A Collection a Day #67 – Pulp Fiction

If I was a boy in the 50’s, this is what the floor of my bedroom would have looked like.

The stories in the pulps usually were not great masterpieces, but their covers sure were. The art used on the covers of these magazines is what made them sell. If I had Bill Gates’ bankroll, I would be buying up the original paintings for these covers and plastering every wall in my palatial estate with them.

Much like the Big Little Books in my last collection, these pulps are hard to handle. Most of the magazines in my collection are fragile and brittle. Some have tears and some have missing covers, and if I try to read them, small bits of paper flake away. The shoddy production of these pulps is a big part of why they can command some serious bucks at auction. Finding a pulp in excellent condition is not easy, so when you see one, the price can be steep. This is especially true for pulps with name brand characters such as Doc Savage or the Phantom. Of course, if you just want something fun to read, you can buy some pulps in lousy condition for just a few bucks.

I have collected so many different things that I thought it would be fun to try and photograph a collection a day and see how far I can get.