You have just acquired some old Pulp Magazines, or you have had some lying about for years. How do you determine if they are valuable enough to hang on to or place on ebay?

There are unfortunately few detailed priceguides available, but if you keep reading, I will review the best one in my opinion, and the only up to date one I have come across. But first, lets review some other means to determine prices for Pulp Magazines:

• Check ebay
  • Many pulp magazines appear every day on ebay. Most do not sell. The key is to check the selling price of those that do sell. You cannot go by the starting price, because as mentioned before, most never receive a bid. Many dealers will place a starting price several times what the pulp is worth, knowing there are no reliable price guides available, so they may get lucky.

    You cannot go by the the current auction price either for items that do receive a bid, as many items are bid up within the last 10 seconds of the auction. The only reliable way is to check results of completed auctions. Do this by using advanced search, and check the option for completed auctions

• Check Amazon
  • There are a few pulp magazines appearing on Amazon. The unfortunate thing for serious the pulp collector is that few are realistically priced. Most dealers are expecting unsophisticated collectors to buy from Amazon. Most prices I see are at least twice what I would expect to pay.
• Check a general magazine priceguide
  • Many general magazine priceguides offer prices for some pulps. The problem with relying on these guides is that they are not comprehensive enough to be useful. Here is a good example. I am trying to complete my collection of an obscure pulp called Saucy Movie Tales. This pulp has only about 25 issues, and is unlikely to be included in most priceguides. If the title is included, no general priceguide could afford to list all 25 issues. The rarest issue is worth almost 10 times the most common issue. Which price will the general priceguide list- the common or rare price, or an average? Either way, you would not be well served by such a guide.
• Use Google to search the Internet
  • This is a tried and true method, but can become tedious if you have a large number of pulp magazines to value. And there is one serious drawback. If you have something truly rare, it is unlikely that any dealer has one in stock at any given moment. The truly rare items don't come up for sale very often. The chance that one will be offered when you are looking may be small. You run the risk of having a rare item and not recognize that fact.

What is the best method for determing if you have a valuable pulp magazine? The answer is to find a reliable and detailed priceguide. But which priceguide? Which priceguide will have up to date prices and be comprehensive enough to list whatever you have.

Which priceguide do I recommend? At the moment, there is only one available that I would recommend.

That would be Bookery's Guide to Pulps by Tim Cottrill, 2nd edition published in the last year.

This could be considered the bible for pulp collectors, but phone book is a better description, as it resembles a medium sized city phone book in size at nearly 400 oversized pages. This is the most complete guide ever published, with over 1300 titles covered. Bet you didn't know that many different pulp titles existed!

The following are features that make this reference guide unique:

• 1000's of prices
• prices for three magazine grades
• 180 Cover artists listed
• 400 authors cross referenced
• 1st appearances noted
• pseudonyms
• major stories noted
• and many more

One of my favorite features is a description of cover art for some issues. As I previously mentioned, the title I am currently trying to complete is Saucy Movie Tales. One of the frustrating things about this title is that nost issues were undated, so it is difficult to know which issues belong where. For this title and many others, a brief description of the cover is provided. here is a brief excerpt listing the first five issues:

Before I found this guide, I was not able to place the issues I had in any order, or to know which issues I still needed. If you have any pulps of this title, please contact me. I would be interested in purchasing any that I need to complete my collection, or any that are in better condition than the copy I already own.

There are a number of articles written on subjects that should interest every collector. These include:

• What are pulps?
• Influence of pulps
• How to use the Guide
• Grading definitions
• Pricing methodology
• Terms and Abbreviatons
• Availibility definition
• and many more

The only drawback to this book is that there are not that many illustrations. That is completely understandible. Were it a completely illustrated, you probably would not be able to lift it. If you are interested in cover art, check here for over 6000 pulp covers on DVD.

Should you have an interest in purchasing this book, click here for a discounted copy with free shipping.

All in all, I highly recommend this price guide.

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