The Saturday Night Auction returns to PulpFest on July 29. It will begin at 10 PM with the always entertaining John P. Gunnison of Adventure House serving as auctioneer. We’ll be previewing some of the highlights from this year’s auction over the next three days. On Saturday, July 8, we hope to publish a list of our scheduled auction lots. Please note that the list is subject to change.
Although PulpFest annually invests a great deal of time and energy to develop a top-notch programming schedule, it also prides itself for the effort it puts into its annual auction. Each year, the convention’s auction director, J. Barry Traylor, endeavors to put together a range of material to make for lively bidding.
Our 2016 auction included over two hundred pulps from the collection of Woody Hagadish. A longtime collector and reader of books and pulps, Woody a Pulpcon attendee in the past. Primarily interested in western pulps — particularly WILD WEST WEEKLY — Woody was a reading enthusiast and enjoyed his collection. PulpFest will be offering more material from Woody’s collection at our 2017 auction.
We’ll have a variety of both pulps and digests from such diverse genres as air war, science fiction, western, and the detective fields. Also included will be several premiums offered to readers of Street & Smith’s DOC SAVAGE and THE SHADOW MAGAZINE. Finally, there will be a number of Gnome Press, Shasta, and Avalon first edition hardcovers offered. The estate is hoping to find good homes for all of these collectibles, getting them to the people who would best appreciate them, as Woody Hagadish had done during his lifetime.
This year’s auction will also feature a number of pulp magazines from the collection of the late Larry Latham. Larry enjoyed a varied career in animation, film, TV, theater and teaching. He was one of the founding members of the Oklahoma Alliance of Fandom, one of the earliest comics clubs in the nation. With a degree in motion picture production, Larry worked at Hanna-Barbera Studios in the storyboard department and graduated to directing and producing at Universal, Walt Disney, Scholastic, and the Berlin Film Company. He won an Emmy for TAILSPIN in 1991. Larry was also admired by the pulp community for his covers and illustrations for ECHOES, THE PULP COLLECTOR, PULP VAULT, and other fanzines. He also created the popular webcomic LOVECRAFT IS MISSING in 2009, which attracted many followers.
PulpFest will be offering a variety of pulps from Larry Latham’s collection, such as copies of THE ARGOSY and THE ALL-STORY, the first three issues of FAMOUS FANTASTIC MYSTERIES, a selection of THE WIDE WORLD, and a number of hero pulps, including the May 1934 issue of DOC SAVAGE, autographed to Latham by cover artist Walter Baumhofer.
One of our members has also mentioned that he may be offering a complete set of the second volume of AMRA — no. 1 to no. 71 — published by George Scithers from 1959 to 1982. AMRA was printed by offset lithography, with high-quality artwork, including by Roy G. Krenkel, Gray Morrow, and Jim Cawthorn. The written content was impressive too, the contributors including L. Sprague de Camp above all others, Poul Anderson, Leigh Brackett, John Boardman, Jerry Pournelle, Fritz Leiber, and Marion Zimmer Bradley.
If you can’t make it to PulpFest 2017 and would like to bid on any of these highly collectible volumes, please contact PulpFest marketing and programming director Mike Chomko by email at mike@pulpfest.com.
There will also be lots submitted to the auction by registered members of the convention. Pulp magazines and related materials, vintage paperbacks, digests, men’s adventure and true crime magazines, original art, first edition hardcovers, series books, reference books, dime novels and story papers, Big Little Books, B-Movies, serials and related paper collectibles, old-time radio shows, and Golden and Silver Age comic books as well as newspaper adventure strips will all be allowed in the auction. Modern graphic novels and comic books will be allowed only if they are related to the pulps. Sexually explicit magazines such as PLAYBOY, PENTHOUSE, and OUI and soft-core porn will not be allowed. Any member of PulpFest 2016 can submit items to the auction. Your PulpFest badge number will be used as your auction bidder and/or seller number.
Start making your plans now to attend PulpFest 2017 to see some of the great material that Barry Traylor is assembling for this year’s auction. We hope to see you from Thursday evening, July 27, through Sunday afternoon, July 30, at the DoubleTree by Hilton Hotel Pittsburgh – Cranberry — just north of Pennsylvania’s “Steel City.” You can join PulpFest by clicking the Register for 2017 button on our home page. And if you’re not from the Pittsburgh area, don’t forget to book a room at the DoubleTree. They’re going fast! Please call 1-800-222-8733 and be sure to mention PulpFest in order to receive any convention special deals that may still be available.
(Robert G. Harris’ painting for “The Sea Angel” — originally used as the cover art to the November 1937 issue of DOC SAVAGE MAGAZINE – served as a premium provided to readers of the pulp magazine. Over at THE SHADOW MAGAZINE, Street & Smith art director Bill Lawler — who was noted for his hawkish visage — posed for a black and white portrait dressed as Walter B. Gibson’s “Dark Avenger.” Readers would clip a number of coupons from issues of THE SHADOW or DOC SAVAGE MAGAZINE and mail them in to receive these free giveaways.
Below is a sampling of some of hero pulp collectibles from the collections that we’ll be auctioning at PulpFest 2017. Please visit our site on Thursday and Friday for more examples from the PulpFest 2017 Saturday Night Auction.)
