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The Sci-Fi Guy loves literary science fiction and he will go anywhere to buy large collections of science fiction pulps, hardcover books, paperback books, comic books or digest magazines. Last October 2015 he uncovered a large collection of science fiction material in Kingston, New York most of which has now been sold on ebay. Now in February 2016 he has struck again by buying a large collection from an estate in Richmond, Virginia. The pulps and most of the comic books were already sold but those buyers were to myopic to buy any of the thousands of paperbacks or hundreds of digest magazines and hardcovers books. So the Sci-Fi Guy took advantage of their lack of initiative and bought about 40 boxes of all the excellent material that was left behind.

I just love book cases like this; hundreds of paperbacks and lots of hardcover books with clean dust jackets. The paperbacks are double what you see here. There is a second row of them behind the front row on each shelf.
In this same room was another bookshelf with lots of Ace paperbacks from the 1960s featuring the novels of Tarzan’s creator Edgar Rice Burroughs. These paperbacks are popular with collectors because they all have cover art by Frank Frazetta or Roy G. Krenkel. I first started buying these type of books in the 1960s from a used book store in Birmingham, Alabama and I’m always on the lookout for more.
The widow of the original owner of this huge collection had already sold most of the comic books but she held back a few, some of which were Strange Adventures and Mystery In Space science fiction comics published by DC Comics in the early 1950s. I couldn’t afford to buy any of them but I enjoyed holding them. Here’s Strange Adventures #10 and #6 from 1951.
Mystery In Space #1, 1951 and Strange Adventures #3, 1950.
Mystery In Space #3, 1951 and #8, 1952.
Another room had more book shelves with paperbacks and digest magazines. The Ace Double D Series paperbacks published in the early 1950s are the earliest and most desirable of the many series of Ace Doubles. I had never seen this many Ace Double D Series paperbacks in one collection before. Here’s one of the most valuable of them, Robert E. Howard’s Conan character dressed as a Roman soldier, from 1953. This is the first appearance of Conan on a paperback book cover. Art is by legendary pulp magazine artist Norman Saunders. Many years later in the late 1960s Lancer Books published most of Howard’s Conan stories in paperback with the famous cover art by Frank Frazetta.
Besides what was in the house there was a heavily insulated outdoor storage shed that the Sci-Fi Guy was told had more books. He just loves to hear stories about mysterious storage sheds with books in them. Let’s see what’s in this one.
Wow! Hundreds more science fiction paperbacks, hardcovers and digest magazines!
Here’s a tiny fragment of what was in the outdoor shed: two rare hardcover books from the early 1960s dealing with Flying Saucers. The author of Flying Saucers Top Secret was U.S. Marine officer Daniel Keyhoe whose name figures prominently in UFO literature of the 1950s and 1960s.
Another book from the outdoor shed: I read Isaac Asimov’s famous “Foundation Triology” paperback books twice in the 1970s and have been reading the three sequels published many years later just recently. I’ve never owned any of the hardcover editions until I found this one. It’s s only a Book Club edition which isn’t as valuable as a real first edition but it’s ok for now.
After three buying trips to Richmond the Sci-Fi Guy finally got all his loot consolidated back home in his garage. So now here he sits contentedly amidst his treasures, contemplating the challenges and opportunities of selling 40 boxes of books on ebay. Where will he strike next? Only time will tell.