OK, new personal rule for me: Any time I post a book that Overstreet claims goes for over 5K in high grade, it gets its own thread rather than a mention in my more general upload thread. Not that this has ever come up before or is likely to come up again any time soon; I think I own all of 5 books total that hit that range. And not that I paid even close to that for this coverless copy; it was actually well under $100, even with shipping.
The reason this book lists so high is, of course, the first appearance of Spacehawk by Basil Wolverton. This particular story has been reprinted at least a couple times that I know of, but it's still wonderful to see it in its original form. Or, for everybody else, at least as close as I can make it. While the Spacehawk stories in v2 and v3 of Target are all wonderful in their own way, with a few stories- the two Hitler parodies and the Dr. Gore stories in particular- excellent, it's generally agreed that the series suffered when editorial demanded that Spacehawk become more down to earth. The v1 stories, by contrast, are AMAZING. Nobody could create an alien world quite like Wolverton, and this is a classic example of that. Just breathtaking work.
As far as the rest of the book, it's still trying to find a direction. It's unsurprising but interesting just how much this book resembles an early Timely book, given that it was packaged by the Jaquet (sp?) shop. We've got a Bill Everett cover and a lead story by Burgos, just for starters.
One note on the condition of the book, other than the obvious fact it's missing the IBC and IFC. There were three small holes through the entire book. I've fixed a few of them in the Spacehawk story where I could, but by and large they're beyond my ability to fix. Mostly they're not too obvious or annoying, but if anybody with really impressive editing skills wanted me to get them copies of the raw scans to try and repair them, let me know.
