Before Overstreet, just how were Comic Book Prices determined

[homerwannabee]

Looks like they are still selling reprints of the Argosy comic guide

 

http://www.quasarcomics.com/argosy/index.htm

[Mutant Manatee]

Another question begs to be asked when was the Silver Age name coined?

 

I'm reading the 1974 Overstreet where he refers to the Flash 105 as the start of the "Second Heroic Age of Comics

 

 

 

 

WEBHEAD

 

 

I'm not sure if this is the "first" mention of the Silver Age, but it is the earliest mention of it that I can find in the Overstreet Guides. From the 1975 edition on page 30:

 

"1956: Beginning with the Flash in Showcase No. 4, Julius Schwartz began a popular revival of "D.C." superheroes which would lead to the "Silver Age" in comic book history."

[WEBHEAD]

Another question begs to be asked when was the Silver Age name coined?

 

I'm reading the 1974 Overstreet where he refers to the Flash 105 as the start of the "Second Heroic Age of Comics

 

 

 

 

WEBHEAD

 

 

I'm not sure if this is the "first" mention of the Silver Age, but it is the earliest mention of it that I can find in the Overstreet Guides. From the 1975 edition on page 30:

 

"1956: Beginning with the Flash in Showcase No. 4, Julius Schwartz began a popular revival of "D.C." superheroes which would lead to the "Silver Age" in comic book history."

 

 

thanks!! great catch.

 

 

WEBHEAD

[Sqeggs]

Apparently, "The Argosy Price Guide" was truly the first comic book price guide (predating Overstreet by 5 years).

 

Bruce Edwards, in a forward to a reprint of the original guide, writes: "I had never heard of The Argosy Price Guide until one was consigned for auction in my Fantastic Mail Bid Sale #18 which closed on July 23, 1994."

 

Bill Schelly, in the introduction of this reprint, writes:

 

"It was the brainchild of the couple who owned the Argosy Book Shop, a small used book store on North Las Palmas Avenue in downtown Hollywood, California (no one has been able to definitely recall their names, but Malcolm Willits remembers them as Dave and Virginia). They saw money being made by the old comics for sale at the nearby Cherokee Book Store and hatched a plan to break into the burgeoning market. Because they knew nothing about comics, Dave and Virginia hired two young comic book fans named Michael Cohen and Tom Horsky to draft a price guide for them. Cohen and Horsky applied the knowledge they had gained from assisting Burt Blum at Cherokee since 1962, and quickly came up with what became the text of this seminal price guide.

 

"The first advertisement for the publication was a full-page in the Rocket's Blast--Comicollector #42 (November 1965) which read: 'New and unique from Argosy--COMIC BOOK PRICE GUIDE...over 5,000 comic book issues listed! Only 5.00 per copy. A must for all serious comic collectors.' The advertisement asked dealers to send for quantity prices. 'Every comic book buyer is a potential customer.'

 

"Apparently at 5.00 there was very little demand (or someone advised the owners that it was ridiculously over-priced, in a day when fanzines never cost more than 1.00) for in the very next issue of RB-CC, a slightly humbler ad proclaimed 'Price slashed!!!! Now only 1.98.' Even then, it seems that very few copies were sold (and it is therefore incredibly scarce today). As a result, this first price guide had no noticeable impact on the market. Dealers continued to do what they always did, which was price comics by the estimated replacement cost, and according to the prices they could get and what other dealers were asking.

 

"Still, there's no getting around the historical fact that the Argosy Price Guide was the pioneer effort...and accurately reflected the fact that the scarcity and value of back-issue comic books was becoming apparent.

 

"As incomplete as it is, lacking even rudimentary information about comic book grading, APG does list prices quite in line with the market at the time: Action Comics #1: 100.00; Detective Comics #27: 80.00; Showcase #4: 7.50; Fantastic Four #1: 6.00; Amazing Fantasy #15: 5.00. So it's fun to look through, and shake one's head at those early prices. Don't we all wish we had a time machine?

 

"Speaking of prices, I was told that an original copy of this guide sold for a price in excess of $200 recently (this would've been the mid to late 1990s). There may only be a few dozen originals in existence, if that! It's a unique artifact of those early days of comics fandom, which I've dubbed its 'golden age.' As such, its re-publication has real historical significance. Could we ever have been so innocent?"

 

Very interesting. I had never heard of that price guide. I do remember the old price lists from Howard Rogofsky. I have a very dim recollection of someone I knew slightly buying a Superman 1 from Rogofsky for $20. Everyone was convinced that my acquaintance would go down in history as the victim of the greatest ripoff ever.

[Zonker]

Another question begs to be asked when was the Silver Age name coined?

 

I'm reading the 1974 Overstreet where he refers to the Flash 105 as the start of the "Second Heroic Age of Comics

 

 

 

 

WEBHEAD

 

 

I'm not sure if this is the "first" mention of the Silver Age, but it is the earliest mention of it that I can find in the Overstreet Guides. From the 1975 edition on page 30:

 

"1956: Beginning with the Flash in Showcase No. 4, Julius Schwartz began a popular revival of "D.C." superheroes which would lead to the "Silver Age" in comic book history."

 

 

thanks!! great catch.

 

 

WEBHEAD

 

Michael Uslan's Theory, Courtesy of Wikipedia

[FlyingDonut]

From Quasar Comics' website:

 

"The Argosy Comic Book Price Guide is the first known comic book price guide that was not a dealer's price list. It predates the well known Overstreet guide by over 5 years! The story of the guide is one which features all the comic book dreams that fans during the sixties loved! Michael Cohen and Tom Horsky, both young teen-age comic fans at the time, were employed by The Argosy Book Store in downtown Hollywood, California to develop the guide! A 38 page digest size saddle stitched booklet was the result.

 

Featuring such prices as Action #1 at $100.00, Detective #27 at $80.00 and Amazing Fantasy #15 at $5.00, the guide is a fairly accurate portrayal of the emerging back issue comic book market at that time. The guide had an original cover price of $5.00, which was quite a lot for a booklet (later reduced to $1.98). Being so expensive, few copies were sold. It is estimated that fewer than 50 copies of the original edition have survived. "

 

[FlyingDonut]

The Argosy Adventure

as recalled by Thomas N. Horsky

 

July 3, 1995

 

Thirty years ago, Summer 1965, my best friend Michael Cohen and I started working for a small used book store off Hollywood Blvd. in downtown Hollywood, CA. The beat couple in their late 30's who owned Argosy Books were not doing too well. They decided they needed an edge, a draw to attract business to their modest store. At that time, used book stores dotted the streets of old Hollywood and Los Angeles proper, and many of them offered boxes of second-hand comics for a nickel, or five for 20 cents, and Mike and I would spend our summers biking from one store to another, checking out the newsstands along the route for the latest issues. It was in this way we discovered and worked for Cherokee Books in 1962, and later Collector's Books, both a stone's throw from Argosy. You see, Bert Blum's dad operated Cherokee, one of the best new and rare book store's in LA, and had given Bert a pair of small rooms upstairs (previously used for storage) so he could pursue his hobby-- buying and selling comic books.

 

Bert opened up the world of pre-60's comicdom to us, and hundreds of extinct 40's and 50's titles which we had never seen could be found on his shelves. Our job was, and I kid you not, to sort through his recently acquired collections to determine which were valuable enough to add to the shelves (we had first pick of both the rejects and the valuables)-- of course we were paid in comics. But the most exciting moment was when we were invited to delve into the cabinet which contained the golden age collectibles that fetched $2.50 and up. Of the few hundred books contained therein at any given time were the Kirby Captain America's, Green Lantern, All-Star, Detective, Action, and in general all the original superhero mags which we had only heard of in faint whispers. The most expensive issues (well beyond the buying power of twelve-year-olds) were Action #1 at $35, Detective #27 at $25, and an exceptionally well-preserved Whiz #1 at $50. These we were allowed to read and handle as part of our education. Being realistic investors, we nevertheless preferred rounding out our 50's and 60's collections with purchases such as Amazing Fantasy #15, which I bought for 35 cents, although we would occasionally part with the price of a Cap or a More Fun.

 

Not long after, Leonard Brown and Malcolm Willits opened Collector's Books, trying to compete with Cherokee (which they never successfully did; Bert never made much money either, but he had free rent). Len and Mal were different in that they were collectors themselves, and had a huge warehouse full of old newspapers and magazines. Hence, our work for them centered on sorting old Sunday funnies and papers (Flash Gordon was my favorite). Mal, a schoolteacher, had an enormous private collection of the 30's Disney books drawn by Carl Barks. I admit that I never saw half of all the stuff Collector's had. Years later, Mal bought Cherokee Books becoming very successful as a commercial book dealer.

 

Back to Argosy. The owner knew that we were avid comic collectors, and he wanted to break in on the comic market, which by 1965 was beginning to look more interesting than the sagging rare book market. But Argosy had neither comic books nor any idea what they could bring. So he commissioned Mike and me to draft a price guide, ostensibly for his own use. Faced with an opportunity to make some real money from a project that sounded like fun, we agreed to charge an hourly rate for our contract services. Upon closer scrutiny, however, the project was more difficult than it sounded, for unlike rare book appraisals, comic price guides didn't exist. In fact, formal pricing didn't exist. There was so little trading in golden age comics and almost no store-mediated trading in the 50's and 60's comics that, apart from the really visible first issues, pricing was essentially uniform: old comics were either curiosities (worth 25 cents), or collectibles (worth $2.50 to $7.00) with nothing in between. The choice we made then was to allow pricing to vary more continuously between these extremes using the same metric so long applied to books-- rarity.

 

Due to the paper drives of WWII, many golden age comics were rare compared to their initial print runs, but not according to rare book standards. Thus, a few thousand copies in existence would render the issue valueless, a few hundreds interesting, a few tens valuable, and an issue with a few known copies, priceless. Priceless? Say-- $100, but only if it was really neat. Besides, who really knew how many copies of an issue were out there? This was a decade before the discovery of the Church collection, and the only known stores on the West coast were walking distance from Bert and his cabinet. And what about condition? Again, one could only fall back to rare book standards, and the vernacular of rare stamps and coins. Better leave that to others. Besides, if the comic had an unbroken spine and no obvious defects, it was in great condition; otherwise it was either good or trashed. Coverless comics had no value; we knew this because Bert gave away all coverless mags for free (I still have coverless issues of Captain America #1, Batman #1, Detective #28, and others rescued from the trash). Thus, condition was left out of the guide.

 

Once the seriousness of the project had been discussed with Argosy, they backed off from a "serious" effort and gave us instructions to put together something-- the cost of which would not exceed $25, or about ten hours work. That, in its rather abridged and admittedly subjective form, became the "Argosy Comics Price Guide" the first of its kind. It was later sold through the mail with no credits given to its authors.

[FlyingDonut]

$418.25 at Heritage in November, 2008

[RockMyAmadeus]

And, of course, because the Argosy was $5, and thus didn't circulate...they were left with other delears' ads and catalogs to figure out how comic book prices were determined.

 

(thumbs u

[thehumantorch]

Apparently, "The Argosy Price Guide" was truly the first comic book price guide (predating Overstreet by 5 years).

 

Bruce Edwards, in a forward to a reprint of the original guide, writes: "I had never heard of The Argosy Price Guide until one was consigned for auction in my Fantastic Mail Bid Sale #18 which closed on July 23, 1994."

 

Bill Schelly, in the introduction of this reprint, writes:

 

"It was the brainchild of the couple who owned the Argosy Book Shop, a small used book store on North Las Palmas Avenue in downtown Hollywood, California (no one has been able to definitely recall their names, but Malcolm Willits remembers them as Dave and Virginia). They saw money being made by the old comics for sale at the nearby Cherokee Book Store and hatched a plan to break into the burgeoning market. Because they knew nothing about comics, Dave and Virginia hired two young comic book fans named Michael Cohen and Tom Horsky to draft a price guide for them. Cohen and Horsky applied the knowledge they had gained from assisting Burt Blum at Cherokee since 1962, and quickly came up with what became the text of this seminal price guide.

 

"The first advertisement for the publication was a full-page in the Rocket's Blast--Comicollector #42 (November 1965) which read: 'New and unique from Argosy--COMIC BOOK PRICE GUIDE...over 5,000 comic book issues listed! Only 5.00 per copy. A must for all serious comic collectors.' The advertisement asked dealers to send for quantity prices. 'Every comic book buyer is a potential customer.'

 

"Apparently at 5.00 there was very little demand (or someone advised the owners that it was ridiculously over-priced, in a day when fanzines never cost more than 1.00) for in the very next issue of RB-CC, a slightly humbler ad proclaimed 'Price slashed!!!! Now only 1.98.' Even then, it seems that very few copies were sold (and it is therefore incredibly scarce today). As a result, this first price guide had no noticeable impact on the market. Dealers continued to do what they always did, which was price comics by the estimated replacement cost, and according to the prices they could get and what other dealers were asking.

 

"Still, there's no getting around the historical fact that the Argosy Price Guide was the pioneer effort...and accurately reflected the fact that the scarcity and value of back-issue comic books was becoming apparent.

 

"As incomplete as it is, lacking even rudimentary information about comic book grading, APG does list prices quite in line with the market at the time: Action Comics #1: 100.00; Detective Comics #27: 80.00; Showcase #4: 7.50; Fantastic Four #1: 6.00; Amazing Fantasy #15: 5.00. So it's fun to look through, and shake one's head at those early prices. Don't we all wish we had a time machine?

 

"Speaking of prices, I was told that an original copy of this guide sold for a price in excess of $200 recently (this would've been the mid to late 1990s). There may only be a few dozen originals in existence, if that! It's a unique artifact of those early days of comics fandom, which I've dubbed its 'golden age.' As such, its re-publication has real historical significance. Could we ever have been so innocent?"

 

Did not know that, very interesting.

[Borgo-migration]

Robert Bell ( what happened to him? )

 

He sold out to the Koch brothers. They drove down to Florida where he'd relocated and packed up his jillions of tons of comics and hauled them all back to New York. Amazing amounts of Silver Age--much of it low grade, which they would put out in huge lots for real cheap.

[BangZoom]

 

Here is a photo of the original edition of the Argosy Comic Book Price Guide.

 

[FlyingDonut]

Here is a photo of the original edition of the Argosy Comic Book Price Guide.

 

 

 

Of course he has one. We should have just asked there first. BZ, any other super early price guides?

[TheWatcher]

Here is a photo of the original edition of the Argosy Comic Book Price Guide.

 

 

Did you buy this at the time it came out or later?

[BangZoom]

Did you buy this at the time it came out or later?

 

I bought it in 1965.

[BangZoom]

BZ, any other super early price guides?

 

I showed some pics of the True Market guide in my thread earlier this year.

 

Link

[BangZoom]

 

Here are a few early convention programs. Link

 

1966 1967 1968

 

 

1969 1970 1971

[Foolkiller]

wow. Now this is an interesting an informative thread.

[gaz2810i]

Having only collected for a few years, threads like these are awsome. It almost makes me want to start collecting comic book collecting memorabilia as well as comics

[comicdonna]

Did you buy this at the time it came out or later?

 

I bought it in 1965.

In your early days of collecting, didn't you place an ad in a paper/magazine looking for comics?