A Note From the Past

[PovertyRow]

Well, I got my Squa Tront books Squa Tront Thread and they were indeed original. And #1 came with a letter from Jerry Weist selling some of his surplus EC books. I have scanned the letter because it is really fascinating. Not only for the level of detail Jerry used in '68 to describe the condition, but also for the slightly strange grading abbreviations and the apparant higher status of a VG??? Note how the grades go from VG-NM and from Fine-VG. Check out the scan of the letter. It is large enough to read but you will have to place your pointer on the letter and then click on the box in the lower right that pops up in order to make it large enough to read.

 

A MAD #1 in NM for $18. I'll take it!

 

The EC Sale letter

[aardvark88]

Wow, Weist was really ahead of his time in 1968 by breaking down his sales list into 7 grading levels. Most dealers in the early 70s, were still using the generic vg-mt as 1 price & grade category. Too busy to sort the multiple copies they had of Marvels or Classics Illustrated.

[originalisbest]

Cool letter - would love to have been around to collect them at that time - but since I wasn't born 'til '71 I'll give myself a break.

 

Could I ask you, what diagnostics show them to be the fisrt printings, so that I can check mine? Thanks!!!

 

 

Jon

[PovertyRow]

Could I ask you, what diagnostics show them to be the fisrt printings, so that I can check mine?

 

Nothing special. Just examined the page quality, the indicias, the cover price, the lack of any price stickering, the originality of the articles (no new stuff added) and the fact that the handwritten text at the top of letter I scanned was actually in red. But I had also owned these about 25 years ago and got them from Million Year and that also helped.

[comicparadox]

Along those lines, I went into an "antique" shop in Chatham, Mass this summer and found some of the Russ Cochran reprints of Mad comics. Folded in to one of them was "For sale Starting October 15, 1990, The Gaines EC File Copies" list. It was pretty instructive - Even then, Mad #1 was 2500! Mad 2 was $1250, Mad 3 and 4 were $800, and then for some reason Mad 5 was $1500. Amazingly, one of the Gaines books I (subsequently) owned was on the list, and when I had purchased it 10 years later, it was "only" 50% over the 1990 price. I don't have scanner abilities at this time, but if anyone is interested, email me at comicparadox@aol.com and I'll try to get someone to scan the image.

[originalisbest]

#5 is/was more $$$ because it's legitimately a scarcer issue in that run. It had problems getting distributed due to the (hilarious) inside front cover parody.