Office Hours

For some reason my mind wanders to those old Private Eye movies where the stencil guy is putting up the gumshoes name on the door to the office. “Jay and Walt – listers for hire”, doesn’t quite have that ring to it but I’ll work on it through this post. It’s a big space: that’s Jay’s desk on the other side of the room as seen from my desk. Somehow there are no bottles of booze in the picture; this tells me Chris Owen didn’t visit that day.

How’s “Jay and Walt – Mint Trolls for Hire”?

The plan is still to sell all those damn boxes in the warehouse; check out these 10 long boxes in the back of my pick-up. I have some business in Eastern Ontario tomorrow and have arranged a shoulder roll in Kingston to sell these 10 boxes. Would have been nice if it was 100 boxes but I’ll take this to start the ball rolling.

We could go with “Jay and Walt – comic gurus for hire”?

I attacked a nice juicy pile of comics destined for the icecollectibles weekly eBay auction. My cover of the week has to go to this L. B. Cole gem from Terros of the Jungle. I get a craving for coconuts when I look at this cover. L. B. Cole is one of those giants of the Golden Age, he’s coveted in many genres, Sci Fi, Good Girl Art and Horror, I like his Romance stuff too. Legend.

“Jay and Walt – guys that will sell your crap for hire” might work?

Speaking of something that should work, take a look at this ad from Terrors of the Jungle #9. Think of all the 12-year-old kids in Michigan, Pennsylvania, the Carolinas etc. that loved reading comics and messing around outside fishing, hunting with their dad, I can see kids ordering away for some of this stuff. My Spidey sense tells me it might not have worked though as this is the first time I’ve seen an ad like this, meanwhile those ads polluted with all that gimmicky trinket garbage, those ads ran for decades in comics.

We could always try “Jay and Walt – jambrones for hire”?

In the eBay auction pile there was a nice mid-grade copy of Neal Adams classic Batman #251, I thought that would be my cover of the week but we’ve all seen that thing a thousand times. I leafed through and found that iconic splash page near the end of the book, this splash is sooo Adams and is such an iconic pose, I’m thinking this page would fetch a pretty penny on auction.

Ok, ok, how about “Jay and Walt – panelologists for hire”?

The latest edition of the icecollectibles weekly eBay auction ended last night with some big books closing. I once had an almost complete set of CGC 9.4 Marvel 1968 relaunch issues, I had 5 of the 6 with Captain America #100 missing. I let my copies go for what I thought was way too cheap back in 2019. A CGC 9.4 sold back in July for 1800, down from the insane high of $3810 back in April 2022. Our copy sold for $1680, I see this as a positive stabilizing result.

Walter Durajlija
Walter Durajlija

Walter Durajlija is an Overstreet Advisor and Shuster Award winner. He owns Big B Comics in Hamilton Ontario.

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2 Comments

  1. I have a Terrors of the Jungle #18 already that looks like you are chasing the same L.B. Cole bikini ed girl so keep driving I’m happy with my copy. 🙂

    Bring back some Canadian books on your trip

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