Sat 1 May 2010
Windy City Con: 2010 – A Photo Gallery.
Posted by Steve under Conventions , Pulp Fiction[15] Comments
The dealers room is, of course, the center of all activity at pulp conventions, whether it be Windy City or Pulpfest. If it’s your first visit, it’s a sight to see. For old-timers, it may be the smell of old musty paper that staggers the senses first:
I don’t recognize any of the faces in these first three photos, but that’s Walker Martin’s back in the lowermost one (in the white T-shirt).
The most jaw-dropping display was, as always, behind John Gunnison’s table. Nobody in the room had seen more copies of Danger Trail in one place at one time. Not only that, these were all in Very Good to Fine condition, if not better:
Another shot of the room. That’s Nick Certo behind the table, making a deal (or small talk) with Paul Herman, whom I traveled to the show with.
A better shot of Walker Martin, whose back you saw earlier above. I believe this was taken the day after the auction, where he outbid everyone on three large lots of romance or “love” pulps. This is what a collector looks like when he’s cornered the market on an entire category of pulp fiction:
Walker then obliged me by taking this photo of me:
If you missed it, you can go back a few posts and read Walker’s report on the convention here.
Here next are Gene Christie and Tom Roberts, the guys behind Black Dog Books. Gene forgot at the time that he’s no longer in my Squadron and he no longer has to salute me. I wish I’d managed to get some of the books they were selling into the photo:
The first night’s auction was an estate sale, and the number and variety of scarce and hard-to-find pulps was significantly higher than there’s been in many years. First of all, a copy of the one-shot Underworld Love Stories, a magazine that most people had never seen before:
I thought the magazine might sell for over a thousand dollars, but I was told that it went for only $720 or so. (If I’m wrong about this, I’m sure someone will let me know.)
There was also a beautiful run of Real Detective Stories. I took two photos of these, hoping that at least one would come out:
These were sold in several lots, each of which commanded a sizable stash of money. Next, a long run of Nick Carter pulps (not the dime novels) in very nice condition. Unfortunately I took only one photo of these, and you get a better glimpse of the spines, I’m afraid, rather than the covers:
Both Snappy Stories and Breezy Stories were in good supply:
Before heading off to the Art Room, I took a close-up photo of Paul Herman, last seen buying magic carpets from Nick Certo:
And of course Paul demanded retribution, and he took this photo of me in return. You can see that Paul does not know how to take pictures, as I really do not ever look like this.
The theme of the convention was the 100th anniversary of Adventure magazine. I failed to take any pictures during the panel discussion, but I did take several in the Art Room. All of original art on display came from Adventure or some of its several competitors. I also failed to take any notes on these, so I’m sorry I can’t tell you either the artists or the magazines:
And all too sudden, the convention was over.
May 1st, 2010 at 10:35 pm
Great post, Steve, and great photos. I keep hearing about how there were some pretty high priced pulps at the con – the Underworld Love Stories was just one.
May 1st, 2010 at 10:47 pm
Thanks for the interesting photographs of the the show. Wish I could have been there.
Monte Herridge
May 1st, 2010 at 10:56 pm
Great report, Steve. I have a lot of pictures of the unusual pulps from the Friday auction and will get them up on http://www.magazineart.org after I get back from my current travels.
I hope John Gunnison is scanning these DANGER TRAIL and some of the other unique copies he’s got.
May 2nd, 2010 at 12:04 am
Thanks for taking these photos Steve. Windy City was alot of fun and I’m already looking forward to PulpFest. Monte says he wishes he could have been there, but he and others who missed Chicago will have a second chance. Mark your calendars for PulpFest, July 30-Aug 1 in Columbus, Ohio. See the amazing details at http://www.pulpfest.com .
May 2nd, 2010 at 1:54 am
nice photogs, steve…especially the one’s in which you look like al capone :-)great, as always seeing you and paul and talking pulps, pulp art, mystery fiction, film noir and sharing “good grub” …be well and hope to see you at pulpfest!
May 2nd, 2010 at 4:59 am
Thanks for the report and photos. As I was unable to attend it is nice to see these pics. The condition of the pulps in the estate auction makes my mouth water!
May 2nd, 2010 at 12:29 pm
It wasn’t only the expensive high-grade pulps that were available at the show, although those were certainly the highlight. There was a wide variety of pulps in all price ranges that impressed me more than anything else, from the five dollar boxes on up — and if you bought in quantity, I’ll be willing to wager that the five dollar pulps could be obtained a lot more cheaply than that.
And there were paperbacks galore, all very inexpensive, digest magazines, several quite uncommon, DVDs of old movies and TV shows, and for me, although I didn’t take any pictures of them, what I bought the most of were the POD reprints of pulp material. This is the future of pulp collecting, I suspect, as the supply of the magazines themselves continues to diminish.
Someone asked me how many old pulp magazines remain undiscovered in attics and basements, waiting to be found. No one knows of course, but I suspect that over 95% of existing pulp magazines are in the hands of collectors and dealers right now. Am I wrong?
I was glad to see that Al Tonik, now in his 80s, was able to attend. Before he arrived I took a lot of joshing from the friends I went to meals with about being the oldest person there. I’m even a few months older than Walker, who’s been coming to Pulpcons, Windy City shows and now PulpFest since the very first ones.
You couldn’t tell from the photos, but I’m better looking than Walker is, too.
I got to chat with Mike Ward for the first time for a few minutes while he was snapping away at the covers (front and back) of a box full of COLLIERS magazines from the 1920s. Take a look at his website. It’s truly spectacular.
It’s always great to meet new friends as well as old ones. By all means, if you can make it, do plan on attending PulpFest, which is not all that far away.
May 2nd, 2010 at 5:13 pm
Steve, I too noticed Mike Ward photographing old slicks. That reminds me of a collector/scholar who is no longer with us, Leonard Robbins from Tulsa, Oklahoma. He used to spend all day during the early Pulpcons indexing pulp magazines. Eventually six volumes of indexes were published but his death stopped the most important index, that of SHORT STORIES. I sent him hundreds of issues to study and it’s a real shame that the index is in limbo.
But Mike is doing excellent work and the results can be seen at http://www.magazineart.org.
May 2nd, 2010 at 5:39 pm
Steve,
No fair blaming me for that photo! You have to get into the 21st century and buy a Digital camera at the least. I have to back you up though, you do look better than Walker. Must be the “Early to Bed, Early to Rise” motto you’ve been harping on. The UNDERWORLD LOVE went for $700.00 plus 10% buyers premium. Congrats to Randy Vanderbeek! Anyone reading this blog who hesitates coming to a show because they’d rather buy everything off eBay, WAKE UP!!
There is lots of stuff that will never get to the internet. Not to mention the great people you’ll meet, like Steve and Walker,etc.
May 2nd, 2010 at 7:26 pm
Actually I do have a digital camera, but I’ve used it so seldom I was afraid of messing up and losing everything.
With this old camera only two shots were unusable, not counting the one you took of me, Paul.
I don’t mind Early to Bed, but I think I must have been complaining about the Early to Rise part of the motto when you focused in on me.
I’ll do some practicing with the digital camera before PulpFest. More photos (and better ones) then!
— Steve
May 2nd, 2010 at 10:08 pm
Thanks for the kudos! I -really- enjoyed meeting a whole bunch of people this time (it was my third Windy City but the earlier ones were only short visits). Steve, I linked to this blog page from my LiveJournal page because you have such good photos. (It’s magscanner.livejournal.com but mostly it talks about non-pulp things.)
I just realized I didn’t meet Digges LaTouch. Does he really exist? Or is he just someone you threaten children with? (Mike, at age 65 and 1/4, has a child-like appreciation of books with pictures, but is too old to pretend he’s a kid any more. Steve looks young but is, indeed, older than Mike. Both of us are older than Rob Preston put together.)
May 2nd, 2010 at 11:34 pm
Mike
It was good meeting you as well, and that last lunch Paul and I ate with you was a pleasure.
I’m sorry you missed Digges. He was one of the four collectors who traveled to Chicago in a nine-passenger van to make sure they had enough room to take their purchases home with them. Walker was one of them, and Ed Hulse another.
Even more than that, I’m certain Digges exists. I sat next to him twice at breakfast and saw him constantly circulating the dealers room, checking his want lists and adding substantially to his collection.
As were we all, in way or another.
May 2nd, 2010 at 11:46 pm
Digges is another collector that I’ve been friends with for 40 years. He lives about 20 minutes from me in Lambertville, NJ. We survived the trip home, despite boxes of pulps rattling around in the large van for 14 hours. A couple days later Digges sailed toward Hay-On-Wye, the UK town with over 30 bookstores. His third visit I believe.
May 3rd, 2010 at 12:11 pm
Steve, how much were those nice copies of DANGER TRAIL selling for? After reading the Black Dog Press collection of 4 Marguard stories, and the nice introduction thereto, I’d be interested to know if this is a pulp that’s “affordable”, understanding the term is relative.
May 3rd, 2010 at 7:21 pm
Rick,
Do you know, I never took the time to ask. But I asked Paul Herman, and he said the asking price was $500 each. (I knew I couldn’t afford them!)
Emphasis on “asking price,” however. Most if not all of that wonderful display on the wall was still there as Paul and I were packing up to leave on mid-day Sunday.
Paul had one on his table that he had priced at $200, the condition about the same as those that John had. Having noticed little or no interest in it after two days, he placed it in Saturday night’s auction.
The bidding there went up to $60, which the high bidder agreed to bump up to Paul’s reserve price of $75.
I’d have to say that that’s what the real “going price” is. But because they’re scarce, I don’t think many dealers will offer copies for less than that.
For me $75 is affordable only if I’m buying one. Several would be out of the question. But as you say, affordable is a relative term. The buyer of Paul’s copy very likely thinks he got a bargain.
— Steve