DALLAS, TX.- Heritage Auctions will follow up December’s record-setting premiere Signature® pulps auction, a single-consigner event focused on highlights of the legendary Dr. Richard Meli Pulps Collection, with an expansive variety of pulps and related magazines featuring an array of genres, titles, artists and authors from more than 20 consigners at the June 5–6 Pulp Magazines Signature® Auction.

As with the previous pulps Signature auction, this one offers rare and top-condition pulps, but it also has beautiful midgrade pulps that new collectors should be able to acquire at attainable prices, says Sasha Fraze, Heritage Auctions Comics & Comic Art Consignment Director for Pulp Magazines.

“This sale has a really wide variety of lots, a good variety of genres, title, artists and authors,” Fraze says. “It runs the gamut of every kind of cool pulp you could want — classic covers, important stories, ultra-rare pulps. Overall, there are tons of cool books that should go for the $2,000 to $5,000 range. It’s a great sale for someone who wants to enter pulp collecting.”

The Dr. Richard Meli Collection Pulps Signature®Auction set numerous records, including the highest-grossing pulps auction of all time at $1.84 million, as well as records for the June 1935 debut issue of Spicy Mystery Stories at $156,000 and for Weird Tales No. 118, with its iconic Margarat Brundage “Bat Woman” cover, at $105,000. While that sale focused on premium, high-grade copies of a select group of fan-favorite titles, the June 5–6 auction has more of what Fraze calls “caviar” titles — lesser-known and rarer issues serious collectors may have never had the opportunity to bid on as well as familiar favorites in midgrade and high-grade conditions.

“This many consigners coming together for a sale like this is really important, because the pulp market is smaller than the comic book market,” Fraze says. “It represents big growth from the last pulp Signature auction, which was a single consigner. There are a lot of people who were excited to have their books featured alongside Dr. Meli’s.”

Among the highlights is an exceptionally rare color variant of Weird Tales No. 1 from March 1923. It’s a 5.0 copy of the debut issue of the iconic title — one of the three most sought-after pulps — which is exciting enough, as the CGC 6.5 copy from the Meli Collection sold for $90,000 in December. But it’s also the only CGC-certified copy of what is traditionally considered the “second state” edition. The vast majority of copies are from the “first state” edition, in which the black and orange tones are reversed on the front cover. This copy, however, is from the minuscule number of copies in which the colors are correct, evidenced by the “Ooze” title’s orange typeface and the creature’s black tentacles. (The auction also offers a well-presenting CGC Restored 2.5 copy of the more common “first state” version of one of the Holy Grails of pulp horror and fantasy collectors, as well as a coverless copy.)

Doc Savage No. 1 from March 1933 is another pulp Grail, and this impressive CGC 4.5 copy from the Meli collection is one of the best copies of only a dozen on the census — it’s one of three in 4.5, with only two higher. Doc Savage is a classic pulp hero, a major influence on the creation of Superman and the comic book industry as a whole, and he makes his debut here in Lester Dent’s “The Man of Bronze.”

“He really represents the first superhero, and this was the second big hero pulp following The Shadow,” Fraze says. “An unrestored 4.5 is an impressive copy of a very desirable book, a pulp key that often shows up as trimmed or a later Canadian edition, so to have an unrestored Doc Savage 1 is really exciting.”

Another highly sought-after pulp is All-Story No. 94 from October 1912, which introduces Edgar Rice Burroughs’ massively popular and influential character Tarzan of the Apes, and this auction offers two different copies. One is a CGC 2.0 copy of the UK price variant, which is nearly identical to the U.S. version except for the “sixpence” price on the cover. Bookery’s Guide to Pulps notes there are “probably fewer than 20 existing copies” of the U.S. version, and the UK price variant is even rarer, with the only recorded online sale being this same copy, which auctioned at Heritage in 2021 for $68,750. A CGC Restored 0.5 copy of the U.S. variety, which is missing its back cover and final ad pages but retains the important front cover image and novel within, is also available.

Second in condition only to the census-topping Meli Collection 9.6 copy that sold for $156,000 in December, a CGC 8.0 copy of Spicy Mystery Stories No. 1 is a beautiful example of the issue whose black background behind H.J. Ward’s classic lingerie cover for “Fangs of the Bat” makes it tough to find in high grade.

All Detective Magazine No. 12 features the first pulp cover by Norman Saunders, one of the best-known and most-popular pulp artists also famed for his 1960s Mars Attacks and Batman TV series trading cards. He got off to an auspicious start with this one, which has all the elements of an ideal pulp cover: a nearly nude blonde, a hypodermic needle and a mad scientist with lab equipment, all the elements arranged in the shape of a skull. This is the only 5.0 example of the book on the census, and only two have graded higher.

Other highlights include:

• Ace Mystery No. 1 from May 1936, an iconic horror pulp, in a census-topping 8.5 from the Meli collection

• A census-topping 9.8 Movie Humor V4 No. 2 from September 1937, not only the highest-graded issue of the title but among every “girly” title listed in Bookery’s

• An 8.5 Weird Tales No. 173 from June 1938, with a quintessential Margaret Brundage bondage cover with a beautiful blonde strapped to a torture wheel, the top copy on the census