The end of July brought a huge pulp auction from Heritage Auctions that featured more than 120 graded issues of famed pulp series Doc Savage. Let’s take a look to see how the Man of Bronze and some other pulp favorites fared.
Doc Savage’s First Appearance
A 4.5 graded copy of Doc Savage #1 (v1 #1), published by Street & Smith in March 1933, was the primary draw for Heritage’s July 31 The Man of Bronze: A Doc Savage Pulp Magazine Showcase Auction. With only 17 graded copies and the highest being a 5.5, this seminal work drew in the big spenders with a final sale of $33,600. Unfortunately, that was down from the sale of a 4.5 in a June 2024 auction when it went for $39,600. The difference? The copy that sold last year had off-white to white pages vs. the one selling this year with cream to off-white pages. In a medium where the cheapness of the paper (thus the name “pulps”) causes rapid degradation, page quality matters. Still, it’s a big sale and the second highest price ever paid for a copy – graded or raw.
Zorro’s Back
Zorro’s first appearance in All-Story Weekly #395 (v100 #2) saw another big sale in the July 31 auction. A top-of-census 3.5 graded copy with cream to off-white pages set a record with a $15,600 sale. That tops the only other recorded sale of a graded copy: a Restored 2.0 that went for $7,200 in a June 19 Heritage auction. Graded copies of this 1919 gem are incredibly hard to find with only six in the CGC census.
Low Grade Better Than No Grade for First Shadow
A Restored 0.5 copy with the incorrect back cover of the 1931 classic Shadow #1 (v1 #1) made waves with a five-figure sale despite the poor quality when it sold for $10,200. It’s not surprising when you consider that the census currently shows only six graded copies and only two graded higher than 1.0. The highest price paid was set back in 2021 when a Fine- raw copy sold in a Heritage auction for $156,000.
Doc Savage Keeps Going… and Going…
The big story of the auction, though, was the enormous number of graded issues of Doc Savage available. The highest seller was a gorgeous 8.5 graded Strasser Pedigree copy of Doc Savage #52 (v9 #4) from June 1937 with an awesome R.G. Harris cover. It sold for $6,000 and it’s a record – by a lot. Previous sales of graded copies had only been for restored or conserved copies; this was the first sale of a universal copy.
Other sales from the series included the sales of a 6.0 of Doc Savage #6 (v1 #6) for $5,760, a 4.5 of Doc Savage #3 (v1 #3) for $5,040, a 7.5 of Doc Savage #10 (v2 #4) for $3,840, a 5.5 of Doc Savage #2 (v1 #2) for $3,120, and a 6.5 of Doc Savage #9 (v2 #3) for $3,120. So all inclusive was the auction that the passport of Lester Dent – the creator of Doc Savage – sold for $4,320.
Other Notable Pulp Sales
In addition to the Doc Savage auction, a couple graded pulps sold in Heritage’s July 20 auction. First was a 4.5 graded copy of Amazing Stories #29 (v3 #5) – featuring the first appearance of Buck Rogers - going for $2,280. That’s a bit of a haircut from the sale of a 4.5 in a June 29 Heritage auction for $2,880. This issue has proven to be a top issue that collectors send into CGC for grading; the census count is up to 102 graded copies.
Next up was Astounding Science-Fiction #93 (v21 #6). A 6.0 graded copy sold for $1,020. This issue features “Who Goes There?” by John W. Campbell, Jr. The novella is the basis for three films: The Thing from Another World (1951), The Thing (1982) – the best of the three films, and The Thing (2011). The census count for this issue is up to 33 graded copies. A 6.5 copy just sold for the record price of $1,680 in a June 19 Heritage auction.
