Bargain! This afternoon I scored Issue 5 {August 1928} of Hugo Gernsback’s “Amazing Stories” magazine, while rootling through the magazine box in a secondhand store. Good condition, Part One of E. E. Smith’s “Skylark Of Space”, and this iconic Frank R. Paul cover - which was what caught my eye; I figured it must be an history of SF or a coffee table book of classic SF art, but no, it’s the real deal. Score!
Go on, ask me what I paid for it…
Probably less than you would pay online.
Nice score.
That’s…more than I thought. I paid 10c…
Wow. For others who go to EM’s link to find the search expired, they have a stained copy of the same issue on sale for $756.
And you mentioned the Doc Smith story, but didn’t bother to brag about an H.G. Wells story that’s in the same mag?
That’s the kind of thing that never, ever happens to me.
Be sure to store it safely in archival-quailty plastic. A real treasure of the genre.
A bit more background: it was a church secondhand shop, where I’ve bought the occasional old denim jacket and pair of jeans: I was killing a few minutes in there before my bus came, browsing the denim and idly rifling through a box of popular scientific and technical perdiodicals - mostly old National Geographic, Omni, Popular Science and the like - all priced at 10c, like old mags should be in church stores - when I found it.
Like I said, I mistook that famous illustration for the cover of another book at first: when I realised what it was, I caught my breath. This was a Find. This magazine was nearly 80 years old. There are ads for patent nose straighteners, jobs as prohibition agents, and Exciting Careers In The Electric Age in there. And of course E. E. Smith, H. G. Wells, and the first ever Buck Rogers.
Sauntering idly over to the counter and asking the very nice middle-aged lady there in a casually strangulated croak whether they, in fact, had any more of these, er, funny old comics, I was told that a box of old magazines had been left outside the door last night, and priced that morning as usual, and that I was probably the first person that day to even glance at them.
Well, that put paid to the visions of retirement that had been briefly dancing in my head once I had discovered a complete run of mint pre-war Hugo Gernsbacks in a storeroom awaiting pricing, but it would seem churlish to complain in the face of such riches, even if they were only metaphorical ones.
The question is, though, how did a single “Scientifiction” magazine from 1928 end up in a box of Scientific Americans of sixty years later in a Presbyterian charity shop in New Zealand? And who put it there?
OK, now I’ve done a little research on this, and my find seems almost too good to be true: this issue has not only the first ever E. E. “Doc” Smith story but the earliest incarnation ever of Buck Rogers, when he was still called Anthony Rogers. This particular edition of the magazine is, apparently, enormously collectable - is there any chance it’s a forgery or a facsimile edition? It seems authentic for an 80 year old pulp, printed on shit paper but reasonably well looked after and stored over the years - anyone know if there are any “inauthentic” copies out there? This is beyond my expertise…
I don’t know whether to congratulate you or come to your house and make it look like an accident.
(And to think: When I opened this thread, I thought it would be about the somewhat crappy 1980s TV series named “Amazing Stories”. “Junk Store” is about right for that show.)
I’m not any kind of expert in this particular field, but in terms of general publishing, if it was a replica from some kind of official reprint run, I would think this would be indicated inside the front cover. If it’s a forgery produced as a one-off by an individual, it might have been inkjet printed, in which case a light dab somewhere inconspicuous with a very slightly damp Q-Tip would detect the water-soluble ink (at your own risk, of course).
Chances are though that it’s the real deal, especially if it was found in amongst other old magazines.
If there are any collectors’ shops in your locality, you should be able to get them to appraise it -If they say it’s fake, then that should also be accompanied by disinterest in buying it from you. You probably shouldn’t sell it to them anyway, unless they offer silly big money.
It seems real, as far as I can determine - I used to have an old 2000AD collection, and while I’m not an expert, it does feel {and smell} like musty old newsprint, with that rather brittle, yellowish quality.
It’s definitely not inkjet - I went over it with a magnifying glass, and this wasn’t done on a modern printer. The wear and tear - some dogearing and fraying, with a couple of pages worn where they’ve come astray from the binding, the spine cracked and scuffed at the top and bottom edges, where it’s would’ve been pulled off a shelf, and some slight damp staining on the top of the pages - seems consistent with something that was read 80 years ago and then boxed up in an attic and forgotten: the ink on the front and back cover isn’t sun-faded, although the spine is.
It’s almost certainly not a reprint, and if it’s a one-off forgery it’s a damn good one, which would seem a long run for a {relatively} short slide. Maybe I did just get lucky. As far as selling goes, I think I’ll hang on to it: makes for a great story, anyway.
You realize we all hate you now, right?
(loads Lawn Darts, Quicklime and folding shovel into backpack; calls Quantas for flight details)
Qantas. No “u”.
You forgot your astronaut-strength diapers.
Update: I’ve left it with a friend who works in an antiquarian bookstore, and her boss, who is an expert in printed ephemera of the last hundred years, can hopefully pronounce yea or nay on its authenticity.
Changing the subject a little here. How old were the National Geographics you mentioned?
And by the way, while I don’t* hate* you, I certainly envy you!
The verdict is in and it’s real. And if I may be permitted one final gloat, I win this thread. I’ll shut up now, I promise.
Damn straight absolutely! That right there is an heirloom, just waiting for you to have a few generations of descendants.
The same issue had the first part of Skylark, and the first Buck Rogers, and an H. G. Wells? Wow.
I don’t hate you oir even envy you; I think this is completely cool and vindicates the view that I may not actually be wasting my time when I go rummaging about in junk shops and charity stores, in search of hidden treasures like this. I’ve had a couple of lucky finds, but nothing on this scale… maybe tomorrow…
My son is five, and will only allowed to view it through chocolate-proof glass and in the presence of guards armed with carbolic soap and wire scrubbing brushes for the next twenty or so years. Some day he’ll thank me for it. My Dad thinks it’s cool, though: it’s ten years older than him.
