FLYING STORIES – Oct. 1929 sold recently on eBay for $34.04
“Flying Stories” was a rare bedsheet pulp published by MacFadden, running for 20 issues between 1928 and 1930.
This… is for the October 1929 issue.
Authors include Frederick Nebel (with a serial installment of “The Scourge of the South Sea Skies”) and Laurence Donovan.
Condition is fair; front cover has overall wear, creasing, tears and a small piece missing at the top.
The spine has portions missing.
The back cover is missing, and there’s a piece out of pages 95 and 96 which affects ads, but not any story text.
Paper is a higher quality paper than the usual pulp paper and is off-white and supple.
While not in great shape, it’s tough to find this title in any condition.”
The cover also looks like it has a tear through 1/2 to 3/4’s of the cover from the top mid-spine, moving right to the female aviator’s helmet, then moving south to the eagles’ wing. It also splits 1/4 way through into another tear heading up through the entire “F” in FLYING.
Bookery: “Scarce to Rare” $30.00 – $75.00 – $150.00
This is one of those Pulps mentioned in Bookery in which collectors have to grab whatever copy they can find, no matter the condition. You never know when another copy of the title will show or a particular issue.
The second series of 6 issues in 1930, put out by Good Story Magazines (with the same logo), is probably even more scarce being a ‘real’ Pulp.
This same copy is at Galactic Central, but the original owner took a lousy picture of it. This photograph was much better.
This issue has 5 short stories and 7 articles/columns/transcripts.
Authors: “The Death Jinx” (Part 1 of 3) by Edwin Vernon Burkholder (who wrote the 19 “Hook McGuire” series as George Allan Moffatt in The SHADOW);
“The Scourge of the South Sea Skies” by Frederick L. Nebel (Part 2 of 3)
Frederick L. Nebel (FictionMags says it’s a novel, but at only 6 pages that doesn’t seem possible, even being a bedsheet. Maybe they are adding all 3 parts of the serial together);
“His Fear of Being Afraid” by L. P. Holmes (who had a ton of stories in the Pulps);
“No Man’s Air” (Part 4 of 4) by Capt. J. I. Lawrence;
the 4 page manuscript “Grim Missiles from the Sky” is by Laurence Donovan;
the longest item in the issue is the 9 page “Flying Stories Told in Pictures”
Way back in March 2016 a much better Dec. 1929 issue went for a “Buy It Now” of $75.00
14TH issue of 14 of the Macfadden Publications bedsheet series.
Authors: “The Cloud Plotters” by Laurence Donovan;
“The Pilot Who Saw Things” by Jackson Scholz;
“The Death Jinx” (Part 3 of 3) by Edwin Vernon Burkholder;
“The Golden Eagle” (Part 2 of 5) by Guy Fowler (it continued when Good Story Magazine Company took over in Feb. 1930)(Guy Fowler wasn’t very prolific but he managed to find his way into all the scarce and Very Rare Pulp titles: BRIEF STORIES, GHOST STORIES, FLYING STORIES, COMPLETE MOVIE NOVEL MAGAZINE, RED BLOODED STORIES, FIGHTING ROMANCES from the WEST and EAST, SUBMARINE STORIES, and BLUE BAND MAGAZINE)
“Charles Lindbergh Aviation. All the pages are wavy as if once exposed to moisture. Yet no stuck pages and no smell. Pricing takes that into account. Really scarce issue.”
Having seen the copy it is truly in VFN+/perhaps up to NM- condition. The wavy pages are very, very light, almost imperceptible, with only some noticeable pinkish bleed into the inner back cover. I’ve seen brand new, fresh newsstand magazines having 10 time worse wavy pages than this copy.
Just 11 cover images are at Galactic Central of the 20 issues, but of those the Dec. 1929 issue has the weakest, less dramatic cover. Still, it is a scarce Bedsheet Pulp.
ENJOY PULPS – David Lee Smith