cheetah

Red Skull to Red Head

HUGE green man to there are a LOT of green men in GA comics.

little green men to big green men

Little green men to little green men

Jann of the Jungle to Kaanga of the Jungle

This is one of the titles I had started collecting right before the burglary. I think I get the Church copies from John Verzyl. He always had the best books.

I still own all of these Terry and the Pirates. I bought the file copies off of Jim Payette a long time ago. He definitely undergraded the books and, even though they are file copies, they had much better than expected PQ and present very nicely. I assume they must have been amongst the early copies purchased from the warehouse and did not get subjected to the heat that browned the later copies.

I’m out of date. Too long since I played the pressing game.

You can look through the census and see where the Church books have been pressed. I think the new pedigree labels have prompted a number of resubmissions and pressing. From my experience, the original label books were often unpressed but the second generation labels are where the amount of pressing became common. FWIW, a lot of the Church books did not get significant improvement from pressing. I did a comparison many years ago and my feeling was most of the church books had already reached their maximum potential. Granted, Matt Nelson’s skills have continued to improve and what couldn’t ‘press up’ 10 years ago is probably a gimme 0.2 increase now.

For me, it was always the book first. White pages, no browning on the edges, looking like it was freshly printed. Most times when you find the book, it then follows it is the Church copy. Sheer volume leads to the Church books being more available, more noticeable, more collectible, and more likely to fetch a high price. Don't get me wrong, the other peds are very nice but the quantity and name recognition of the Church books almost always makes them the copy to go after if you want an immaculate 80-year old book. I should add that since I was never a big collector of the top 100 GA books, the Church copies were almost always the only high-quality ped available. Some Allentowns, some Pennsylvanias, almost never any SF copies. Church and Crowley were the primary choices of well structurally-preserved books and Crowleys were always a distant also-ran compared to the Churchs. They are just much more common and easy to find in many titles.

There are always odd stories like this. When I went diving in Bonaire in the early 1980s, there was only one bread cutting machine on the island. One of the blades broke and it took a month to get a replacement. For the entire time I was there, every loaf of white bread had one double piece that the cook religiously fed to the seagulls each morning.

So this is a book that was printed then cut and bound using a bent blade?

FH titles are such a different fish than everything else. To me the true test was finding a superior structural copy with superior colors. The best ones I ever found were a series of Church’s Jumbos between 15 and 20 that I got from John Verzyl (not surprising).

Call me a cynic but after trying the verify the SF pedigree story, someone is going to have to prove the Promise collection’s story before I believe. I spent an hour going through Korean War files and census records and didn’t find an easy connection to the current pedigree. I’m certain the SF story is BS. I’ll wait to see if the current story holds water.

Central Valley books rival Church copies but the titles are generally weak. Deciding to by a Fritzy Ritz Church or Central Valley copy would not create much of a conundrum. Just by them both and spend the change on lunch.

I found it easier to do with Jungle and Jumbo Comics. Getting well-colored Planets was much more difficult. After a recent period in the Planet Comics thread where people posted all their copies, it was clear to me that the few years I spent on Planets was nowhere near long enough to have put together a good looking set.

I have always felt that Gabe/Mr Illmannered was largely responsible for the renewed interest in PCH. He bought an outsized number of books from me when I closed out.

I agree on the Churchs. The Fiction House books have many poor examples due the way they were stored after they were purchased from Chuck. Metro also had books listed as Mile Highs that CGC disagreed with. Unfortunately, the FH books in the Promise Collection just look like the normal poor-colored FH books. I didn’t see anything yet that would have made me want to rush out and buy one.