PICTURE STORIES FROM SCIENCE #2

This Golden Age EC educational comic (rotated sideways in the photo) shows notable wear: soft, rounded corners, visible spine stress with some color break along the top edge, and a vertical crease running through the cover art. There is handwritten pricing/inventory notation ("3.97") in pen on the cover, which is a value-reducing defect. Edge wear is present along the borders and the surface shows some general wear consistent with age; interior and back cover were not assessed from this photo.

Picture Stories from Science #2 hails from EC Comics' earliest incarnation under founder Max Gaines, well before the horror and crime titles that would later define the company. Part of a small stable of educational anthologies—alongside Picture Stories from the Bible, American History, and World History—it packaged scientific concepts into comics form for classroom and general readership. The book is a document of the industry's short-lived push toward instructional content and of EC before William Gaines and Al Feldstein transformed it into the most influential publisher of the pre-code period.

Demand for the title is driven almost entirely by EC completists and Golden Age educational-comics specialists rather than by character or creator keys. Certified sales are sparse, with only a handful of graded copies recorded and pricing that climbs steeply through the upper grades—a pattern typical of scarce Golden Age books where survivors in presentable condition are few. The absence of any 9.8 on census means top-grade demand is speculative, resting on the premium collectors will pay for the finest known examples.

The buyer here is the dedicated EC collector assembling a complete publisher run or the Golden Age enthusiast chasing educational-format oddities. Low- and mid-grade raw copies trade modestly and turn over infrequently, while high-certified examples command outsized multiples precisely because so few exist in that condition. Given the thin market, patient buyers and sellers should expect wide bid-ask spreads and irregular liquidity across all grades.