Ranking the Non-Pedigree Original Owner Collections 1 1

[bronze johnny]

On 12/20/2021 at 1:13 AM, PopKulture said:

I'll ask a naive question: what is considered the best SA collection, pedigree or non-pedigree, based on breadth, condition, number of keys, etc.?  

In my limited estimation, the Church pedigree still rules the GA (and likely will always, but who knows?). I would dare venture it's not even close, but again I could be mistaken. Is there a silver-age analog to the Church collection's dominance?

Pacific Coast Pedigree is Silver’s greatest.

[namisgr]

On 12/20/2021 at 6:28 AM, bronze johnny said:

Pacific Coast Pedigree is Silver’s greatest.

I believe this, too, with respect to breadth and condition.  The complete and long runs from nearly every SA title in near mint plus after near mint plus grade are astounding.  But the Pac Coast collection really kicked into ultrahigh grade gear only in late 1962, is missing the first 3 issues of Fantastic Four along with Journey Into Mystery 85 and Hulk 2, and has nice but not spectacular copies of some major keys like AF15, FF 5, Daredevil 1, and Hulk 1.  For pre-1963 books, I know that some collectors prefer the White Mountain and Slobodian books, and for the earliest Marvels the Massachusetts collection may be on par with the Pac Coast.  My impression is that the Silver Age does not have a single pedigree collection that satisfies on breadth, condition, and quality of keys all together.

Edited December 20, 2021 by namisgr

[tth2]

On 12/20/2021 at 2:13 PM, PopKulture said:

I'll ask a naive question: what is considered the best SA collection, pedigree or non-pedigree, based on breadth, condition, number of keys, etc.?  

In my limited estimation, the Church pedigree still rules the GA (and likely will always, but who knows?). I would dare venture it's not even close, but again I could be mistaken. Is there a silver-age analog to the Church collection's dominance?

There is no SA analog to the Church pedigree, because there is no single SA pedigree that has virtually everything, including the mega-keys in high grade, like the Church pedigree.

Pacific Coast probably has the best overall depth and breadth, but it has very few mega-keys in high grade, and in some cases doesn't appear to have them at all.  White Mountain has some of the best copies of the Marvel mega-keys, but the depth and breadth aren't there.  SA DC keys are a hole in virtually all of the big SA pedigrees.  Curator, Western Penn, Mass, etc. all have their strengths but also their weaknesses/gaps.

[Readcomix]

On 8/10/2015 at 8:30 PM, drdonaldblake said:

one could add the RObert Bell Collection if it is still intact

 

I remember an article in Bell in CBM and Bell stated in the mid 80'[s he sold his complete high grade marvel collection which he had compiled since the 60's

Didn’t Dolgoff and the Koch brothers buy and split up the Robert Bell collection?

[Morganmi]

Anybody ever heard of this "Marin Collection" picked this up about a year ago off the boards Couldn't find much about it searching the internet. This copy obviously has some flaws but very white pages and the gloss on it is like a new comic.

[marvelcollector]

On 7/22/2015 at 8:38 PM, jimjum12 said:

 

.... the Circle 8 is the one that puzzles me the most.... how could a hoard of such size have so little information about it ? I have a few of the mid 50's Atlas books and they're stunning. I'd heard it went into the SA proper and even had an AF 15. GOD BLESS...

 

-jimbo(a friend of jesus) (thumbs u

It does have an AF 15.

[Tri-Color Brian]

On 12/24/2021 at 7:45 PM, marvelcollector said:

It does have an AF 15.

It also has the world's worst Jimmy Olsen...

[bronze johnny]

On 12/21/2021 at 11:23 AM, Morganmi said:

Anybody ever heard of this "Marin Collection" picked this up about a year ago off the boards Couldn't find much about it searching the internet. This copy obviously has some flaws but very white pages and the gloss on it is like a new comic.

Seen books from this collection but have no idea how big it is.

Edited December 28, 2021 by bronze johnny

[Morganmi]

On 12/27/2021 at 10:03 PM, bronze johnny said:

Seen books from this collection but have no idea how big it is.

If what it says on the card is correct it sounds pretty impressive, but I'm guessing it was sold to the wind without a lot of fanfare, so probably only someone from Hero's Comics would know about it. 

[buttock]

Two that just came to mind, they are more atomic age than SA, but worth mentioning.  Both came out of the south.  The "cereal box" collection -- books that were stored in cereal boxes, and the "hole in the wall" collection.  

[MattTheDuck]

The Silver Age equivalent to the Church Collection is out there, waiting to be discovered.

[jimjum12]

On 12/28/2021 at 11:52 AM, MattTheDuck said:

The Silver Age equivalent to the Church Collection is out there, waiting to be discovered.

Robert Bell may have had something like that. When he finally cashed out and moved south, he not only sold the massive warehouse, but also had a complete Marvel set that was upgraded every time a better copy came in the doors. After years of discreet inquiries, I have still yet to learn who ended up with it. GOD BLESS.... 

-jimbo(a friend of jesus)

[MattTheDuck]

On 12/28/2021 at 9:42 AM, jimjum12 said:

Robert Bell may have had something like that. When he finally cashed out and moved south, he not only sold the massive warehouse, but also had a complete Marvel set that was upgraded every time a better copy came in the doors. After years of discreet inquiries, I have still yet to learn who ended up with it. GOD BLESS.... 

-jimbo(a friend of jesus)

My belief is that, like the Church Collection, there are Silver Age collection(s) sitting with people/families that don't know what they have.  Due to the growth in the hobby in the 60s and 70s, there should be a lot of high-grade Silver Age collections from actual collectors as well, such as you describe.

[namisgr]

On 12/28/2021 at 1:19 PM, MattTheDuck said:

My belief is that, like the Church Collection, there are Silver Age collection(s) sitting with people/families that don't know what they have.  Due to the growth in the hobby in the 60s and 70s, there should be a lot of high-grade Silver Age collections from actual collectors as well, such as you describe.

I have my doubts.  While there are certainly plenty of the latter, gathered from multiple collections over the years, not being all from a single owner renders them outside the definition of a pedigree.

As for original owner collections, the only pedigree silver age collection brought to market in the past ten years is the Fantucchio.  It had long runs of lots of titles in terrific shape, but very few high grade early keys, let alone keys at the top of the census.  Based on how infrequently new and deserving SA collections are being recognized as pedigrees, I don't think there are very many left to be discovered in the wild.  A few, maybe, but the 75-80 year olds who started buying and keeping in 1960 and were old enough to maintain them in exceptional condition, and also haven't cashed out yet, are very likely few and far between.  Folks my age in their late sixties were 7-9 years old when Fantastic Four hit the newsstand, and even those with the foresight to read and store their beloved comics with meticulous care for the most part only started doing so as young teenagers in the mid 1960s.

Edited December 28, 2021 by namisgr

[tth2]

On 12/29/2021 at 2:19 AM, MattTheDuck said:

My belief is that, like the Church Collection, there are Silver Age collection(s) sitting with people/families that don't know what they have.  Due to the growth in the hobby in the 60s and 70s, there should be a lot of high-grade Silver Age collections from actual collectors as well, such as you describe.

If you're talking about collections made up of books from 1965 and later, I'm in total agreement.

If you're talking about collections that have high grade copies from 1956 onwards, particularly of DCs, I'm doubtful.  I don't think people really appreciate how much comic collecting fell off a cliff after World War II, and how scarce high grade books from the 1950s are (excluding ECs and Dells).  If the Promise owner had survived the Korean War, perhaps he would've continued his collection into the 1960s, but on the other hand maybe he would've stopped because he'd grown up and gotten rid of his books before the SA arrived.

I'd love to be proven wrong, of course.   

[MattTheDuck]

On 12/28/2021 at 8:49 PM, tth2 said:

If you're talking about collections made up of books from 1965 and later, I'm in total agreement.

If you're talking about collections that have high grade copies from 1956 onwards, particularly of DCs, I'm doubtful.  I don't think people really appreciate how much comic collecting fell off a cliff after World War II, and how scarce high grade books from the 1950s are (excluding ECs and Dells).  If the Promise owner had survived the Korean War, perhaps he would've continued his collection into the 1960s, but on the other hand maybe he would've stopped because he'd grown up and gotten rid of his books before the SA arrived.

I'd love to be proven wrong, of course.   

Yeah, I of course don't claim to actually know anything.  It's really as much a hope (because as Deadpool said, "I'm gonna go lookin'!") as anything else, and honestly I agree there's probably nobody who has 100 percent of everything in high grade.  I'm thinking more of just a gigantic, relatively high quality collection.  I may not be around long enough but it will really shock me if - at least in that way - there's no Edgar Church analog for Silver books.  It seems like the quality of the Church books was almost accidental - by that I mean he didn't take any special precautions to protect the books.  There may be people of his era who did - others will know more than I do about that.  But there are lots of stories right on these Boards about kids trying to protect their books better in the 60s with garbage bags and the like.  I bought an ASM 3 right here on the Boards that was sitting in a guy's dresser drawer for over 50 years, and I don't think had been touched since about 1968, and which will (I hope) probably grade out at 7.0 or above.

It's fun to think about, but you know, I do not encourage anyone to think such a collection might exist or to look for it. 

[sfcityduck]

On 12/28/2021 at 7:48 AM, Morganmi said:

If what it says on the card is correct it sounds pretty impressive, but I'm guessing it was sold to the wind without a lot of fanfare, so probably only someone from Hero's Comics would know about it. 

Heroes is Alan Bahr - also associated with Okajaima pedigree.

[sfcityduck]

On 12/28/2021 at 9:56 PM, MattTheDuck said:

 I agree there's probably nobody who has 100 percent of everything in high grade. 

My guess is that there probably is when you talk GA and SA keys.  Probably somewhere in Virginia.

[LordRahl]

On 9/19/2022 at 11:10 PM, sfcityduck said:

Heroes is Alan Bahr - also associated with Okajaima pedigree.

I lived across the street from Heroes when Alan found that collection and saw it early on in the store. It's nothing to get excited about from a condition perspective. There were a lot of books though and the page quality is nice. 

[anukasan1]

I find some of the stories of these non-pedigreed collections fascinating. E.g., the "Atlantic City" collection, which got a whole in-depth half-hour TV episode devoted to it. 

But the problem is...it can be increasingly hard to find those stories, as time goes on. At least CGC & other sites give overviews of the current pedigrees; but for some of the non-pedigree collections, Google searches only point to threads like this, which don't actually tell (or at least link to) their background stories in detail.

Is there a site or a thread which does compile more of those stories?