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MILLIE THE MODEL COMICS ON THE RISE?? DECARLO
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20 posts in this topic

Hello all.  so I ran across a collection of comics. and found this millie the model comics and had it graded. came back a CGC 8.5 inside cover and 8.0 outside cover.  So , from what I can see earlier millies are tougher to come by. 

but I was wondering if everyone is noticing as well if Millie or is it because of Decarlo or is it just swimsuit covers of millie or what your thoughts are on . such a rise of interest in these.

I saw on GPA i think millie 25 9.0 sold for over $3,800 last year.  not sure why. decarlo? the cover is not that interesting.... there was another millie 33 in only a 8.0 sold for about $2,400 a year ago....

in any case check out the one i have.  I dont collect millie but figured since it was a double cover and decent grade to get it graded.!  any thoughts be great also thoughts if millie is still on the rise?

THanks

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High grade Millies at auction can realize some eye-popping prices, especially with swimsuit covers like #27.  Far more volatile are prices for random DeCarlo issues in the VG range. On ebay you can sometimes find completed auctions for the same issue in similar condition with as much as a 4:1 price difference. As comicnoir alludes to, a few dealers look only at the top end of realized prices, and price accordingly, not wanting to leave potential money on the table. Then there are the Heritage auctions for lower grade groupings of Millie books that seem to realize more than one would expect to see if sold individually, so the market still looks pretty strong.

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On 5/21/2019 at 6:29 PM, golden43tiger said:

NICE. feed back.....so I am guessing this is strong......as you said!   thanks folks

That book in its grade could do very well at auction.  the DeCarlo Millie's are getting a lot of love from collectors.  The My Friend Irma books are equally nice but don't always reach the same price levels.  I suspect they may be a bit more plentiful since My Friend Irma was popular in radio, movies, and television whereas Millie was just a Timely/Atlas character.  The first Millie book by DeCarlo is #17.  Overstreet lists #18 but that's not correct.  Also, A Date With Millie volume 1 (7 issues) is all DeCarlo.  Volume 2 (also 7 issues) is all Stan Goldberg but many sellers erroneously list them as DeCarlo artwork.

Here's a nice, early DeCarlo cover.

 

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47 minutes ago, telerites said:

I think this is the only Millie book I own.  Not worth all that much.  

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The only way to truly tell is to see what it would fetch in an open auction.

You never know, it might actually do quite well.  Especially considering that it is the only copy and hence the highest graded (and lowest graded copy lol) according to the CGC Census Population Report.  hm   :takeit:

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On 5/23/2019 at 6:16 PM, lou_fine said:

The only way to truly tell is to see what it would fetch in an open auction.

You never know, it might actually do quite well.  Especially considering that it is the only copy and hence the highest graded (and lowest graded copy lol) according to the CGC Census Population Report.  hm   :takeit:

There are 10 on the census. There is a duplication of listings: both "A Date with" and "Date with."

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On 5/22/2019 at 6:05 PM, lotemo said:

That book in its grade could do very well at auction.  the DeCarlo Millie's are getting a lot of love from collectors.  The My Friend Irma books are equally nice but don't always reach the same price levels.  I suspect they may be a bit more plentiful since My Friend Irma was popular in radio, movies, and television whereas Millie was just a Timely/Atlas character.  The first Millie book by DeCarlo is #17.  Overstreet lists #18 but that's not correct.  Also, A Date With Millie volume 1 (7 issues) is all DeCarlo.  Volume 2 (also 7 issues) is all Stan Goldberg but many sellers erroneously list them as DeCarlo artwork.

 

 

 

Volume 2 #1 has a few pages of DeCarlo, and IIRC Volume 2 #2 has a single page of DeCarlo. After that it's a total Goldberg fest.

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4 hours ago, 143ksk said:
On 5/23/2019 at 4:16 PM, lou_fine said:

Especially considering that it is the only copy and hence the highest graded (and lowest graded copy lol) according to the CGC Census Population Report.  hm   :takeit:

There are 10 on the census. There is a duplication of listings: both "A Date with" and "Date with."

Thank God you posted that information here for me.  (thumbsu

Just in time too, as I was about to send him a PM offering to pay $10K for his copy there.  Now, I'll probably send him one offering $10 and do him a favor by taking that as "common as dirt" book off his hands.  lol  :takeit:

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On 5/10/2019 at 11:28 AM, rjpb said:

High grade Millies at auction can realize some eye-popping prices, especially with swimsuit covers like #27.  Far more volatile are prices for random DeCarlo issues in the VG range. On ebay you can sometimes find completed auctions for the same issue in similar condition with as much as a 4:1 price difference. As comicnoir alludes to, a few dealers look only at the top end of realized prices, and price accordingly, not wanting to leave potential money on the table. Then there are the Heritage auctions for lower grade groupings of Millie books that seem to realize more than one would expect to see if sold individually, so the market still looks pretty strong.

I think Millie is in the same boat as Archie’s. They were sold to kids who loved reading them to death (thus their rough conditions at times) but they were not widely collected and kept in higher grades like many other titles. 

My interest in Archie’s probably started in the 1990’s (along with Millies and her crew) so I got to know a lot of Archie collectors in that time with some really nice books as well as complete or near complete runs of titles. Pretty much all serious Archie collectors I have ever  met were aware that Decarlo worked for Marvel first and had a large body of work there with Millie and others and had some very nice copies of her titles in their collections. 

So when you wonder where all the nice Millies have gone don’t be surprised that a lot of them are probably resting in those collections from the last couple of decades when “mainstream” collectors ignored her and really only recently have Archie’s and Millie’s (along with the romance sector) started to explode.

I still remember walking the dealers room at San Diego circa 1995 and when I asked for any of the “kids” comics like Archie or Millie was shown a tiny but cheap selection. If I asked for Matt Baker books they would be like Matt who??? Lol

 

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38 minutes ago, lou_fine said:

Thank God you posted that information here for me.  (thumbsu

Just in time too, as I was about to send him a PM offering to pay $10K for his copy there.  Now, I'll probably send him one offering $10 and do him a favor by taking that as "common as dirt" book off his hands.  lol  :takeit:

I was mostly posting it for telerites--didn't want him to think he had the lowest graded copy...

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On 5/25/2019 at 10:57 AM, N e r V said:

I think Millie is in the same boat as Archie’s. They were sold to kids who loved reading them to death (thus their rough conditions at times) but they were not widely collected and kept in higher grades like many other titles. 

My interest in Archie’s probably started in the 1990’s (along with Millies and her crew) so I got to know a lot of Archie collectors in that time with some really nice books as well as complete or near complete runs of titles. Pretty much all serious Archie collectors I have ever  met were aware that Decarlo worked for Marvel first and had a large body of work there with Millie and others and had some very nice copies of her titles in their collections. 

So when you wonder where all the nice Millies have gone don’t be surprised that a lot of them are probably resting in those collections from the last couple of decades when “mainstream” collectors ignored her and really only recently have Archie’s and Millie’s (along with the romance sector) started to explode.

I still remember walking the dealers room at San Diego circa 1995 and when I asked for any of the “kids” comics like Archie or Millie was shown a tiny but cheap selection. If I asked for Matt Baker books they would be like Matt who??? Lol

 

I don't know. I was walking the convention floor at San Diego and Wonder Con in that era, and that's how I built my Baker collection. Harley Yee, Brian Peet and some guys from Georgia were flush with Baker, most of 'em priced in the $20-40 range. It was a good time to be alive.

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In my experience, you are both right. I got a ton of great Archies and related books in the '80s at shows in Chicago. Dealers who cared about having a wide selection of books such as Harley and a few others would have them. Most dealers, though, would look puzzled as to why anyone would want such a thing.

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2 hours ago, SteveDuin said:

I don't know. I was walking the convention floor at San Diego and Wonder Con in that era, and that's how I built my Baker collection. Harley Yee, Brian Peet and some guys from Georgia were flush with Baker, most of 'em priced in the $20-40 range. It was a good time to be alive.

Me too. My point was he wasn’t as widely know or collected. I became aware of Baker back in the 1980s. I think I started going after his work in force after Over-street published one of those repo. covers of Teenage Romances #13 in the Guide. I even had a name artist at the time do a reproduction of that cover. 

Either way, different era for any number of things in comics. So much stuff back then was under the radar by today’s standards you could exhaust a thread writing about it.

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I got my Baker start by buying the giants and annuals that I was actively collecting at the time. If they were old, square bound and cheap, I bought everything. There was very little market for “love books” and I didn’t particularly care for them. But, there was something special about the Baker ones. Even though I rarely actually read them, I grabbed all those St John issues with those “good girl art” covers. Dealers would hold them for me because hardly anyone else wanted them. Glad I did now...

 

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