Labour Day weekend but with the CLINK auction coming up at the end of August we'll probably push it back a little to include those results because there appears to be a great selection of WECA books that will go up on the auction block with many in solid grades not like the first couple of CLINK auctions. If anybody is concerned about underselling their WECA books, I would recommend getting them slabbed and up on CLINK to see what people will pay for them. A price guide is just that--a guide and not a written-in-stone statement that sellers have to get the stated price or that buyers have to pay the stated price. I think it gives sellers and buyers a point to begin negotiating a deal and so many other factors come into play as well. In fact, the best part of the WECA Price Guide for me is not the money numbers sitting in those columns but the fact that it will be the best checklist (with 1st apps., significant covers, important artists credits, etc. notations) that has been done so far. It's been too long to be without something like this to help people understand and acquire these books in a confident way.

Thanks for your thoughtful and clarifying reply, Brian. I really do appreciate your love of Freelance. He's one of the best written characters (done by Toronto Telegram editor Ted McCall and wonderfully rendered by Ed Furness) from the WECA period and demands a reprint series at some point--mind you it would have to be a three volume reprint because of the number of stores available. It's a reprint series I've been pushing for for some time. I hope somebody like Chapterhouse might do it. I don't mean to run down CGC decimal grading system because it provides a service that has made this hobby grow (and this is a CGC forum, isn't it?). But sometimes it can go over the line for those of us who started collecting in the sixties. I think your move to FECA books is one that many people are making and I see them being snapped up regularly on eBay. There are many lovely and distinctive books from that period and they are all Canadian. A checklist price guide of all of them that we know about would be our next project after we finish the WECA Price Guide which, itself, we hope will be ready for Fan Expo in Toronto this year. As for Walt's listing of the Better 1, we all have to remember that this an asking price and not a realized price point. I wonder what the person who sold the book to Walt will think if and when he sees the listing? Sorry for the long text posts. I'll try to send a pic or two next time.

You're right, speculation on a commodity that is essentially character driven would lead you to the first appearance of Nelvana and Johnny Canuck as the choices to put pennies in your pocket and most collectors would agree. But for me, the first issues of the four Maple Leaf titles are more desirable because they have the first work by so many of those great Vancouver creators and are way more interesting but after collecting comics for over 50 years I still can't properly appreciate how just character and decimal points (cgc grades) drive the value of comics. For me The Iron Man is only a small part. It's a much more interesting book than the 9 page colour The Iron Man story.