I'm going to let the photo's on this "national treasure-esque" find speak for themselves. I'll just give you a little backstory before I do. One quick aside, we have been incredibly blessed to have both of the wonderful golden age collections we've acquired this year come with fantastic stories. We have been only one person removed from the original owner both times, and the story of how the books survived so long is so much better than just finding one randomly.
This story is a tiny bit odd, but still very intriguing for it's own reasons. The collection is/was only 45 issues from ONLY 1948 & 1949. All but 2 issues were published by Fox Features Syndicate, not a completely unknown publisher, but not EC, Timely, DC, etc. They are mostly all from the "jungle" genre.
The original owners name was Frank Farkus, and he was from Burlington NC. Several of the books even have the stamp on the cover that has faded over time with the exact address of the newstand / variety store that he bought the books from. The odd thing about the collection is that each one of these issues is gorgeous. Most of them in very high grade, this is usually indicative of a very serious collector, yet Mr. Farkus was apparently content with the 45 issues he acquired over a 1-2 year period and left it at that.
The books were brought to us by Mr. Farkus' sister, Mrs. Poe, and her husband. They are both two of the nicest people you'd ever meet, perfect stereotypes of fantastic grand parents I'm sure. Frank's sister told us she and her husband acquired the books after Frank passed 15-20 years ago, and just didn't really know what to do with them. They came to us just standing up in a small "half-box" with a few dividers among them separating the series, no bags, no protection, yet they are in fantastic condition. Pages aren't brittle, covers have VERY little to no chipping, and most of them feel relatively new, so much so that I'd feel more comfortable reading many of these vs some of my silver age Marvel stuff.
Frank's sister told us the books had been stored in a cedar chest (go figure) for as long as she could remember, wrapped in protection of some kind. Important thing is, however they were stored for the last 70 years, it worked!
Anyway, Mrs. Poe told us that her brother had fought in World War 2 and got into comics after he got back from the war. Apparently the hobby only lasted briefly however as she said he moved on to collecting books about military history. So much so that when he passed his collection was donated to a university in north Georgia that renamed a part of the library after him. Must have been a lot of books... if only he'd had that many comics!... but I digress.
Enough babbling though, let's look at some pics!
One more thing though before we do, YUP! SALE TIME!
Use offer code "GOLDEN" for an additional 20% off ANYTHING in the store, yes including the golden age goodness you're about to view. Just type offer code GOLDEN in the comments section of ebay's offer screen, along with an offer that's 20% less than our current ask, and we'll accept.
You can view the books for sale in the store by copy & pasting this link into your browser:
http://stores.ebay.com/Atlanta-Classic-Comics?_dmd=2&_nkw=jj1
Now onto the stars of the show!
