MileHighs TFTDB talking about a 2nd Mile High.

[ninanina]

Recently clicked on Mile High's web-site and I noticed he's started talking about a 2nd Mile High collection that apparently dwarfs the first one we all already know and read about. Already's printed part 3.

 

Interesting reading I'm sure for anyone who's interested.

 

www.milehighcomics.com

 

Click on Tales From the Database and scroll down to the bottom. (For those of you who need directions)

[aardvark88]

Thanks for the link. Chuck made a wise business decision coming up with the scratch for the Mile High 2's. Not sure if anyone else would have been able to absorb such a large warehouse of comics except for perhaps Koch-Dolgoff-Koch at the time.

[ninanina]

Looks that way.

 

It also looks like the seller knew exactly what he had in terms of value and also realized the discount in value it would take to unload these quickly.

 

So now, Chuck has come across 2 - ONCE in a lifetime collections. How lucky can ya' get.

[Rickdogg]

Here is one

 

 

[fantastic_four]

We've discussed Mile High 2 in these forums before...most people look at it as a third-rate wannabe pedigree that was Chuck's attempt to cash in on the reputation of the Mile High collection. It was definitely a nice set of books--I own a few 9.4 or better copies from it myself--but people seem reluctant to identify warehouse finds as pedigrees.

[ninanina]

 

 

 

[COI]

This pedigree is just an attempt at riding the coattails of his own previous success. Don't believe the hype.

[Rickdogg]

but people seem reluctant to identify warehouse finds as pedigrees.

 

Exactly Chuck is comedy, but you have to give him credit for trying

[Crowzilla]

I wonder if he'll post about how a lot of boxes had already been sold out the back door before he was able to buy them all?

 

[ninanina]

Must have been before my time. Sorry if I'm recirculating old news, not my intention. How someone, anyone - comes across a nice collection is always fascinating reading. Maybe after we read Chuck's account of the find we'll realize a few more things can be said?

[Bonds25]

Here's the first 3 parts of the article for those too lazy to click the link -

 

Mile High II Collection Part I

 

Starting with this week's column, I'm going to tell you a long story about the best comics deal I ever made. Contrary to popular misconception, the Edgar Church collection was not my best-ever comics find. In fact, at the time that I closed the deal, the collection that I later dubbed the "Mile High II Collection" had a retail value that was over ten times the original value of the Mile High/Edgar Church collection! Aside from the significant financial effect the discovery of this larger collection had on the future of Mile High Comics, I think the story of the purchase of this collection is historically quite interesting. Others must agree, as it has been the #1 requested topic from the e-mails I've received from readers of this column. I have to warn you, however, that the story is not a pretty one. The comics were great, but the environment in which I made the deal was a sordid mix of sex, drugs, and family betrayals. It ended up being the best comics deal that I ever made, but it took a trip through the sewers to get the job done.

 

I want to start the story by setting the stage for the purchase. February, 1985 was a bitter cold month in Denver. I was operating in those days in a mouse-infested 15,000 square foot warehouse, that was once home to Denver's first ballroom dancing arena. My tiny office had a huge mirrored window that faced the roar of traffic going down Broadway, the main north-south arterial in Denver. In addition to letting in the noise, that big window leaked cold air so badly that I frequently had to wear gloves while working at my desk. Aside from the physical chill, I spent many of the days that cold winter in psychic despair, as it was very much looking like my financial gamble of investing all the proceeds from the Edgar Church collection into Mile High Comics had been a huge mistake.

 

As I mentioned in the Mile High I story last year, I sold off nearly all of the Edgar Church comics between 1977 and 1986. Initially I was just selling comics that I didn't particularly care for, but by 1981, I was selling off titles I really liked, such as the key Timely titles MYSTIC, DARING, and TOUGH KID SQUAD. Continuing my downward slide, in 1982, I was forced to sell ACTION #1-11 (all for $50,000...). In 1983, I was forced to let go of MARVEL MYSTERY #1-10 (also for $50,000), my favorite remaining key run. With the exception of the small Timely titles, each time I sold books I put 30% aside for taxes, and then deposited the balance of the funds into the Mile High checkbook. No matter what I did, however, it would all be gone in a couple of months. Then I'd be back to selling more of the Church books to keep the company going. By 1983, when the MARVEL MYSTERY issues were gone, I could see the end of the line coming up fast. I then had to make a harsh decision. I could no longer afford to fund all of Mile High Comics. Something had to go.

 

The structure of Mile High Comics in those days was much as it is now. We had five retail stores, a mail order new comics subscription business, and a mail order back issue business. The first big financial crunch came during the Fall of 1982. At that time, I had one of those cool ideas that changed my life. Before going into comics dealing full time, I had studied Finance at the University of Colorado Business School. I remembered from my financial management classes that you could immediately book the profits from the sale of an asset to your corporation financial statement, even if the actual payments were not to be received for several years down the road. This became a critical question, as I badly needed to borrow money at that time, but (obviously) couldn't show any corporate earnings. To test my theory, I went to my banker, and asked him if he could loan me cash against a long-term receivable. He said that he most certainly could, as long as I had a signed promissory note. I immediately put my plan into effect by selling one of my stores to a former employee for $2,000 down (all of which I ended up loaning him...). I then took the resulting $50,000 10-year note to the bank, and it ended up being sufficient collateral for an immediate $30,000 loan! With that wonderful example as an incentive, I sold all my other stores over the next three years, and consequently found myself with only the mail order divisions of Mile High Comics remaining. While giving up my stores was in many regards heartbreaking (especially my first store in Boulder) I couldn't deny that it was very exciting to have, for the first time in my life, great borrowing capacity.

 

Mile High II Collection Part II

 

This week's column is installment #2 of the story of my 1985 purchase Mile High II Collection.

 

After I sold the Mile High Comics retail stores for a handful of dubious promissory notes during 1983 and 1984, I found myself with excellent bank credit, and a far lower need for infusions of working capital as a result of no longer having to cover the losses some of my stores had been generating. This was an excellent development, as by early 1985, the majority of the books I had remaining from the original Mile High/Edgar Church deal were issues I wanted to keep in my personal collection. This put me into a real quandary, however, as I had invested the majority of the proceeds from my sales of all the other Mile High/Edgar Church books into constructing a very efficient mechanism for selling comics by mail, but I then didn't have enough Modern and Silver Age comics on hand to meet the demand that my mail order business was generating. Sending back nearly 50% of the sales we were achieving from our 1984/1985 ads in Marvel was quite frustrating.

 

It was within this context that I was startled by a phone call that I received from New York. Our receptionist buzzed me one day in early March, 1985, with the very strange message that there was a man on the phone who wanted to sell me 2 million comics. If I received this same message today, it would be no big deal, as there are several bulk comics dealers who today might be able to claim that they have 2 million books in stock. In 1985, however, that was a quantity equal to our entire inventory, which was probably the largest in the country. In addition, today's bulk brokers would have in stock mostly from 1992-1994, which are practically impossible to sell. In 1985, with the Direct Market still in its infancy, there were almost no unsaleable back issues. If this guy really did have two million back issue comics, it was imperative that I figure out some way to buy them.

 

As it turned out, I already vaguely knew the seller. I had met him, and his father, at an American Bookseller's Association (ABA) convention a few years prior to his call. His family sold remainder books as their primary business, and I had purchased 500 boxed sets of the old Simon & Schuster Origins of Marvel Comics/Son of Origins of Marvel Comics from them at that convention. After he introduced himself, he began by explaining that his father had been "investing" in back issue comics since the late 1950's, and he now had a warehouse filled with approximately two million issues in it that he needed to dispose of immediately. He estimated that at least 400,000 of his father's comics had a cover price of 12 cents, or less. The remainder were at least 5 years old, as his father had stopped purchasing comics in 1979. He then went on to tell me that the majority of the books were in "Mint" condition, as his father purchased all the books new, and just stashed them away.

 

By the time the seller finished telling me about what his father had, I was in a state of shock. If what he was claiming was in any way true, this collection was worth an absolute fortune! Going by even the most conservative possible estimate of $2 per issue, this was a deal with a retail potential of at least $4,000,000! Most important to me, however, was the fact that this was exactly the type of feedstock I desperately needed in order to capitalize upon the huge investment I had made in constructing the Mile High Comics mail order system. I simply could not have asked for a better potential deal to fall from the sky at that moment in my professional career.

 

One trick to business (and playing poker...) is to never give away your hand. Despite my overwhelming excitement, I casually asked the seller what he needed for his books. I could only gasp in dismay when he said he wanted $500,000. While that was not an unreasonable price to pay for such a potentially great deal, it was far beyond my means at that time. Calculating what I could borrow against all my store promissory notes, I figured that I had about $150,000 in potential available bank credit. Even that had to be discounted somewhat, however, because a deal of that magnitude would require at least $20,000 in shipping and handling costs. How in the world was I ever going to get my hands on these comics that I so desperately needed?

 

Mile High II Collection Part III

 

This week's column is installment #3 of the story of my 1985 purchase of the Mile High II Collection.

 

Once I hung up the phone with the seller of the collection, after that initial call in which he asked for $500,000 for his immense hoard of old comics, I immediately called my banker for an appointment. We met in his office the next day, and I began crafting a financial plan by which I could purchase the books. My first question for my banker was: "If the collection is as great as the seller represents it to be, how much cash could I borrow from the bank based on my current balance sheet (which consisted mostly of dubious promissory notes from the sale of my retail stores to my store managers...) to utilize for the down payment?" If I would have been borrowing strictly against my assets, I'm reasonably certain that I would have been offered very little. But I had previously borrowed several large sums from this particularly banker, and repaid them promptly. With that track record to back me up, I was offered a $100,000 three-year loan, but only if I was willing to also pledge my house, and all my personal assets. Gleep!

 

Once I talked my wife Nanette into pledging our house (given that we had three babies under the age of 4 at the time, Nanette showed remarkable faith in me...), I then met with my attorney and my tax advisor. We decided that the best course of action was for me to invest in a plane ticket to New York, and for me to go and check out the deal. I called up the seller, and arranged to have him pick me up at La Guardia airport.

 

Right from the beginning, I knew this was going to be a very strange deal. The seller turned out to be this very nervous skinny guy, about 35 years old, who drove an incredibly beat-up old "boat" of a car. When we got to the parking lot he excused himself, and immediately opened the trunk to get out some automatic transmission fluid. He told me that his car had been acting up, and that he had to periodically pour in more fluid. This turned out to be every 50 miles...

 

Once we got going he started going off on how I was not at all how he had envisioned me. My long hair, and very casual dress, was the complete opposite of the uptight businessman he had been expecting. I run into this a lot, even today, so I considered it no big deal. I was shocked, however, when he almost immediately offered me a snort of cocaine. Now at this time in my life I had been completely straight for a couple of years (as I remain today), but during my college days I was quite a stoner. That having been said, I was still amazed that this guy was so brazen with someone he had just met. I pretended to take a hit, and then watched him snort with gusto. Even loaded, he was still able to drive, which told me that either he was using really crappy coke, or he had done this many, many times.

 

Once we got to his house, it was much like entering into Ozzie and Harriet land. The loving wife and the two young boys waiting for him in the large living room of his Cape Cod House, situated in a pretty Long Island neighborhood, were just like off a movie set. I quickly discovered that all this harmony was an illusion, however, as I soon heard through my bedroom walls a strident argument about money. Clearly, this guy needed cash, fast.

 

The next morning, after once again adding transmission fluid to the car, we drove to the seller's office, which was located in a huge old brick warehouse. As we pulled into the parking lot next to the building, I was chilled to see a relatively new delivery truck that had burned to just a blackened shell. I asked the seller what had happened, and he said "we had an accident overnight, about a week ago." When we then entered the building, and I was amazed to see only about six workers. This building was about 60,000 square feet, and contained an incredibly huge quantity of remaindered books wrapped on pallets, but there was almost no one doing anything. The place was like a giant dark tomb. When I asked what in the world was going on, the seller informed that he had run into a little "problem" with the Teamsters Union, and that most of his staff were currently on strike.

 

We then drove to a mini-storage center, about five miles from his main building. The seller drove up to the largest individual unit in the complex, and unlocked this huge old rusty padlock. When he rolled up the garage door, I was stunned to see a solid wall of pallets stacked five feet tall. These pallets were butted up against each other so tightly that there were absolutely no aisles. This was in early March, 1985, and it was darn cold, even at midday. This storage unit was huge (3,000 square feet), but had no heat, and only a single light bulb hanging from the center of the room. The seller climbed up in the pallets, and walked on the boxes until he could get to the chain that turned on the lights. He then turned to me and said "Well, here they are!"

 

To be continued...

 

 

 

 

 

[CosmicBob]

Contrary to popular misconception, the Edgar Church collection was not my best-ever comics find. In fact, at the time that I closed the deal, the collection that I later dubbed the "Mile High II Collection" had a retail value that was over ten times the original value of the Mile High/Edgar Church collection!

 

Ok Chuck, while it may have had a value of ten times the Church collection, exactly how many Action #1s were in the MH2? MM#1? Cap #1?

 

I've got a Superboy #203 from MH2, and while it's nice, it certainly doesn't qualify as "important" like many of the books in the Church collection. I doubt there are too many really important books in MH2.

 

I think he's just trying hype his warehouse.

[FlComicFan]

actually some of the nicest silver and bronze books I've ever seen and owned came from Mile High 2 I had heard rumours over the years that those books were part of many many stolen remaindered books held by mobster types.. I'm curious which 12 Cent Marvel it was that he got 12,000 NM copies of in that stash

[Bugaboo-migration]

If I was Chuck.....I'd have said to hell with the comics........hit the guy over the head.......grabbed his cocaine stash and transmission fluid........and thrown a party..........but that's just me.

[murph0]

Probably ASM 45, I swear I've seen an enormous amount of those in NM.

 

Brian

[aardvark88]

Wonder if the Mile High 2 also contained Marvel mags. Saw Chuck sell thru a long box of Spect Spidey Mag 2 color Goblin in San Diego comicon about 15 yrs ago.

[blowout]

I'm curious which 12 Cent Marvel it was that he got 12,000 NM copies of in that stash

 

There were 12,000 copies of one book in NM?

 

If that is true, Brian may be right suggesting ASM #45, there were certainly multiple copies of that book in the warehouse.

But I think that was probably true of all the 1966 and up 12 cent Marvels. Its probably more likely to be a book like Cap #100, Sub-Mariner #1, Iron Man #1 or Hulk #102.

[Aman619]

I have a feeling that it was Tales of Suspense #74. Im not positive and have no inside knowledge...BUT----

 

Back in the mid 80s I went to one of their stores and saw palettes of comics. A lot of 70s junk: Black Lightning, Starfire, etc. And I was digging around in these huge piles/boxes of books and came across a huge pile of Sunspense 74s. I picked out 40 of the nicest ones (all unread and unsold) and bought them for $4 each.

 

Thats only circumstantial, I know. There were a lot of books in multiples there that day. But I looked in the CGC census recently and sure enough, #74 has had lots more high grade books sent in. Here are issues 73 thru 75:

 

issue........9.8.......9.6.......9.4........9.2........9.0............Total graded

#73..........1...........5..........1...........3...........1....................20

#74..........5..........10........24........11...........6....................67

#75..........0...........1...........4..........2...........6....................18

 

#74 is not a key so that is not the reason so many more have been sent in than its contemporary issues. Couldn't it be the abundant supply in high grade that explains why so many more have been selected for grading.

[Comicdave]

I don't recall where I read it, maybe in Comic Book Marketplace, but I believe the issue that had 12,000 copies was Capt. Marvel #13. The article mentioned there were other issues that had quantities of 3000-6000 each.

 

I remember a few years back at the San Diego Comic-Con a dealer, not Chuck, had stacks of silver and early bronze books for sale. There were multiples of several issues, maybe 20-30 different issues stacked on a table unbagged. I remember picking up an Avengers #57 for $15 or $20, I think guide was $35 at this time, to replace the copy I had. I had it graded a couple years ago and it came back a 9.0 I believe.

[diablo508]

Do they still sell comic books on eBay??

 

Yeah, but no ones buying