Mac Bolan Book Adventure Quest

 

     Kind of a slow day, work-wise.. especially for a Thursday. I went out and built some displays, and started to feel a bit adventurous.. Time make Jared happy and go on a Mac Bolan Book Adventure Quest.. of epic questing. Now where is that picture he sent me on Facebook?

 

 

     Yes, he used a picture from my blog to help me find books for him. I brought the picture up on my phone, showed it to my buddy at the Flea Market.. and..

 

 

     ..Bam! .50 cents of happiness. Angry black man on the cover and all. The best covers are on old Mac Bolan novels. At this point I head over to a place I knew had quite a good selection of Executioner, and called him.





 

     About 10 pictures and 5 phone calls later, we narrowed down the list to a select few morsels.

 



     For some reason this is only picture I could find with the books I bought, but I think I bought five. They are in a box downstairs ready to be shipped when the box gets full. Ill have to check that out. As you can see, I also nabbed a couple of books for myself. I told myself I would go to one more store and check out whats new.

 
     I walked in, and the owner had put this aside for me. A whole box of vintage Daw classics from the 70's and 80's. All in unread condition. My budget spent, I asked her if she could cut me some kind of deal, which she refused almost right away. I insisted, she called someone and shot me down again. The final price was $3.50 a book, and I'd have to buy them all. Average selling price on eBay is not really much more than that, so I can guess where she got her price. I few in the box go for around $10.00.. I decided to pass. I know what your thinking. How could I pass on such a great offer? Well, I have about a third of them in my collection already, and Daw books are only worth something if the cover art is awesome, or they are super early editions. These were kind good condition, mostly later editions, and not the greatest cover art. She did agree to put them back under the table and wait for me to call her before she heads to eBay with them. A huge let down, but I did get some other good ones..

     My cat, Artax, smelled something funny on the books. Some great cool first editions, one in particular I really liked by Isaac Asimov.

     First edition Face and Fancy. Kind of like a precursor to the Book of Facts he released years later. Cover art is strange and wonderful, and cat-attracting. I spent my $10.00 allowance today, but since I had such good fortune finding a few gems, I decided to take one more side trip.

     All the book hunting makes you hungry, so after careful consideration, my son and I decided it would be best to have pizza and discuss the finer points in life, the world, and everything.

Garage Sale Saturday: Old Macgregor

 

     Had a few minutes before my wife really got out of bed so I took a fast little spin down the street where the houses are nicer, and people behave differently, often badly, because they have more money than most people. That said..

 

 

     Two Super old books, randomly picked from a couple of old snobs asking too much money for everything. Some how, I got away with these two gems for.. .25 cents.

 

     Twenty-five cents. Take that rich people.

 

 

 

 





Super Thrift Shopping.. at Super Thrift.

    
     So decided to give this super huge Thrift Store by the train tracks another chance. It's pretty ghetto. Nothing electronic I bought from there ever works. It's 99% clothes, and it smells like Kenny Rogers in there. Not the chicken place, I mean, Kenny-fucking-Rogers.

     Some first edition, late printing Harry Potter books.. always good for a quick eBay turn-around..l but alas.. $3.99 each! I don't think so Super Thrift. Shame on you.

 

 

     Look what we have here. C.O.P.S. VHS tape. Fantastic short-lived cartoon from my youth. Great animation for it's day. Also, I saw some PC games, both without the codes. A used copy of Ever Quest II, a failed MMORPG, for $10. (sarcasm) Sign me up!

 





      Fail again guys. The shirts were super organized by color and type. The pants too. No books, no cool things to show you. I'm out of here.

Another box in the mail! What could it be?

What could it be? Wait, its books! It says so right on it.

 

      SO my mom must have been busy lately, because she surprised with me with a big box of books this morning! The box weighed in at around thirty pounds. I see she did not cross out the remote on the box, so I'm assuming it includes one for the purposes of this blog post.

 

     This morning was also daddy-boy day, so I had help setting everything up, and unwrapping.

 



Contents when first opened, my offspring tore it from my greedy hands.

 

A kids book for Major II! He read all of it right away.

 

Whats this I see? Some IF mags from the sixties! Awesome.

 

A closer look, relics of the past.

 

I love Spam. Its healthy, salty, jellied covered quasi-meat, makes me purr. The texture? Sublime.

 

A TV Guide for my Trekkie wife. Janeway is a bitch, for the record. At this pointed, Major spotted something for him I missed.

 

Toy Story cards from the very first Toy Story! Of course, they had to be played with right away.

 

All the books out of the box. Wow! It's like finding One Eyed Willy's Rich Stuff.

 

 A little up close HD images so you can zoom in and see the titles. All are early or first editions.

 

Really cool "Ace Double". Two books in one.

 

     Tons of books I did not have just fell in to my lap this morning, what a rare treat. Thanks Mom for hunting down some good classics for me. I saw your note that mentioned you supplemented the contents of the box with your own private stash. Well, you know your books will be in a good place. Of note: H.G. Wells early edition paper backs,  Animal Farm second printing, two Ace Doubles which in my experience are pretty rare, especially in this condition. As customary, gifted books do not get researched on eBay, but you can pretty much guess what some of this is worth.

 

     Spirits high, and morale boosted, father and son had one more adventure....

 



..We were hungry. Thanks grandma for the cool stuff.

Thrift Store Pickups on Mcgregor, Making Friends

     Not two miles from my house there is a cool little old lady thrift store that I pass about weekly and never go in. If I see lace and crappy wicker furniture, I typically just move on. I was opening a liquor store next door, and a pretty nice one I might add. I had no excuse but to pop in while I was waiting on the owner to make some time for me. Well, I was pretty surprised.

     At this point before I took the pictures, I had to text Jared and ask him if he needed any of the "Destroyer" series. I saw an almost complete collection there. He told me he was not looks for those, just the Mac Bolan-esk ones. Well I tried to help a fellow collector, which gives me the warm fuzzies.

     About 10 book shelves total, clustered around the vintage Christmas vinyl and senior citizen cassette tapes. Right away I saw some unseen gems. I grabbed a few and piled them up on the aforementioned book case. Right away an older gentlemen in his late 50's-early 60's approached me and asked me if I was looking for vintage Sci-Fi. I remarked that I was. He started handing me books explaining he collects himself, but has all the ones in this store. He had also noticed stores in the general area were (not so surprisingly now) devoid of pulp sci-fi and fantasy. We hit it off, he told me stories about his finds and adventures, and I told him mine. He told me about his Forbidden Planet sequel he had wrote and tried to obtain the rights to. We talked for about a half hour, exchanged names (his was Vinny) and I checked out. And the spoils...

 Jesus. Okay lets try that again.

 



     Now that the cat moved.. Sweet vintage Sci-fi! Nothing great, but mostly things I wanted and/or needed. First edition Dune Messiah I have in hard cover, but not in paper back first edition, so that was a pretty good score. Another DAW original, two Laser pulp cover novels and a Clarke first edition paper back to round it all out. I spent $7.50, and came out with about $150 in ebay value. Not my best day, but I did damn well. Vinny helped.