*Horror 1940-1959: We close out this week’s trip to the Bute Collection with several issues of Mystery Tales, one of very many horror titles published by Atlas in the 1950s that spanned the change from Pre-Code to Post Code. Here we concentrate on Pre-Code issues. Many of Atlas’s entries into this genre were of similar high quality, but for a while Mystery Tales received a higher degree of notoriety following issue #40 having some significance in the Lost TV series. I can remember prices soaring on all issues of the series some years back as a result of this, but (apart from #40 itself) now seem to have settled back to the same approximate values as other Atlas horror contemporaries. Six issues for your consideration this update as follows:
IN THIS UPDATE: MYSTERY TALES
#14 GD/VG £130 (PICTURED) Pre-Code. Nice solid supple copy with minor spine wear but diagonal colour-breaking crease across length of cover. SOLD
#16 VG £175 (PICTURED) Pre-Code. Nice solid supple copy with corner blunting and some spine wear.
#18 PR £16 Pre-Code. Covers separated and detached, worn and torn.
#22 GD £48 (PICTURED) Pre-Code. Okay copy but edges a little worn and torn. Interior tape reinforcement at staples.
#23 VG £100 (PICTURED) Pre-Code. Nice tight copy with good staples and pages; faint colour-breaking (subscription?) crease vertical down centre of cover
#24 VG £100 (PICTURED) Pre-Code. Nice solid supple copy with minor wear; tiny sliver out lower right edge cover; white mark on title box.