Welcome to Vintage Paperbacks and More

 Hello World,

    Yeah, we used to say that when first starting a website or program back in the 1990's. I don't know if the term is in use anymore, I'm not that hip. 

    I've been collecting vintage paperbacks for over 40 years now and it has gradually grown from an avocation to practically a vocation. That being the case, I've wanted to, and have been urged by friends to, create more content associated with vintage paperbacks, digests and magazines, which are the three main vintage paper artifacts I collect. So here we are, I am blogging for the first time in my life. 

    Blogs are supposed to be about Eye Candy so here's some pics of various moments in time of my collections...

 

A few of my copies of Reform School Girl by Felice Swados. Diversey Romance Novel No. 1  My favorite vintage Digest, and one of the rarest and most valuable books in the hobby.

 

An assortment of vintage 50's-60's Drug books

 

The first eight Dell Books

 

Vintage Popular Library paperbacks by Cornell Woolrich under his pseudonyms William Irish and George Hopley

       

Sorting out portions of a high grade collection from Connecticut that I bought a large chunk of.  I called these "The High Grade Collection" since they were the first large assemblage of high grade books I was able to buy when I started collecting again.

Army Romances No. 1, 2 & 3. An exceptionally rare digest run to put together -  especially number 1 & 3!

 

I like the George Harmon cover on the 1st paperback edition of Orwell's 1984 so much that I had to have all the variant color schemes!

  

A run of Peanuts Rinehart first editions, first prints. One of my first paperback loves.

    I guess a little about what I do would be in order... 

    The bookstores and secondhand shops of New York City were my proving grounds back when I started collecting in the late 1970's. Although obsessed at first with Science Fiction, I gravitated towards paperbacks with Good Girl art and juvenile delinquent/gang subjects. My interest in the cover artwork eventually led me to do original research on various cover artists, known and unknown. 

    I am the author of "The Art of Raymond Johnson" a comprehensive biography and checklist of the works of Raymond Johnson, a pioneer in the genre of "Good Girl" cover art in the paperback field from the 1940's through the 1960's, which was published in Illustration Magazine No. 77 in August 2022. This lengthy article was the first biographical work on the artist, whose work was well known to collectors but whose life was previously undocumented.

 

                Illustration No. 77 Cover by Raymond Johnson illustrating "Maharajah" by Richard Cargoes, Popular Library No. 451, 1952

 

  

    Sample text of "The Art Of Raymond Johnson".  The Magazine is sold out at publisher, The Illustrated Press, but it can still can be purchased in digital format for $4.99 on Magzter here: https://www.magzter.com

 

     Not to be pigeonholed by the "traditional" ( Noir/Science Fiction/Sleazy Pulp ) notion of vintage paperbacking, I've been a Peanuts fan since infancy and have pursued collecting and researching the wholesome early vintage Peanuts paperbacks and have acquired all of the Rinehart & Co. and Holt, Rinehart, Winston, Inc. softcover "Full Books" published between 1952 and 1974. 

The first edition, first printing of the first Peanuts paperback, published by Rinehart & Co., Incorporated in 1952. Note the experimental price hand stamped on the cover!

     

     Seeing the confusion on the internet and in the marketplace about what constituted true first printings of the various Peanuts books, I embarked on a project to document the bibliographical hallmarks of the Peanuts First Editions as I was winding down my Raymond Johnson research in 2022 and brought the effort forward to publication in 2024. Linky: https://www.peanutsfirsteditions.com/home

    Although I've been selling vintage paperbacks, comics and various other things on eBay since 1998, I got a bit more serious and launched Vintage Paperbacks and More in 2024 as my eBay store, incorporating as Vintage Paperbacks, LLC. 

 

Click the image to check out my eBay store.

 

    As my collection has grown, I've gotten more and more into the side of upgrading my existing books and selling my undercopies, as well as sourcing books for other collectors. It has grown to the point where I'm at least a "half-time" vintage paperback dealer. I spend an inordinate time looking at vintage paperbacks, digests and magazines and trying to figure who uncredited artists are (or shepherding information that is scattered around the internet). 

    In 2025 I had the Vintage Paperbacks logo designed and "Mary the Gun Moll" can be found a s a kind of unifying identifier of my store and online content. I have started a webpage and this blog and hope to have one nested within the other somehow as the website evolves. I foresee the website as serving multiple purposes in the future, with the blog as an outlet for research and fun vintage paperback talk.

 

Click on the image to go to the Vintage Paperbacks website.

     With that all said, I hope I can provide enough entertainment and cool vintage paperback pictures and info to entice readers to subscribe and share this blog. I'm giving it a shot!