THM's 1 thru 5

[mdj]

Has anyone ever owned, read or even seen any of the THM's 1 thru 5? I hope somebody on this site can tell me something about them. The amount of information on this site is mind boggling. Thanks for your help.

 

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[mdj]

The only thing I know about them is they are listed in KvonM 's book THE JOURNALS OF EL DORADO.

 

[Tiredman]

There is a fellow who is the expert on them, in fact he released one on Amazon with the previous authors wife permission.

 

[Tiredman]

Look up Randy Bradford for your questions.

 

[Randy Bradford]

Someone say my name?

THM 1-5 are certainly a source of controversy. There are a good number of folks who have been looking far longer than me who have never seen one, most would tell you they are a myth and never existed.

There's actually a bit of fairly specific information lurking around that would lend some credence to the possibility that they did in fact exist. Rumors of the books abound like Bigfoot, but nobody can seem to come up with a photocopy or even a photograph of any of them.

Treasure Hunter Manual 6 mentions all of the 1-5 versions several times, enough to set the tone that each of the books had it's own theme. According to Journal of Discourses (JoD), all 5 of the books were printed in Chicago in the late 1950s and early 1960s. This is interesting because, unless I'm mistaken, this would have been the same time Karl was in California and was printing the original national Prospector's Gazette (Ironically enough, Volumes 1 through 5 which he began publishing in 1954). Karl hadn't attained the notoriety he would later find but a review of JoD also shows a great number of other books Karl indicates were published but for which there is no record of.

My thoughts on the topic are the until a copy turns up, nobody will know for certain. Even finding one copy of any of them would give credence to the others existing as well. Karl does not mention ISB numbers for any of these titles in JoD which tells me there is a high likelihood that they were independently published which means tracking them down would be nearly impossible through conventional means. He does indicate they were printed (most of them anyway) by Audubon Publishing in Chicago, though they are no longer in business. Having access to their records might shine some light on the topic, but this likewise seems an unlikely possibility. It doesn't appear that the books were registered with the Library of Congress (hence no ISB) and my guess is that if it was self-published, the print runs would have been very small as Karl would have been paying out of pocket for them and didn't have the "name brand" to push tons of copies (yet).

Some have suggested that Karl combined those volumes to make Volume 6. By then he was getting a head of steam reputation wise and was affiliated with Johnny Pounds (the Treasure Hunter), Art Lassagne (The Gold Bug) and Bill Mahan (Treasure World). I believe all would have been based in California at the same time (1960-1965-ish) and frequently cross promoted each other's material in their own periodicals. Lots of "scratch my back I'll scratch yours in exchange for advertising and all of these magazines and newsletters were staples well into the mid 1970s when the bottom started falling out of treasure publishing. This is also the same time when Treasure Publications started popping up. Prior to this, treasure stories were a by-product of the Western (True West, Golden West, The West, Frontier West, etc.) magazine trade as well as Men's magazines (Argosy, Saga, Cavalier, many others).

That's a lot of writing to essentially answer a question with, "Nobody really knows." Thanks for indulging me...

Randy

 

[mdj]

Someone say my name?

THM 1-5 are certainly a source of controversy. There are a good number of folks who have been looking far longer than me who have never seen one, most would tell you they are a myth and never existed.

There's actually a bit of fairly specific information lurking around that would lend some credence to the possibility that they did in fact exist. Rumors of the books abound like Bigfoot, but nobody can seem to come up with a photocopy or even a photograph of any of them.

Treasure Hunter Manual 6 mentions all of the 1-5 versions several times, enough to set the tone that each of the books had it's own theme. According to Journal of Discourses (JoD), all 5 of the books were printed in Chicago in the late 1950s and early 1960s. This is interesting because, unless I'm mistaken, this would have been the same time Karl was in California and was printing the original national Prospector's Gazette (Ironically enough, Volumes 1 through 5 which he began publishing in 1954). Karl hadn't attained the notoriety he would later find but a review of JoD also shows a great number of other books Karl indicates were published but for which there is no record of.

My thoughts on the topic are the until a copy turns up, nobody will know for certain. Even finding one copy of any of them would give credence to the others existing as well. Karl does not mention ISB numbers for any of these titles in JoD which tells me there is a high likelihood that they were independently published which means tracking them down would be nearly impossible through conventional means. He does indicate they were printed (most of them anyway) by Audubon Publishing in Chicago, though they are no longer in business. Having access to their records might shine some light on the topic, but this likewise seems an unlikely possibility. It doesn't appear that the books were registered with the Library of Congress (hence no ISB) and my guess is that if it was self-published, the print runs would have been very small as Karl would have been paying out of pocket for them and didn't have the "name brand" to push tons of copies (yet).

Some have suggested that Karl combined those volumes to make Volume 6. By then he was getting a head of steam reputation wise and was affiliated with Johnny Pounds (the Treasure Hunter), Art Lassagne (The Gold Bug) and Bill Mahan (Treasure World). I believe all would have been based in California at the same time (1960-1965-ish) and frequently cross promoted each other's material in their own periodicals. Lots of "scratch my back I'll scratch yours in exchange for advertising and all of these magazines and newsletters were staples well into the mid 1970s when the bottom started falling out of treasure publishing. This is also the same time when Treasure Publications started popping up. Prior to this, treasure stories were a by-product of the Western (True West, Golden West, The West, Frontier West, etc.) magazine trade as well as Men's magazines (Argosy, Saga, Cavalier, many others).

That's a lot of writing to essentially answer a question with, "Nobody really knows." Thanks for indulging me...

Randy

Thanks for your post Randy, you seem to be the resident expert. In the interest of clearing up some of the confusion and misinformation, I'm posting the pages in his book about THM,S 1 thru 5.

 

[treasuresalvor]

Karl said that he was living in Salt Lake City in 1959 when he was finishing manuals 3 and 4 and preparing #5. Did they ever really get published? Who knows but I doubt it. I would think they probably just got combined and turned into manual #6 in 1961. Somebody somewhere knows.

 

[Randy Bradford]

Karl published a number of books independently and some unofficially through small publishers. I've seen at least two books of his in this fashion. One was published in 1958 or 1959, that was his ghost town manual. The other was his Model's Manual which was actually a book on photography...that was on sale through Ebay, I only saw pictures of it...believe it was published in 1954. This would be not long before he started publishing the first volume of the National Prospector's Gazette in Bellflower, California. It seems likely that minimally he had the connections to publish the books, though it remains to be seen why he would be living in California and publishing through Chicago. I believe he lived in Illinois for a time before moving to California though.

Someone in the Chicago area might do well to search business records for Audubon Press that would have been publishing from 1958-1962. They aren't there now, but it's possible they changed their name or were bought up by another company and could still exist in some fashion. It's a pretty big long shot but could turn up some interesting leads to someone with the inclination.

Karl's time in California yielded his associations with Hardrock Hammond, Johnny Pounds and Art Lassagne. Pounds published The Treasure Hunter newsletter and Art published "The Gold Bug," who also published the original versions of THM 6 and THM 7. Karl's relationship with these fellows really developed as their respective publications supported and mentioned one another frequently. All were taking part in an emerging market of treasure publications that were coming to be in the early 1960s and included Treasure World (Bill Mahan), Western Treasures, The Prospector's Club (A.T. Evans, and a fantastic newsletter I might add) and Treasure Adventure, the forerunner of "Treasure" which would re-emerge in the early 1970s and would be a monument to treasure press for 2 decades.

Probably the easiest way to track Karl's movements is through his newspapers, though many of them are hard to come by. Most of this is guess work, but it would look something like this:

*National Prospector Gazette (Volumes 1-5): Bellflower, CA 1954-1959
*The Adventure Bulletin: Salt Lake City, Utah (Unsure when this began or how many issues were printed, I can confirm the last issue was printed in 1964 before becoming the Exanimo Express)
*Exanimo Express: Weeping Water, Nebraska (7 issues, cannot yet confirm the first 2, last 5 issues were published from 1965-1968 with the final issue being published from Segundo, CO)
*National Prospector's Gazette (Volumes 6-12): Segundo, CO (Primarily, Issues 10.4-12.6 printed in Ames, Nebraska)

If anyone can add to or clarify this information I'd be enormously grateful.

 

[Old Bookaroo]

Treasure Adventure magazine - is this the original Indiana Jones?



Or was it that Charlton Heston movie?Journal of Discourses?" Do you mean "Journals of El Dorado" - shown, above, of course.

A brief note: Sudden Wealth ("Deek Gladson") was published by The Gold Bug at the same time it was published by The Exanimo Express. Which is the true "first?" I don't know.

KvonM's Ghost Town Guide was reprinted in the first edition of his THM #6.

ISBN numbers started, I believe, around 1970. So books published in the 1950's wouldn't have them.

As for THM #1 through #5 - Quien sabe?

Good luck to all,

The Old Bookaroo

 

[mdj]

Everybody has good points. If we post info we know about them, it might lead us to a discovery of a copy!, Or else to the conclusion they never existed. We have a good guide...who, what (6 by 9 hardbacks), when, where, why and how.... I don't remember reading anything about symbols and signs used by criminals during the pre depression and depression periods. (THM fourth edition) My point is not all the information in the first five were combined together for 6 & 7.

 

[Tiredman]

I looked at Randy's National Prospectors Gazette's on Amazon. Much impressed use the look inside feature to have a peak.

 

[mdj]

I think the best shot at finding a copy of one of the THM'S 1 thru 5 is, checking with the relatives of a professional treasure hunter who was active during that time, the late 50's or early 60's. (Yes, I'm still holding out hope that one day...it will happen)

 

[Tiredman]

So if some surface where would you place the value at? I know I value my favorite author who's work is out of print.

 

[mdj]

At auction maybe a few hundred dollars. My guess. Are you holding out on us Tiredman?

 

[Tiredman]

no but things turn up at those out of the way places if they exist.