walclark

A couple of things from a different submission.

Was sending some stuff in for a buddy and threw a couple of books I had lying around into the submission. Just back this week.

Thanks for all you are doing, Jeff. Truly inspiring!

Beautifully said and well done, Jeff. In the video, you said you couldn't understand why you were getting so emotional. It's always hard to lose a part of our collecting history and especially such a big part with whom you had a personal connection. Thanks for posting.

I think everyone knows how much I like the Cookeville collection. It's like a hometown collection for me. The town is about 80 miles from my home. I have numerous ties to the area and I was really close to the two dealers that first brought the collection to the market. Having said that, I disagree with its designation of pedigree status. It's a nice collection with thousands of Golden Age comics, but I don't think it meets the criteria for a pedigree. Of course, in and of themselves, the criteria are arbitrary. It's not like there is a Federal Department of Comic Book Pedigrees. I don't track the prices of Cookeville copies that closely, but my impression is that the market doesn't place any premium on the books. Unlike Church, Okajima, Larson, etc., they certainly don't seem to sell at multiples versus similarly graded copies. Maybe the market has spoken regarding the collection's status.

There is a Comic Cavalcade #11 in an old school 9.2 label. May have been the first Cookeville that I owned, but traded it away as a raw copy at a Chicago con many, many years ago. It was in the Overstreet grading guide as a VF if I recall. https://comics.ha.com/itm/golden-age-1938-1955-/comic-cavalcade-11-dc-1945-cgc-nm-92-off-white-to-white-pages-wonder-woman-flash-and-green-lantern-make-cover-appea/a/14031-16254.s?ic4=GalleryView-Thumbnail-071515

Definitely a Cookeville. My communications have been spotty. We are still dealing with the after effects of the Christmas bombing here in Nashville.

You, sir, are not alone.

Very nice. Didn't know Matt was still doing restoration work. Figured being the primary grader would take up all his time. I wonder how he took the pages from "rather brittle" to off-white?

Yeah, when a pretty 6.0 sells for $15,000 in the July HA auction, this price was a surprise to me.

I have one more nice addition to my collection that might arrive before the end of the year. If it does, it will hold the #1 spot, but for now I would put these at the top of my pile. Fight Comics #15 was the last of the three Super-American covers that I needed and it completed my mini run of the series up to the switch to jungle covers. Pep Comics #38 occupies my number 2 spot for the moment. Schomburg war cover, yes, please, and the Rockford pedigree is a nice bonus.

Only $50? ComicLink charged me $60 to ship one book. It does seem excessive. I don’t remember it ever being that much before.

Very sorry to hear this sad news, Cat. My condolences.

Thought I was the only one that collected this title.

What you are proposing defies the laws of physics.

I was able to track down some additional information about the Cookeville Collection and thought the Board might find it interesting. I had the opportunity to talk to Jimmie Mackie, the younger brother of Leroy Mackie, and he was kind enough to share a few additional details about the collection. Leroy was born in 1930 and Jimmie in 1933. Their family lived on South Jefferson Avenue in Cookeville, not far from the town square. As the brothers got older, on Saturdays, their mother would give them each a dime and the boys would ride their bikes to the town square. Sometimes that dime would be spent at the picture show, but more often than not, the Mackie boys would head to Marchbanks Drug Store. This is where the boys bought the comics that would become known as the Cookeville Collection. Jimmie (who later changed his name to Jimmy and eventually to James because he told his mother that Jimmie was the way girls would spell that name) remembered that the pharmacy had a soda fountain and sometimes that dime was spent on a malted or a sundae. Often, he and Leroy would read the comics on the newsstand and eventually make a selection to take home. At home, their father had built on to the home and added an attic space for the boys to store their things. It was referred to as the “funny book room.” Jimmie remembered the room with built in shelves for them to stack their comic books and as a place for them to store their marbles. Apparently, he was quite the marble player and had amassed a fair number of them that were stored in a big bucket. I would guess that the fact that the comics were stored out of sight in the “funny book room” is probably what saved the collection that familiar fate of so many other collections…”mom threw away my comics.” The “funny book room” matches exactly with what Rick Frogge told me about the day that he, Harry Thomas, Geppi, and Overstreet went to move the collection out of the family home. Jimmie didn’t know a lot about the details of the sale. In fact, at that time, he didn’t know that Leroy had sold the comics. He found out a few years later. When cleaning out the house following the passing of their mother, Jimmie asked Leroy what happened to all the old comics and Leroy told him that silverfish had ruined them and he had thrown them out. It was only later that he found out that Leroy had been selling some of the comics over a few years and then made the bulk sale. Jimmie told me that Leroy was the big collector and only stopped buying comics when he joined the Air Force. Maybe that’s why he didn’t sound at all bitter about the fact that his brother had sold their comic collection without his knowledge. He told me that at one point Leroy had his daughters cataloging the comics, but he didn’t think those records exist anymore. As to the big mystery about the initials on the comics, unfortunately, the passage of time has erased that memory. Jimmie didn’t really remember the writing on the cover at all (I’m guessing that the clerks marking the covers and applying date stamps wasn’t that memorable to a kid that age). He remembered that it was a couple of the female shop clerks that made the sundaes and rang up the boys’ purchases and he’s certain that it’s their initials on the comics. And a note to CGC: despite what it says on the CGC website, the store clerks were sisters, but not the Mackie’s sisters. I’m thankful to Mr. Mackie for sharing his memories of the Cookeville Collection. He was a genuinely pleasant gentleman and we talked for a while about mutual acquaintances, his business, and his family. While there is still a lot that we don’t know about the collection, we now add Marchbanks Drug Store to the story.

This was a common practice in the Golden Age to conserve paper for the war effort.

Ah, my apologies. Now I see them over to the side of the pics. Good luck with the sale.

@Northwest I think you forgot prices on the Fighting Yank and the Sensation.

Just in. My only win from the recent CC auction.

My condolences. While I had limited interactions with him, I am thankful that I was about to sell him a pedigree comic book for his run.

I think I might have turned to evil after getting a haircut like this.

I just keep mine hidden under the mattress.