Colan and Palmer on Tomb of Dracula

On a post a couple of months ago, I briefly made reference to Gene Colan's work with the inker, Tom Palmer.  These two worked together quite a bit, but their longest run together was on Tomb of Dracula.  I have to admit, that this character and book are not my favorite, I much prefer Doctor Strange (where Colan and Palmer also worked together).  But, the quality of the work is so fantastic that I will happily admit to having a big pile of these books in my collection.

Gene "The Dean" Colan was born in 1926, in the Bronx, New York.  He started working in the comic book business in 1944 for Fiction House.  In the 1960's he had long stints on Daredevil, Iron Man, Silver Surfer, and Doctor Strange.  But Tomb of Dracula was the most successful run...and his teaming with Palmer was a big part of that equation.  I have not studied this topic in depth, but, for me, each man elevated the other.  Colan was less than half without Palmer...Palmer was not as good without Colan.  Again...my humble opinion.

                          

 

That said, today I am offering the cover of Tomb f Dracula issue #50...along with a brilliant interior page.  As I have said many times before...the craft that has been laid down on this page and on pages by other artists who took their work seriously, is clear.  It's just fantastic work.

Sometime soon I will make it a point to break out some Doctor Strange with Colan and Palmer.

Until next time...

Blogging here on Sundry Collectibles and at Disney Postcards on, you guessed it, Disney Postcards!

Adventures of Rex the Wonder Dog #2

I have mentioned in several previous posts that Alex Toth was one of the master comic illustrators to come out of the Golden Age.  He started working in the late 1940's and was active through the 1970's...with a smattering of books in the 80's and 90's.  He passed away not that long ago in Southern California.

                 

One of his earlier, and scarcer, books is The Adventure of Rex the Wonder Dog.  This is issue #2 from 1952.  The title alone smacks of early 1950's nostalgia!  The Overstreet Comic Book Price Guide lists the first three books in the run as "scarce".  And the Gerber Photo-Journal Guide to Comic Books says that these issues rate a 7 out of 10 on scarcity...so probably only about 20 to 50 copies remain.  Well...whether all that is true or not doesn't really matter...these are very cool books with great Alex Toth art!

I picked up this book at a Heritage Comics auction last week, and while the dog on the cover is perhaps a little stiff, the girl is pure Toth.  Where Toth excelled was in the layout of the page to communicate a story.  While this is not so much in evidence here or in the interior art of this book...by the late 1950's he had matured into a master graphical story teller.

Oh...the Daisy air rifle ad on the back is just a bonus!

Until next time...

Blogging here on Sundry Collectibles and at Disney Postcards on, you guessed it, Disney Postcards!

CGC and "The Wild West"

About ten years ago the comic collecting hobby got well and truly rocked when a group in Florida, Comics Guarantee Corporation, or CGC, started to grade and encapsulate comic books in plastic containers.  The whole idea was that, as a buyer, you would now have a trusted third party that would have graded the books and a common grading standard would be in force across the industry.

Well...you can imagine what happened.  Some dealers and collectors hated it.  Some thought it was great. Others, like myself, were fairly agnostic on the whole thing.  The ones who hated it were mostly the folks whose comic book grading was not so good, or who felt the CGC grading was not up to their personal standards, or who felt encapsulating a comic was ridiculous...comics were meant to be read (an excellent point...the cases could be opened though, but that invalidated the grade).  The ones whose grading skills weren't so good were selling books on eBay...calling them Near Mint when they were no where near that grade.  They were now in a bit of a pickle.  The ones who felt it was silly to encapsulate books, or who disagreed with CGC grading, just ignored it for a while and let it play itself out.  The folks who liked CGC were, generally, collectors who had a pile of very high grade books and stood to benefit from the whole thing.  (Very high grade books got huge premiums over lesser books in those days...and they still do today)

But the ones who REALLY benefitted were CGC themselves.  They were getting anywhere from $15 to $80 a book or more for grading services.  Not bad.

The advent of "official grading" turned the hobby into the wild west for a while.  Arbitrage opportunities abounded.  You could walk into a comic book dealer (one of the ones who was not interested in third party grading), buy a really nice copy of a sought after book, have it graded, and then sell it for way more than you originally paid.  This was happening regularly and was very easy to do.  The dollars involved were not insignificant either.  When high grade copies of books like this Incredible Hulk 181 (first full appearance of Wolverine) were selling for $300 "raw" vs. $3000 "slabbed"...the choice became rather clear if it presented itself to you.

Eventually the "Wild West" got to be more tame.  But CGC is still around and recently graded it's two-millionth comic!  Amazing.  At the end of the day I think CGC has been a good thing.  Yes...it has put some very high grade books out of reach of the everyday collector...but I think it has also helped reduce the price of lower grade comics to make them easier to buy.

Until next time...

Blogging here on Sundry Collectibles and at Disney Postcards on, you guessed it, Disney Postcards!

CCG's and TCG's

I am continuing on the collector card theme today....

Back in the mid-1990's a new kind of collectible quietly came on the scene.  I remember going into a comic shop in my home town and seeing a box of Magic: The Gathering cards for sale and thinking..."What's that?"  Well, Magic: The Gathering...or Magic, as it is often referred to, is a Collectible Card Game, or CCG.  They are sometimes also called Trading Card Games, or TCG's, as well.  Magic was the first of many, many different themed CCG's to come down the pike...and they are stil coming to this day.

The first game that I bought was a Star Trek based game that came out in 1995.  I actually never played the game...I just thought the cards were cool!  But these games were and are played...and played seriously.  A colleague of mine at work was actually national champion (or runner up, I forget) for the Star Trek CCG game in 1996 or 1997...playing in the national tournament in Las Vegas after being flown there gratis by the publisher of the game, Decipher Inc.

Well...going back to that day I saw the Magic cards for sale, when the store owner told me what it was, I remember thinking, "Sounds ridiculous!"  Silly me!  I never played Magic, but from a collectible standpoint, I wish I could go back and buy that box of cards!  They would have made a great investment...a Black Lotus card, from the first set, regularly gets $4,000 on eBay!

I will break out some more CCG's I have...including the ones I played...in future posts.

Until next time...

Blogging here on Sundry Collectibles and at Disney Postcards on, you guessed it, Disney Postcards!

Star Trek Master Series Picture Cards

Collectible picture cards have been around for a long time.  Starting out (I believe) in the late 19th century, baseball cards and other themed cards have their origins as special add-ins to a product package (bubble gum, cigarettes, and the like).  In the case of baseball cards, the cigarettes and gum were eventually jettisoned and the cards sold alone.

                

I have a few sets of picture cards, but one of my favorites is the Star Trek Master Series series put out by Sky Box in the 1990's.  Some of the art work in this set is genuinely of high quality, especially the portraiture.  Some of the other cards depict various famous scenes from the original series and Star Trek The Next Generation.  

These cards were well and truly over-produced, so they are not rare or hard to find...and they aren't worth much as a collectible.  There were a few "chase" cards in the set that were holographic in nature, and were harder to find.  They could be bought on eBay for a nominal fee though.  Either way, the set is nice to look at and well produced...so, worth the price of admission.  

Until next time...

Blogging here on Sundry Collectibles and at Disney Postcards on, you guessed it, Disney Postcards!

United States "Star" Notes *

It's been a while since I blogged on a currency collectible, so tonight I thought I would break out this crispy little gem I pulled from circulation a few years ago.  It may not be worth that much...$10 probably...maybe a little more...but it is definitely collectible due to the star at the end of the serial number.

As a kid, I knew that a star note was a special note, but I never really knew why.  Well, a star note is actually a replacement note.  When the treasury prints up its regular run of notes and an error or damage occurs, they will pull these notes and replace them with a star note.  A complete description of this and other reasons for these notes can be found on this site.  

While star notes are much more uncommon than a regular note...there are often many of them printed.  This $10 D note from 2003 had 1.2 million numbers printed.  This is compared to total production of $10 bills for 2003 of 249,600,000 according to the Bureau of Engraving and Printing.  So...while not super rare...the odds of finding this note are not that high.  Some star notes though, are quite rare.  For example, the 1B run of series E $10 notes from 1999 only had 3,200 star notes printed!  Not very many.  See this site, for a great list of data of this kind.

Anyway...next time you see a star note in change, pull it aside and show it to your kid, or keep it for yourself!

Until next time...

Blogging here on Sundry Collectibles and at Disney Postcards on, you guessed it, Disney Postcards!

The Boeing Model 247

Another aviation postcard today from the same estate as the last post.  You may recall that at a recent estate, the owner had been a United Airlines pilot.  I found this card among various other paper items.  It is a commemorative card printed in 1973.

One of the things I like about collecting this sort of thing is that it is educational.  Prior to picking up this card, I would not have known what a Boeing Model 247 looked like, or what era it flew in.  But now...I do know.

This plane brings back visions of characters like Indiana Jones flying to far off and exotic places in the 1930's.  Of course the plane that is shown in the beginning of Raiders of the Lost Ark carrying Indy to Asia is a Boeing 314 Clipper sea plane...but this aircraft has a similar flavor to it.  I love that forward slanted wind shield....probably not that aero-dynamic...but very stylish!  (With the Model 247D...the slant went with the wind...)

Until next time...

Blogging here on Sundry Collectibles and at Disney Postcards on, you guessed it, Disney Postcards!