When this two-volume set was published back in '89, you couldn't just jump on the Internet and hunt up a photo of dang near every Golden Age comic ever published. So The Photo-Journal Guide was a beautiful thing. A collection of more than 21,000 comic book covers, in full color, along with pertinent info of various sorts.
Each big honkin' volume, running 400 pages and measuring 10 x 13 1/2 inches, begins with informative text articles. Volume 1 discusses the hobby of collecting, the science of grading, calculating relative values, pedigrees, preservation and storage, and the basic plan of the books. Volume 2 goes deeper into the phases and trends of collecting, buying, selling, investing, restoration, and social and historical impact. Volume 2 also has a handy artist index. All of that, I'm sure, was important reading for folks who could afford to collect Golden Age comics.
But for the rest of us, who are really just looky-lous, these books are all about the photos. And they're pure eye candy. All are interesting, and some are flat out amazing. Mixed in with the familiar titles are hundreds of titles I've never heard of, and would otherwise never see. The Adventures of Alan Ladd. Al Capp's Wolf Gal. Atom-Age Combat. Baseball Thrills. Billy Buckskin. The Bouncer. Catholic Comics. Claire Voyant. Criminals on the Run. Captain Kidd. And on and on and on. And on some more.
Each issue (or sequence of issues) has an entry showing the RVI (Relative Value Index - higher numbers are better) and the SI (Scarcity Index - 10 being the rarest). This page tells us that Doc Savage 2, with an RVI of 380, is worth roughly three times as much as Doc Savage 19.
Seems to me I paid somewhere in the neighborhood of eighty bucks for these books back in '89, and I'd expect them to be worth a lot more now. Unfortunately for me (but luckily for you), they're not. The same outfit later published several volumes devoted to Marvel Comics. This original set does include some early Marvels, but the cut-off date appears to be 1963.
