My question is not about a comic, so to speak, but The Magazine of Fantasy
and Science Fiction. I have the five magazines containing Stephen King’s
Gunslinger. I was trying to get them appraised, but could not find them
anywhere online. Do you know what they are worth? They are in fair
condition. Thank you. Robert
Happy to help, Robert: the Professor has fond memories of F&SF, because he discovered a whole stack of them (and Galaxy, and some others he can’t remember now) in a friend’s basement in the late ’60s, and got hooked and eventually got a subscription to it, probably from 1968 until the mid-’70s. It always seemed the most literate of all the post-pulp sf mags, and it had Isaac Asimov’s science column every issue, and Harlan Ellison quite a bit, too. Then, in college, the Professor wrote a not-very-good fantasy story and sent it off to them, and got back a preprinted rejection slip — but on the bottom, whoever had hauled it out of the slush pile and evaluated it had scribbled “–but keep writing,” which was a surprisingly nice thing to do.
So, anyway, a search of eBay turns up two current auctions of the five F&SFs with the King Gunslinger chapters. One, item #170177538914, is up on 12/15, and also includes some hardcover King stuff; the whole collection has a minimum bid of $129, but no bidders so far. The other one, item #280182514384, looks like the one to watch: It has just the five F&SFs, a starting bid of 99 cents, no reserve, and currently no bidders; it’s up on 12/16. The photo with it shows the mags in better than fair condition, too, so if the Professor were you, he’d keep an eye on it, see what it goes for, subtract maybe 50%, and then you’ll have at least a partial answer to how much those puppies are worth.
