Hepcat

That is correct. United Parcel Services are out-and-out rip-off artists. UPS levy custom brokerage fees to collect the 13.5% GST that far exceed the GST! In fact the UPS fee is so high I've almost refused delivery in the past. As a Canadian I always specify no UPS.

+1000000 A thread that is not look at my key book worth X amount (Besides the SC 4) is something this board needs more of! This thread is for people who enjoy old funny books! 1956 was a kick azz year! I agree 100%! The year 1956 had a plethora of titles not often seen let alone posted including several DC funny animal titles. 1956 also featured a riot of comic book genres including some such as jungle girl that would soon completely disappear from the stands. Moreover the western and war comics that companies such as Atlas, Charlton and Quality were publishing in 1956 were far grittier and thus more interesting than the ones that were still being published later in the Silver Age. It was a great year for anyone who truly likes comics and not just the business of comics.

Those Flash issues were all among the comics you sold, were they not?

Yes. And all brutally difficult to find in high grades.

Thank you! I need more from the fifties though. So tough!

Here's a scan of the only comic in my collection cover dated March 1956: It was another great month for comics though. Here are pictures of the six I'd most like to add to my collection: Joe Maneely was a true master at his craft. Had he not suffered an untimely demise, he might have stayed the star of Marvel's bullpen through the Silver Age. Had I seen covers like that as a kid, Wyatt Earp would have become my favourite cowboy hero! Wow! Talk about obscure! And I love that mushroom cover. Awwwww! Another Rex the Wonder Dog cover that knocks it out of the park. Did I ever mention how I love those mushroom covers? Great composition! I badly need to add this one to my collection of Lone Ranger comics. Mmmmm Uncle Scrooge, a nice one!

Yeah, I really like it too!

Not sure which 4 you mean but: SC4 @350 SC8 @183 H1 @ 1279 AF15 @2471 Flash 105 @454 Flash 106 @205 Flash 123 @593 Actually I was thinking of Showcase 4, 8, 13 and 14 but those other ones are nice to see for comparison's sake as well.

Are the other Flash Showcase comics not even tougher to find in high grade than is Showcase 4? Or at least Showcase 8? Can anyone post the latest census figures on all four of these comics?

Over the Easter weekend I had kisielius which is a jellied berry pudding with roughly the consistency of applesauce. Here in North America it's typically made from cranberries because it's traditionally served on Xmas Eve which is a time when fresh cranberries are still widely available in grocery stores: Kisielius is a light, refreshing dessert bursting with flavour and is something any berry lover can appreciate. It's popular throughout northeastern Europe where it's made from cherries, raspberries, strawberries, currants, in other words whatever berries are at hand. A thinner version is often served as a hot or cold beverage, particularly in Russia. (Warning: Never buy the kisielius mixes sold commercially in northeastern Europe. They're just a jelly dessert and simply awful.) I topped my kisielius off with my gourmet version of Dream Whip. I substitute 35% whipping cream for the milk called for in the Dream Whip recipe. I need the extra calories to maintain my fighting edge.

Oh wow! That's a nice one!

These are perhaps Gil Kane's three greatest Green Lantern covers ever:

Could you post individual scans of your issues #6, 7, 13, 15, 22 and 24 please?

Here are scans of a five more of my Green Lantern comics that I don't think I've posted yet:

Here's another cover concept that DC recycled. From 1959 by Nick Cardy for editor Jack Schiff: From 1963 by Lee Elias for editor Murray Boltinoff who had previously been Jack Schiff's assistant: And from 1965 by D ick Dillin for editor Jack Schiff:

Here now are scans of the comics from my collection cover dated February 1956: Here as well are the five comics from February 1956 that I'd most like to add to my collection: Hey! An actual Apache? Wow! I love those MiG covers! I seem to be the only remaining fan of DC funny animal comics. Sad. Disney plus diner equals big hit with me! Mmmmm! A gritty Atlas western with Joe Maneely cover art!

Can you show us some interior scans please?

One of the reasons I really enjoy visiting Montréal is that it's still replete with mid-twentieth century casse-croûtes and other establishments featuring my type of dining:

Unfair! Neither of those titles are 2nd stringers!

Don't worry! I'll still be posting scans from my collection in December. Here now are scans of the comics from my collection cover dated January 1956: Here as well are the half dozen comics from January 1956 that I'd most like to add to my collection: Mmmmm, Lorna! Gritty Atlas war tales from Korea! Mmmmmm, Nyoka! Oh man! Too cool with the goat and all! I'm getting hungry! I've been heavily into Dagwood sandwiches lately. Wow! Who knew that Quality war comics were so gritty?

I'd venture to say that we all need to see more scans like that one!

Speaking of pedigrees for Atlas comics, which pedigrees include a good cross section of Atlas and other fifties comics? It seems to me that pedigrees are either Golden Age or Silver Age, while the Atomic Age is missed.

Here are scans of a dozen of my favourite Joe Kubert covers from my collection:

Slot car racing was hugely popular with young boys in the mid-sixties. Ads such as these were a common feature in DC comics at the time: And this Cap's Hobby Hints appeared in the DC comics that hit the newstands fifty years ago in February 1966: So the number of commercial slot car tracks in the United States like the ones in these pictures had reached 3500 by late 1965! Slot car racing started out as an off-shoot of building plastic car models. Kids built Monogram, AMT, Revell and Cox kits such as these to race at their local tracks: 1/24 scale Revell Lotus 23 at left and the above 1/32 scale Monogram Ferrari 330 P/LM at right: Imagine being able to race the model car you had just built! Model building was very popular with kids in those days so it's not surprising that the number of commercial tracks exploded. I knew of three right in my own home town of London, Ontario in 1966. What killed the hobby by the end of the sixties was that slot car racing technology advanced so quickly in the 1964 -1967 period that kids found their lovingly built cars to be uncompetitive within months if not weeks of purchase. Moreover by 1968 kids couldn't master or even afford the best technology/techniques available. And with the advent of ever more aerodynamic bodies made of lightweight Lexan instead of traditional styrene plastic, the link to model building was broken. Therefore a new crop of ten and eleven year olds didn't replace the fifteen and sixteen year olds moving on to other interests, e.g. real cars, guitars and girls. There are still quite a few tracks across the country these days though. For example: Buzz-A-Rama in Brooklyn, New York PJ Raceway in Ronkonkoma, New York TSS Hobbies in Monroe, Michigan Mid-America in Bloomington, Illinois Buena Park Raceway, California Dallas Slot Cars The Race Place in Holly Hill, Florida Metro Slot Car Raceway in Montréal, Québec Strikingly good looking pre-built cars by companies such as Scalextric, Carrera and Revell-Monogram are popular these days. For example, this 1/32 scale Scalextric Ford GT: This 1/32 scale Scalextric 1970 Charger Daytona: This 1/32 scale Scalextric Lola Nighthawk: These 1/24 scale Carrera 1934 Ford Coupes: And this 1/24 scale Carrera 1941 Chevy: But Revell-Monogram and other companies still make kits available as well for those who like to assemble and paint details on their own cars. The tracks have strict specifications for races these days so that ordinary hobbyists are not at a disadvantage to those willing to employ the latest expensive technology in their cars.

Now that spring is less than a month away, a young cat's thoughts turn to ... ice cream! And the brand I most fondly remember from my younger days was Silverwood's. The slogan for Silverwood's Ice Cream was "Smoother than velvet", and you can take it from me that the slogan was no lie. If there's one thing we felines know it's dairy! My older sister worked at the Silverwood's ice cream plant on Bathurst Street in London not far from our house for a couple of summers in the sixties. She brought home a whole set of very cool Air Force trading cards for me in 1963(?). They were a premium enclosed in Creamsicle and Fudgesicle wrappers like this one from Winnipeg: I worked at the Silverwood's ice cream plant myself for part of the summer of 1973 although by this time it had moved to the southern outskirts of London by Highway 401. The Silverwood Dairy got its start in London early in the twentieth century. It soon carved out a strong position in Ontario markets including Toronto using the slogan “You can’t beat our milk, but you can whip our cream”. Like other dairies of the time, Silverwood's provided home delivery service using horse drawn carts. Here are a couple of pictures of Silverwood's milk wagons: The horse drawn carts were gradually phased out after WWII although Silverwood's still had a few of these wagons wending their way along London's leafy streets until sometime in the mid-sixties. It was back in 1963-64 that my mother and I saw that the train car being backed into the Labatt Breweries plant had somehow collided with a Silverwood's horse much to the detriment of the latter. Her uncharitable comment at the time was that Labatt's didn't want people to drink milk.... Silverwood's continued home delivery well into the seventies using Divco trucks like this one pictured doing deliveries in Toronto's Parkside neighbourhood: Silverwood's continued to grow by acquisition over the decades and by the early seventies had become the largest dairy in Canada with operations from coast-to-coast. Trucks such as these were a not uncommon sight on Canada's highways in the seventies and eighties: In the meantime Silverwood's launched Mac's Milk Stores in 1963 which also grew to become Canada's largest chain of convenience stores by the seventies. In 1984 though the Silverwood Dairy was sold to Ault Foods, the dairy subsidiary of John Labatt Limited just down Ridout Street from Silverwood Industries' head office. Ault Foods had acquired the rights to the Sealtest name brand in 1981 and the philistines at Ault decided to discontinue the proud Canadian Silverwood's brand name for the dairy business and go with the American corporate brand name Sealtest instead! Imagine that! One London company vandalizing another. I was incensed. I would have pulled the corporate fat cat who made that decision at Labatt's out of his chair and given him a sound beating! Ironically John Labatt Limited revealed just how shallow its commitment was to the dairy business just a few short years later. Labatt's.sold off the dairy business in 1996-97 with the ice cream operations going to Swiss multinational Nestlé. So Silverwood's ice cream, butter, milk, they've all been consigned to history. The only thing that remains of the proud Silverwood's Canadian brand name is an occasional sighting of Silverwood's eggnog around Xmas and perhaps yogurt. Otherwise it lives on only in the memory of dairy enthusiasts and local history buffs such as myself. Here are a few pieces of Silverwood's memorabilia from my collection. First of all a menu from a closed diner in Dundas, Ontario: A butter wrapper: A Dixie Cup: The spoon that Silverwood's distributed for use with the cream top bottles the company sold: