Readcomix

This. The seller sounds to me mildly sociopathic, frankly, wanting to play some control game. I'd simply reply with my own terms, likely, similar to what MustEatBrains laid out, and if he declined I would politely welcome him to keep my number but assure him I won't be doing business that way. (Let's say box 1 of the 30 is the only one you don't want. His way, you both never know. The conventional way, you might well buy 1 unwanted box along with 29 you do want. Maybe that hypothetical would help him understand.) I have heard of one other guy doing this, but he was a long-time collector, known to the dealer who was doing the buying, and the dealer knew it was all going to be Golden Age horror and war in nice shape, so it was fairly known quantity in comparison. I also do not think he was adamant about closing down the relationship if the dealer passed on anything, but then again they both knew he would want pretty much all of it, so that tactic may not have been applicable. But it was very much a "this is what I am ready to sell now" kind of approach.

My fave too -- congrats Rick!

Deadly double to dancing duo

Well, post away, bro! She's core Archie!

Make sense. Either would contribute to scarcity today -- targeted distribution only, or rejection by broader distributors. Targeted does make a lot of sense.

Thx! I really don't know the answer either, and we have long lived with the apocrypha that this book is extremely rare. While it may be more common than thought, I think rare is certainly still a fair adjective, though the Overstreet technical definition of scarce is also a possibility. I go back to my speculation that if Dell's Lobo #1 (with a 1965 print run of about 200,000) could experience returns of unopened cases from distributors, (Wikipedia quotes Dell writer of book as saying they sold maybe 10,000-15,000 copies, mostly due to distributors rejecting it), then a 1947 book could well have had a similar experience, at least in terms of proportion of books printed and shipped versus rejected by distributors.

Thanks to this thread, I went and tracked this down:

No, I haven't lost my mind. See the interior page shot.

Found this the other day. I'm a sucker for bright and flat, chips or no.

My daughter's Christmas present just landed

I'll second that!

This might be in Comcav's mailbox by now, but it is cool

Baker to Baker

Here ya go....while we're at, other pin-ups from the issue, and the first page of Josie's debut:

I guess someone better dig out that Betty in a towel pin-up page...

It IS a great book, though ...

This makes sense. Consider Dell's experience putting out Lobo almost 20 years later, in 1965. Supposedly they printed about 200,000 copies of Lobo #1 and were receiving whole cases back from distributors refusing to distribute it. Actual sales from the few who did totaled about 10-15,000, the story goes. Not hard to imagine a similar experience in 1947. I Have seen one really ratty copy offered; I recall it went on eBay a couple years ago maybe. $500 opening bid, and one bid took it, IIRC. I really wanted it but remember thinking from pix and description that it was just too deteriorated for a book I wanted to handle and keep for a good while.

Calling Dr. Love...

Outlaws to fugitives

My first thought when I saw this today was, "How the heck do I not have one of these already?" Fixed!

Long overdue

Heartwarming, ain't I?

NOT a page 2 thread...fixing that with today's acquisitions...

Landed these today