[2] Beginning their numbering system at 101, Gold Medal got underway with Alan Hynd's We Are the Public Enemies, the anthology Man Story and The Persian Cat by John Flagg.

"[3] Early Gold Medal authors included John D. MacDonald, Charles Williams, Richard S. Prather, and Marijane Meaker (under the pseudonym of "Vin Packer").

Other 1950 Gold Medal originals included the Western Stretch Dawson by William R. Burnett, the first lesbian pulp novel Women's Barracks by Tereska Torrès (later to be followed by Marijane Meaker's Spring Fire and Ann Bannon's Beebo Brinker Chronicles) and mystery-adventure novels — Nude in Mink by Sax Rohmer and I'll Find You by Richard Himmel.

While MacDonald, Williams, Prather, Louis L'Amour, Richard Matheson, Bruno Fischer, and MacKinlay Kantor were joining Gold Medal's roster of writers, other paperback publishers were soon asking agents for original manuscripts.

Literary agent Donald MacCampbell stated that one publisher "threatened to boycott my agency if it continued to negotiate contracts with original 25-cent firms.