The PulpFest 2025 Auction will take place on Saturday, August 9. It will begin at 9 pm and feature 200+ lots submitted online by PulpFest members and a few small estates. Additional lots may also be added during the convention itself.
Online Bidding
For those unable to attend the PulpFest 2025 auction, the convention will accept online bids placed through the 2025 Auction page. Click the auction link at the top of our website. Online bids can be placed on every auction lot in our photo catalog.
PulpFest will bid for our online bidders during the auction. We will continue bidding for each online bidder up to the amount of the person’s bid. If no bid placed by the audience at the live auction is higher than the final online bid, the lot will be won by the online bidder.
To place your online bids, click the red “online bid form” button above our auction lot photographs.
Online bidders will be asked to provide contact information, payment method, and their final bids for each auction lot. You can submit bids for multiple lots on the same form by clicking the “+” button on our online bidding page. All information submitted will be kept confidential.
Online bids that are less than $10 will not be accepted. The deadline to place online bids is 10 pm Eastern on Tuesday, August 5. Afterwards, the PulpFest Auction Online Bidding Page will be shut down.
PulpFest will accept checks or money orders (in U.S. dollars), PayPal, or credit card payments for items won through silent bidding. A 5% fee will be charged for all credit card or PayPal transactions. There will be additional shipping charges for those who cannot pick up the lots they have won.
Consigning Items to Our Auction
All members of PulpFest 2025 can submit items to our auction. All member auction lots must have a $20 minimum value. If a lot is submitted with a reserve price, it must be able to meet that reserve. If the bidding does not meet your reserve price, your item will be passed.
All auction lots must have a value of $20 or more. The convention will charge a 16% commission based on the selling price for anything sold in the auction. For example, if an item sells for $100, the seller will receive $84.
To minimize the submission of what most people term “junk” to our auction, PulpFest will charge $5 for those auction lots that receive no bids.
Pulp magazines, vintage paperbacks, digests, men’s adventure and true crime magazines, genre books, first-edition hardcovers, series books, dime novels, original art, Big Little Books, Golden and Silver Age or pulp-related comic books, old-time-radio shows, gaming materials, and film serials, B-movies, and related collectibles will be allowed in the auction. Sexually explicit material — including Playboy, Penthouse, and Oui — cannot be submitted to the auction.
PulpFest will accept materials submitted by PulpFest 2025 attendees up through 1 p.m. on the day of the auction. These will be sold following the early submissions. At this late date, we are no longer accepting consignments from estates or people who will not be attending PulpFest.
To submit your material to our auction while at PulpFest 2025, you can get consignment forms from Mike Chomko. Our auction banner (pictured at the start of this post) will be near Mike’s dealer tables to show members where to submit their auction lots.
When submitting your lots, we will need your name, your PulpFest badge number, and a description of the items included in the lot that you are consigning to the auction.
Any PulpFest member will be able to submit auction lots to Mike Chomko on Friday, August 8, from 9:30 am until 4:45 pm. On Saturday, August 9, PulpFest members will be able to submit auction lots from 9 am until 1 pm.
The sooner you submit your material to our auction, the sooner your material will come up for bid.
PulpFest reserves the right to reject any auction material that does not meet its standards, including minimum values and reserve prices.
Please write to PulpFest auction coordinator, Mike Chomko, at mike@pulpfest.com or 2217 W. Fairview Street, Allentown, PA 18104, if you have any questions about placing material into the next PulpFest auction.
Bidding in Our 2025 Auction
For those physically present at our 2025 auction, your PulpFest badge number will serve as your bidder number. If you are the winning bidder, the auctioneer will ask for your badge number.
After paying for any lots you win, you can pick them up in the Willow Auction Preview Room, located near the hotel’s lounge. Our auction banner will be there.
People who desire to attend the PulpFest auction — but not the convention itself — are also welcome to attend. If non-PulpFest attendees wish to bid during the auction, they will have to register as bidders. There will be a $5 non-refundable registration fee to bid during the auction.
Non-PulpFest attendees will be able to register to bid during our 2025 auction from 8:30 – 8:50 pm in the PulpFest 2025 programming area where our auction will take place.
If you win any auction lots, you must pay for them before you depart the auction room on Saturday night. You are also expected to pick up the lots you have won on Saturday night unless you make other arrangements with our staff.
Auction Preview Sessions
We will have daily preview sessions in the Willow and Walnut Rooms at the DoubleTree. Watch for the auction banner in the corner of the hotel’s restaurant and lodge area. We’ll have paper catalogs there.
The preview sessions will run from 3:30 – 4:45 pm on Thursday, Friday, and Saturday. The times are also listed on our program schedule which you will find on the back of your convention badge. If you plan to bid, please visit the preview rooms during these times.
You can also access our PulpFest 2025 Mobile Schedule at pulpfest.com/schedule/ to find our auction preview times.
You’ll have one last look from 8:30 – 8:50 pm on Saturday evening, just before the start of our Saturday night auction. But if you plan to bid in our auction, please don’t wait until the last minute for our preview. Visit during our afternoon sessions.
You can also view photographs of all currently submitted auction lots on the PulpFest website. Click the “2025 auction” button at the top of our home page and scroll down to our auction photo catalog. Click here to download a PDF of our catalog. The catalog includes all consignments submitted by 4 pm on Sunday, August 3, 2025.
The items in each lot have been graded by eyeball only. We have attempted to note both exceptional pieces and substantial defects, but are not responsible for anything that may have been missed. If you will be attending PulpFest, you are responsible for looking at the lots on which you plan to bid. It is up to the bidder to decide on each item’s condition.
Questions?
See Mike Chomko if you have any questions about the PulpFest 2025 auction. You can also reach out to him with your questions by email at mike@pulpfest.com or 2217 W. Fairview Street, Allentown, PA 18104-6542. Please enclose a stamped, self-addressed envelope for his response.
Our featured image is excerpted from John Falter’s cover for the August 5, 1944 issue of The Saturday Evening Post.
The PulpFest auction banner was adapted by William Lampkin from Rafael DeSoto’s cover art for the January 1934 issue of Standard’s The Phantom Detective.
Lot #158 consists of 3 issues of Donald Wollheim’s Avon Fantasy Reader. Including numbers 4, 14, and 18 (the final issue of the publication) — all in VG condition — the title was published as an occasional anthology, rather than a periodical. Published as a digest, Avon Fantasy Reader reprinted stories from a wide range of sources. The highlights of the three issues are the stories by H. P. Lovecraft and Robert E. Howard, particularly Howard’s “The Witch from Hell’s Kitchen,” published in #18 for the first time anywhere.
Our auctioneer image is excerpted from Norman Rockwell’s cover art painted for the April 29, 1922 issue of The Country Gentleman.
Lot #23 consists of 3 consecutive issues of The Shadow from 1939. The lot includes August 15, featuring “Wizard of Crime”, September 1, featuring “The Crime Ray”, and September 15, featuring “The Golden Master,” the first meeting between The Shadow and Shiwan Khan. All three lead novels are by Walter B. Gibson, writing as Maxwell Grant. All three covers are by Graves Gladney, and all three issues are in VG condition. The August 15 issue also includes a Sheridan Doome story by Steve Fisher, while the September 1 issue has an Alan Hathway Whisperer yarn. There is a reserve placed on this item.
