show us your Mile Highs (Edgar Church copies) 7 7

[BEAUMONTS]

[lpsunburst]

[sagii]

On 1/7/2023 at 3:49 PM, lpsunburst said:

Awesome!

[FoggyNelson]

On 12/31/2022 at 9:46 PM, BEAUMONTS said:

Love the blues on this cover, a cover I have never seen before

[tth2]

On 1/8/2023 at 4:49 AM, lpsunburst said:

That's a great cover!  Does anyone know who the artist was?

[lpsunburst]

On 1/8/2023 at 11:37 AM, tth2 said:

That's a great cover!  Does anyone know who the artist was?

Its generally considered to be a Cazeneuve cover. Lots of the Wonderworlds starting in the teens have very similar Flame covers.

[BEAUMONTS]

On 1/8/2023 at 9:30 AM, FoggyNelson said:

Love the blues on this cover, a cover I have never seen before

https://www.frazettagirls.com/blogs/news/frazetta-in-comics

 

[Frisco Larson]

[Frisco Larson]

Recent purchase.

[Robot Man]

Found this in a box the other day. Haven’t looked at it for a long time. The collection to end all collections. If we only had the foresight (and the money)…

We all know what the Church Supe #1 recently sold for. Well, apparently Redbeard bought it for the astounding amount of $3K at the time. I was lucky enough to hold and thumb it at his house. I remember him commenting that it wasn’t “mint”. To be honest, I hardly noticed…

I wonder who bought Mask #1 & #2? And where they are now?

Long before any one knew who Matt Baker was, Wartime Romances, was just a cheap “Love” title worth only a few bucks. How about the run for $62.?

Every page is just mind blowing for consecutive issues in the best condition possible. A very cool piece of comic book history! 

Edited March 5, 2023 by Robot Man

[plady69]

On 3/5/2023 at 10:51 AM, Robot Man said:

Found this in a box the other day. Haven’t looked at it for a long time. The collection to end all collections. If we only had the foresight (and the money)…

We all know what the Church Supe #1 recently sold for. Well, apparently Redbeard bought it for the astounding amount of $3K at the time. I was lucky enough to hold and thumb it at his house. I remember him commenting that it wasn’t “mint”. To be honest, I hardly noticed…

I wonder who bought Mask #1 & #2? And where they are now?

Long before any one knew who Matt Baker was, Wartime Romances, was just a cheap “Love” title worth only a few bucks. How about the run for $62.?

Every page is just mind blowing for consecutive issues in the best condition possible. A very cool piece of comic book history! 

Wow, thanks for posting this!

[tth2]

On 3/6/2023 at 2:51 AM, Robot Man said:

Found this in a box the other day. Haven’t looked at it for a long time. The collection to end all collections. If we only had the foresight (and the money)…

We all know what the Church Supe #1 recently sold for. Well, apparently Redbeard bought it for the astounding amount of $3K at the time. I was lucky enough to hold and thumb it at his house. I remember him commenting that it wasn’t “mint”. To be honest, I hardly noticed…

I wonder who bought Mask #1 & #2? And where they are now?

Long before any one knew who Matt Baker was, Wartime Romances, was just a cheap “Love” title worth only a few bucks. How about the run for $62.?

Every page is just mind blowing for consecutive issues in the best condition possible. A very cool piece of comic book history! 

Thanks for posting that!

I know all the prices seem dirt cheap today, but going back in time I can definitely understand why people at the time were gagging at Chuck's prices.

[Robot Man]

On 3/6/2023 at 6:47 AM, tth2 said:

Thanks for posting that!

I know all the prices seem dirt cheap today, but going back in time I can definitely understand why people at the time were gagging at Chuck's prices.

I can remember the first con he brought them to (Casual Con in Buena Park), people thought he was crazy but still buying. His rationale was, everything we had thought was “mint” was shattered with this collection. EVERY book looked like they were printed yesterday. 

[MB1952]

On 3/6/2023 at 7:12 AM, Robot Man said:

I can remember the first con he brought them to (Casual Con in Buena Park), people thought he was crazy but still buying. His rationale was, everything we had thought was “mint” was shattered with this collection. EVERY book looked like they were printed yesterday. 

Thanks for sharing simply mind boggling to see those prices. That Baker War Romance run for $62 bucks 

ps Many collectors/dealers still didn’t know who Matt Baker was in 2000 when I started buying his books and art. 

[Robot Man]

On 3/6/2023 at 9:10 AM, MB1952 said:

Thanks for sharing simply mind boggling to see those prices. That Baker War Romance run for $62 bucks 

ps Many collectors/dealers still didn’t know who Matt Baker was in 2000 when I started buying his books and art. 

Back in those days, the books everyone wanted were Timelys, DCs, ECs, Barks ducks and a few others. Very few people wanted “Love books”, Archie’s, or even PCH if it wasn’t an EC.

I started collecting GA annuals and giants. I bought a lot of Bakers in the process. GGA was starting to take off and I liked the covers even though I didn’t know Baker, I recognized his style. I don’t remember when I found out who he was, but had a good start on them when I did. I probably overlooked those Wartime Romances in my zeal to grab up as much PCH and Crime as I could afford. 

[october]

On 3/5/2023 at 12:51 PM, Robot Man said:

 

I wonder who bought Mask #1 & #2? And where they are now?

 

Don't know who bought it originally, but it's location now is in my shortboxes.

 

[MrBedrock]

On 3/6/2023 at 9:12 AM, Robot Man said:

I can remember the first con he brought them to (Casual Con in Buena Park), people thought he was crazy but still buying. His rationale was, everything we had thought was “mint” was shattered with this collection. EVERY book looked like they were printed yesterday. 

Chuck brought some to a HoustonCon here in either '76 or '77 (in the basement of the Shamrock Hotel). I remember he had Marvel Mystery 23 but I think it was priced a little higher than the $225 in the catalog. In the Overstreet Marvel 23 was listed for a third of the ask. I had never seen pricing like that and was pretty indignant about it. Frankly I still am.

[Robot Man]

On 3/6/2023 at 2:21 PM, MrBedrock said:

Chuck brought some to a HoustonCon here in either '76 or '77 (in the basement of the Shamrock Hotel). I remember he had Marvel Mystery 23 but I think it was priced a little higher than the $225 in the catalog. In the Overstreet Marvel 23 was listed for a third of the ask. I had never seen pricing like that and was pretty indignant about it. Frankly I still am.

Chuck brought this collection to Casual Con about 6 weeks after he acquired it. Yeah, we all thought his prices were crazy. I mean, the Guide was the Bible. NOBODY asked over Guide. Far cry of where we have come now. But it was all we had and everyone used it. 

This must be the show you are talking about.

"When I flew with my future wife, Nanette, to Houston in February of 1977, we took with us a full suitcase of some of the most beautiful Golden Age comics that the industry had ever seen. My goal was to sell enough of the comics so that we could cover our operating costs, and also to have enough cash to pay the Church heirs for the part of his reference library that they hadn't yet thrown away.

To my amazement, the Saturday of that show was a complete bust. This was not a big convention, but it still had an attendance of upwards of 500 fans. We were selling the Church books at 1976 Overstreet, and I think I recall that we grossed about $200 that Saturday. That was a disaster, as it didn't even cover the cost of our airfares. Blessedly, on Sunday, a wonderful gentleman by the name of Burrell Rowe came to the convention. Burrell had heard from a friend that we had great Golden Age comics for sale at the show, and he had to come and see if the rumor was true. Once he saw our books, he picked out a large stack, and justified our entire trip. It's a darn good thing that he did, as our sales to the other attendees of the convention were just as bad on Sunday, as they had been on Saturday."

 

Things must have changed soon after. I remember getting there early and did some box diving. Picked up a few books including a copy of Fight Against Crime #20. Had never seen it and the cover just blew me away. I had to pay full guide asking price of $2.00 for it. I then noticed a "buzz" in the room. Nobody knew this hippie from CO but he was wheeling in boxes and boxes of the prettiest books we had ever seen. Yeah, a lot of price grumbling but no one left without some of his books. I think I had around $100. for the show. I spent most of it on Church books.

 

This is Chuck's memory of the Casual Con show.

"About six weeks after I had saved the collection from imminent destruction, I drove 20 hours to attend a CasualCon, in Anaheim, CA. While CasualCon was only a one-day show, I had heard from several friends that it was an excellent marketplace for old comics. So, Nanette and I loaded up our old 1969 Chevy window van with about 2,000 of the Edgar Church comics, and drove all night to Anaheim.

When we arrived, early the next day, we went straight to the Inn-at-the-Park convention center. I had arranged in advance for us to have a single table in the back of the room. Before the room even opened, however, we had a very surreal experience. I wheeled our boxes full of Golden Age into the hallway reserved for dealer's entry, and waited in line with about 30 other dealers for the room to open. Most of the dealers attending the show were from the Southern California area, and they were quite surprised to see us so far from home. When they inquired why we drove so far for a one-day show, I told them about the Church collection. What happened next was incredible. Dealers clustered around our boxes, and a feeding frenzy began. Within the span of 30 minutes, we sold $4,200 in comics! By the time the room opened, practically every dealer had purchased books from us.

While this should have set the stage for a great day, it actually caused just the opposite. Instead of the convention being a success, it turned into an incredibly dull affair. We sold about $500 more in comics to retail consumers, but that was it. In surveying the dealer's room, I quickly picked up on the fact that overall economic activity in the room was totally constrained. I asked some questions, and came to the startling realization that I had removed all the working capital out of that dealer's room. By taking all the cash the dealers had brought with them before the room even opened, I caused a mini economic recession!

To explain, at the time of this convention, I was also attending classes in the Business School at the University of Colorado. My major was Finance, and I had just finished one course on Micro-Economics, and another on The Federal Reserve and Monetary Policy. Applying what I had learned in my classes, I could readily see that by introducing a product that was unique in the marketplace (very high-grade Golden Age), I had upset everyone's equilibrium. In particular, by pricing my beautiful books at straight Overstreet, I created an immediate perceived reduction in value of all the lesser-grade Golden Age books in the room. Why buy comics in Fine from the dealer at the table next to you, when you can buy stunning NM/M copies from Chuck, for only slightly more?

The main problem with all the dealer's buying from us is that they then didn't purchase anything from each other. Without reciprocal sales between dealers occurring around the room, the "velocity" of transactions was greatly restrained. As a result, while every dealer ended up with a few of our great comics, they all felt the show was a failure, due to very slow business. We were the only ones who did well, and we took all the money home.

What I learned from this experience was to not price the comics from the Church collection at Overstreet. Not only was the demand there that justified higher prices, but I was also not doing anyone who already owned large quantities of Golden Age comics any favors by selling those great books too cheaply. In fact, I firmly believe that I could have crashed the entire Golden Age market nation-wide in 1977 if I had sold all the Church comics, at Overstreet, during that one year. This is an opinion shared by many others who were in the field during those formative years. Only by making the decision to sell the Church comics at the "outrageous" multiples of 1.5X - 2X Overstreet did I slow the sales enough to where the books were integrated into the Golden Age community without devaluing the rest of the comics in the market. I was absolutely ripped apart in the fan press by the "purists" in the collecting community for selling the Church books at above Guide (especially after the rumors started circulating about how inexpensively I had purchased the collection), but I darn well knew that the policy I had chosen was the right one for the long term viability of the Golden Age market. I was only 21 years old at the time, so it was hard to put up with all the vicious public criticism I engendered by my pricing decision, but I'm firmly convinced to this day that I did absolutely the right thing for the financial health of the back issue comics market. The fact that everyone who purchased books from me in those early days (even at my "inflated" prices) made a fortune on their investment, seems to bear out the ultimate wisdom of my decision to price at small multiples above Guide."

 

Yep, he sucked all the money out of the room. I had never seen and to this day have never seen such a feeding frenzy. A truly remarkable day. 

 

 

Edited March 7, 2023 by Robot Man

[Robot Man]

On 3/6/2023 at 12:58 PM, october said:

Don't know who bought it originally, but it's location now is in my shortboxes.

 

Amazing book! 

I’m sure Mr. Church would be happy you are taking such good care of it. 

[Sarg]

On 1/24/2023 at 12:31 PM, Frisco Larson said:

Recent purchase.

Is the cover artist really unknown?