Mile Highs?

[ft88]

Anyone know if these can be shown to be Mile High copies? The only origin on them I have is that they were part of a collection where many of the high grade Joe Palooka's and Tracy's were purchased from Sparkle City in the late 80's. The first one has a tear up in the upper left but both books have pretty fresh off white pages. Once purchased in the 80's I think they were stored in decent but not ideal conditions.

 

Also, a while ago I asked in the grading forum if this JP 108 was a file copy. It has reference notes on the interior pages and a signature stampe but other than that I wasn't sure. Thanks for any help, I know some folks out there are trying to track down all the pedigree issues, especially the Mile Highs so I can only hope this helps.

 

 

[Timely]

They are not, sorry!

 

West

[lou_fine]

They are not, sorry!

 

West

 

Yes, the codes from the front cover scans does not look like any of the Edgar Church codes that I have ever seen.

 

This actually brings up a very good question about the verification of pedigree books in general. Everybody says that its a simple matter of providing a provenance or lineage trail back to the original owner. This is always easier said than done.

 

For example, I had purchased the Church run of Funny Picture Stories #1 - #3 from Mark Wilson about 15 years ago. Although these books lined up roughly with the VG grade designation from Chuck's original MH catlogue, I was never able to find out the previous owner from Mark. He just verbally guaranteed to me they were the Church copies and wrote down a statement to this effect on the back of one of Chuck's business cards.

 

It's almost like revealing the previous owner in the lineage chain would be revealing his source for the books and possibly cutting him out as the middle-man in any future business dealings. Generally got the same kind of reaction from most dealers at the time, although it was never really a problem with the collectors themselves.

 

As a result, these books have been tossed somewhere in my closet as just another forgotten part of my collection. Only reason I remembered these books is that Bob Beerbohm had commented yesterday about some possible Church Centaurs that Tim Collins had at his RTS Unlimited booth down in SD.

 

Ended up giving Tim a call only to learn that the only Church books he had were King Comics. He actually stated that he was a collector of Centaurs as he was close to completing 4 runs of these books. He told me that he did have a couple of Church Centaurs, but they were really for his private collection. In fact, he commented that he would be a buyer of Church Centaurs as opposed to being a seller of Church Centaurs.

 

In a strange twist of fate, he told me that he had once had the Church run of Funny Picture Stories #1 to #3 or #4 and had foolishly sold them off to Mark Wilson about 15 years ago. Turns out that Tim has been a long-time collector even before becoming a part-time dealer after his noted purchase of the IRS Collection way back when. One of the selling decisions he had regretted as he wished he had these three books back. I was happy to informed him that I had purchased these apparent Church copies from Mark and I would certainly let him know if I ever decided to sell them.

 

Well, since I am on holidays for the rest of the week, I should probably try to clean out my closet to find these books since they just might have some value after all.

 

 

[adamstrange]

Very good points, Lou and a interesting story of the Funny Picture Stores.

 

If you find them, we'd love to see scans.

[CentaurMan]

That's a great story, Lou, thanks for sharing it. Lots of good info in there, not the least of which was that Tim is close to completing 4 different Centaur runs.

 

I've been super busy at work, and whenever I log onto the boards I'm about 700 GA posts behind (and like 10,000 General posts; I've given up there). That said, name a run of around 25 Golden Age books you're interested in and I'll update and post my scarcity ratings on them for you.

[lou_fine]

That's a great story, Lou, thanks for sharing it. Lots of good info in there, not the least of which was that Tim is close to completing 4 different Centaur runs.

 

I've been super busy at work, and whenever I log onto the boards I'm about 700 GA posts behind (and like 10,000 General posts; I've given up there). That said, name a run of around 25 Golden Age books you're interested in and I'll update and post my scarcity ratings on them for you.

 

Unfortunately, I could not remember which 4 runs they were although Funny Picture Stories was most defintely one of the runs. The other might have been Amazing Mystery Funnies since I did ask him about that title.

 

Actually, one of the reasons why I found it difficult to sell the last Comic Pages since it was a rather nice bookend with the first 3 issues of Funny Picture Stories. Can't complain too much though, since I did get a couple of great books in return. (thumbs u

 

I know exactly what you mean about logging on and being backed up on the high number of unread posts. What's even more infuriating is that the system seems to periodically convert all of these unread posts to read posts while you are in the middle of going through them. Ongoing problem ever since the Forum software upgrade.

 

With respect to your scarcity rating, I guess a look at the latest Windex scarcity numbers for the Green Lantern run might be appropriate since Joe just had his Church run go through the Heritage auction last week. BTW: Would these numbers include the impact of these Church copies or would they be excluding this latest sale?

 

Thanks again and it's always great to have your input on the boards here.