Book Guy

Visited a friend last week who is an avid Weird Tales Collector with a second common friend to catch up on things and view his collection. Was served a great spaghetti dinner and was allowed to handle the Mags! Here are some shots of a few mid-30's highlights. These were formerly Frank Robinson's under copies and are very nice indeed. Better than the pictures show. He also had a number of the 'bed sheet' issues and many from the 1920's. It was fascinating to see the evolution of WT through the years through actual copies spread out in front of you. I had not seen many of the bed sheet issues before. Definitely the Brundage era covers are the best, though there are outstanding covers from all eras. WT is something I was interested in collecting, back in the day, but never quite managed to grab more than a couple of copies and now that ship has sailed!

Enjoy!

On 9/20/2023 at 12:11 PM, Yorick said:

I like a certain author...  I'm prohibited from writing his name.

Same here! He's my # 1 Collection focus over the years though I rarely buy anything anymore.

On 9/21/2023 at 9:09 PM, Darwination said:

I'm going to go ahead and stick these here since it's an active thread and seems to have a lot of material.  I considered the sweat mags thread, but I don't know if these are exactly that.

I've been sorting through 40 boxes today (almost there, good lord, fun tho) and separating books out into type and genre, etc. First time I've ever done a comprehensive sort.  I always take cover scans of magazines and pulps (wish I'd done it for all  comics and newspapers and tabloids and paperbacks, too) as they come in, so I can see my collection that way, but it's another thing altogether to sort the slicks from the pulps from the modern mags, pulps into genres or titles, etc.  I showed off this set (have some dupes,too, not sure if these are all scans of my best copies) to my wife.  She sat there with a look of horror at my wonder with these covers.  Thomas Beecham, True Strange 1-7.  I think I saw the original of one of these cover's original painting sell in the last couple years for like a grand, no love from the art world!

 

I like TRUE STRANGE as well. I have the Elvis and I think one other, though I don't see it here. Might be wrong

Display copies? Hung on the wall? The kid bought them for a discount when the next issue arrived?

On 6/23/2023 at 8:31 AM, Number 6 said:

I think this a key point:  if customers only have access to your book inventory by walking through your door or the handful of shows you attend you’re going to miss a lot of the interest that’s out there. 
 

Dealers who have their own websites with searchable inventory, or at the very least, sell through sites like ABE or Biblio, seem to be doing fine. Auction sites like HA and PBA Galleries seem to get strong results. 
 

It wasn’t just comics, there was a bunch of quality book material that got snatched up during the lockdowns of ‘20/21.  Books aren’t as sexy and pound for pound probably don’t get the same crazy money that comics are getting right now, but there still seems to be strong interest for now. 

My best years in business were the pandemic years and this year is still above average. So things went wild in Books too. Also eBay has come of age as a site to sell books with. eBay outsells Amazon and ABE combined for me. The key in the current market (to me at least) is to be more careful about what Books you invest your time in describing, photographing etc. I'm becoming more ruthless on what I pass on-even after I've already paid for it. Unless there is some buying pressure on a Book, I don't want to carry it. Or at least it has to be unusual, scarce, rare in a jacket etc. Otherwise I don't bother to put extra effort into trying and just donate or discard it. This was not my habit in the past, or rather I was more willing to give these marginal books a chance. Also online I don't handle anything below a price of $15.00. And I'm sure that price point will continue to rise. Even at that price point I don't carry much-only items I have a long history of selling and I know will move fairly quickly. And you can't raise the price of slow books to match an arbitrary price floor. There has to be, or seem to be genuine desire for the Book at any particular price. Also, I rarely 'Overprice' deliberately just to see if there is a market for something. Lastly expensive Books punch above their weight-as should seem obvious. They pull in more money for the same amount of work. So I try to have as many of those as possible.

I was somewhat surprised about how well Stephen King still sold. I got a lot of his Books recently, sometimes in multiple copies, mostly sharp. It had been a few years since I handled a large number of his Books. Usually they trickle in one at a time, usually with reading wear etc. So I was surprised at how much the prices had risen (Pandemic!) so I experimented with the prices on these by pricing them higher than I would have considered 3 years ago but not in the nosebleed environs of the top priced copies. They sold pretty well and I was uncertain any would sell at those sort of prices. So he's still solid for me.

Another example is LONESOME DOVE. I sold 2 (maybe 3) copies of nice copies in jackets at $200 or so. It's a common Book and its time is somewhat past. None sold overnight but each took a month or two to sell but it showed there was still ample demand.

A walk in Bookstore is almost a thing of the past.

Younger people still want Books but what exactly they want is not fully formed yet. For example if they like Beat Lit, they might desire to own First Editions or conversely be satisfied with a 1972 paperback reprint of ON THE ROAD considering it to be a Vintage 'Beat Era' artifact. Time will tell.

Wow!

TWO Scuba Covers!

WOW! Great Stuff! I've never seen any of them. Lots of True Crime. Was that typical of Canadian Pulps? I loved the CRACKED DETECTIVE and HISTOIRE! Mystery Fiction Canadian Pulps must be quite rare. Wow again!

Another winner! New York City has certainly suffered on Comic Book covers!

More Everett lurching about

Floating eyes again

I really love the walking through walls covers of which Atlas did a lot!

A colorful and lively cover, but maybe not very effective for this sort of Mag.

Companion Mag to MYSTIC I guess.

A good cover idea, but too stiff and not creepy

Sexy 50's housewife! Could be a Slasher Movie poster.

I like the portrayal of Alternate Universes. At least that's what I think it's showing...

I think MYSTIC is my favorite title. Not because the contents are better, I just like that there was a comic named MYSTIC! Literal BIG FOOT (Print) Cover here to go with the other Bigfoot/Yeti theme covers.

On 6/4/2023 at 9:47 PM, OtherEric said:

To make a VERY general statement, I think on average you'll pay about double for a D-Series Mystery double what you would pay for a SF or Western, with tons of qualifiers based on demand for the specific book and so on, of course.  You'll pay about the same for an average Western or SF book, but you'll see about 100 SF doubles for every Western double you run into.

If you want REALLY scarce, look for the handful that aren't in any of the three main categories.

The Wodehouse I see around. I sold a copy earlier this year. The others are pretty hard. There won't be much buying pressure on them as they fly under the radar of genre collectors so the prices might be reasonable. Other than the Wodehouse it looks like the others are French Authors in translation. An Editorial idea that didn't pan out?

On 6/4/2023 at 4:20 PM, Surfing Alien said:

100%. Way harder. Sci-Fi collectors have hoarded everything compared to other genre collectors. OtherEric and I have discussed this and the Westerns are even tougher to find, although usually cheaper, since they are less collected.

The later Ace Double westerns seem to turn up fairly often. Almost nobody collects them or collected them back in the day but I still see them around. The Mysteries almost uniformly have great covers. The earliest D Westerns also have very Pulpy Covers, but they are Westerns so I just don't care much emotionally!