what would you do if you found the mile high collection 10 years ago?

[bluenote]

this is hypothetical question of course. say the mile high collection was never found by the colorado collector at mile high comics. in 1977 but found in 1995. and u were in his shoes and purchased the collection.. in 1995.(.this was before ebay & before cgc) i believe it was like 14,000 books and he paid 2 bucks a piece for them right? now what would you do if you found thiose same books 11 years ago.would you sell them , trade them ,keep them or what? ... i would have kept every last book .. i can honestly say that

[Aces]

Try to talk them down to a 1.50 per book....

[deathlok]

I'm sure given the circumstances, Chuck would have liked to keep the books. However he had to borrow money to even buy the collection, not to mention he wanted to open his own comic shop. So he kinda felt obligated to sell the books off like he did.

 

If it were me I would have kept the major titles and probably sold the rest.

[skybolt]

I would've kept these titles (Detective, Batman, WW, Sensation, Superman, Action Comics, and most GGA covers) and sold the rest to finance my HG SA Marvel collection (ASM, X-Men, Avengers, etc.). What ever money was left over, I'd buy a house or something.

 

Of course, 10 years ago I'd just finished school and couldn't even afford these books at $2 a piece.

[october]

Sell them all. Move to the tropics. The end.

[rjpb]

I would have kept my favorite 500 or so covers and a few partial runs ( More Fun w/Spectre/Dr. Fate covers, Adventure with S&K covers), a few keys, but probably not Action #1, Most, if not all of the Timelys, maybe the Planets, and alot of the GGA books. Much of this would overlap with fave covers. I could probably still have retired selling the rest.

[DiceX]

Even finding them in 1977, I think Chuck did pretty well in the way he handled it.

He built an empire and will be able to work in comics for the rest of his life.

He makes a living doing what he enjoys doing.

Kudos to him. I wish it were me.

 

I would have at least kept the Action 1.

[tth2]

this is hypothetical question of course. say the mile high collection was never found by the colorado collector at mile high comics. in 1977 but found in 1995. and u were in his shoes and purchased the collection.. in 1995.(.this was before ebay & before cgc) i believe it was like 14,000 books and he paid 2 bucks a piece for them right? now what would you do if you found thiose same books 11 years ago.would you sell them , trade them ,keep them or what? ... i would have kept every last book .. i can honestly say that

More like 20,000 books, and I don't think he paid anything near $2 per book for them.

 

Obviously 11 years ago they'd be a lot more valuable than when Chuck found them in 1977, so there'd be a much deeper and readier market for the books. If I didn't need to borrow the money to purchase the collection, then I probably would have tried to keep as much of the main Timely and DC runs as I could, along with other keys and notable books (e.g., Lou Fine covers). I would then have sold everything else.

[THE_BEYONDER]

Sell them all. Move to the tropics. The end.

 

I'd wait until CGC opened their doors...and pre-screen the whole collection at 9.4

 

SELL IMMEDIATELY THEREAFTER

[october]

this is hypothetical question of course. say the mile high collection was never found by the colorado collector at mile high comics. in 1977 but found in 1995. and u were in his shoes and purchased the collection.. in 1995.(.this was before ebay & before cgc) i believe it was like 14,000 books and he paid 2 bucks a piece for them right? now what would you do if you found thiose same books 11 years ago.would you sell them , trade them ,keep them or what? ... i would have kept every last book .. i can honestly say that

More like 20,000 books, and I don't think he paid anything near $2 per book for them.

 

Obviously 11 years ago they'd be a lot more valuable than when Chuck found them in 1977, so there'd be a much deeper and readier market for the books. If I didn't need to borrow the money to purchase the collection, then I probably would have tried to keep as much of the main Timely and DC runs as I could, along with other keys and notable books (e.g., Lou Fine covers). I would then have sold everything else.

 

I thought he paid like 20 cents each for them? Am I wrong?

 

 

Hey Tim.

[october]

Sell them all. Move to the tropics. The end.

 

I'd wait until CGC opened their doors...and pre-screen the whole collection at 9.4

 

SELL IMMEDIATELY THEREAFTER

 

I don't know if I could wait that long, I really need a tan. Dumping the whole thing at once, ungraded would net what? 10 million at least? (taking into account the market flooding).

[jimm94]

22,000 books for $2,000 dollars is what I have been told.

 

It's a tough hypothetical question, since the Edgar Church collection is such a seminal part (IMO) of the high grade back issue market. Although it took a number of years for the collection to "catch on", it's significance is as undeniable as it is legendary.

 

If I had found it 10 years ago, I probably would have sold them, bought silver age Marvels, and squandered the rest. If I found it today, I would do exactly what Tim said: keep the Timely's and DC's. Sell the rest. Best collection ever.

[shadroch]

Although I don't believe Chuck has ever stated what he paid for the church books,the number that gets mentioned most often is about a dime apiece.

Had the books fallen into my lap in 1995,it would have been quite easy to simply put the books up on consignent with the major sellers of the daymove to Mejico or the Spanish Main and collect monthly checks for the next 100 years or so.

[tth2]

Had the books fallen into my lap in 1995,it would have been quite easy to simply put the books up on consignent with the major sellers of the daymove to Mejico or the Spanish Main and collect monthly checks for the next 100 years or so.

I dunno. I'm not at home so I can't pull out my OS from 1995 & 1996 to see what some of the big-ticket sales were going for back then, but I doubt you could have sold the entire collection for more than $2 million back then, particularly if you sold it all at one time. Probably closer to $1.5 million tops.

[bluenote]

22,000 books for $2,000 dollars is what I have been told.

 

 

no way he paid only $ 2,000 i mean come on i know its 1977 and all but we are talking 20.000 comic books in mint condition.... remember he owned a comic shop at the time.. know what he had to call someone to borrow just 2,000.. i thought i read somewhere in overstreet fan when they were still around that he paid 2.00 a book... that would mean he would have to come up with around $31,000.. for that amount i can see him calling another comic dealer and borrowing the money.. but 2.000 no way.. it had to be more than that

[FFB]

22,000 books for $2,000 dollars is what I have been told.

 

 

no way he paid only $ 2,000 i mean come on i know its 1977 and all but we are talking 20.000 comic books in mint condition.... remember he owned a comic shop at the time.. know what he had to call someone to borrow just 2,000.. i thought i read somewhere in overstreet fan when they were still around that he paid 2.00 a book... that would mean he would have to come up with around $31,000.. for that amount i can see him calling another comic dealer and borrowing the money.. but 2.000 no way.. it had to be more than that

 

And yet it's apparently true. Ten cents a book. Remember, Church's relatives wanted the books gone because they considered them "junk" and were trying to sell the house.

[bluenote]

ok i went to mile high comics web site to see if he had any information on this ... the only thing was there was the mile high catalog. nothing about what he paid,but it had the total of books... here is what is mentioned

 

1977 Mile High Comics Catalog

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

During the Spring of 1977, we worked feverishly on trying to compiling a catalog of the Church collection. Our job was made a bit easier by the fact that approximately 20% of the books had either been sold by that point, or traded to Jim Payne for his store. That still left us with about 14,000

 

 

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

with those figures the totalamount of books would be 16,800 books...and if u look at the catalog there is some nice books.. not to mention batman issues 1-14 all in near mint conditionwith the batman 1 going for $3600.. i also notice that he is onl;y 21 years old when he makes the purchase. so that explains why he needed to borrow the money... but looks like payne got his pick of some really nice books... as u can see theearly action comics are gone from the catalog

[Comicdey]

I went to college in Boulder Colorado, and I always had in the back of my mind that the collection was around 30,000 and he paid 3K. So whatever the true total collection number was....ten cents was the going rate according to people in the know. Rumors grow, but a dime is still a dime.

[shadroch]

Its funny how that 10 cent a book figure gets mentioned so often.I'm curious where it comes from,as I'm fairly sure Chuck wouldn't say it,and the Church family wouldn't really have a clue to how many books there really were,unless they went by Chucks list.

 

As far as checking out a 95 PG to see what they were worth,super HG books would have sold for multipes of guide in any era.

[Comicdey]

I'd keep em all for at least a few years to go through and decide which ones I liked the best. Then sell off just enough every year (200-500) so my collection was down to 5,000 when I finally passed on. Not too big for the heirs to handle and definately enough bucks to make them smile. I might even throw in an overstreet so they'd stand a fighting chance in the dealer eat dealer comic world.

 

 

 

but I digress......

 

I also remember hearing that he had to make a side deal with a barks collector who fronted most or all of the money for dibs on those books. Now I can sit back and wait to be corrected by one of the long time collectors on the boards. The information was already brewing in the rumor mill for 9 years when I heard it back in 1986.

 

I used to go to the store on colfax (?) in Denver for the monthly auctions and there were always a few lesser title mile highs for sale that a collector was slowly moving on. I remember a few Bobby Benson B-Bar-B issues, but none of the better covers, a few humor titles and miscellaneous books. I was always curious what he had left back then.

 

I should never have let my friend outbid me for a copy of Flaming Love #1 for $3 in about F/VF, just because he didn't realize that I was going to be the winning bidder at $2. I still have my copy of Future comics #2 w/NBC.

 

Back then I had the proverbial Timely appetite with a Gold Key budget.