Silver Age pedigree thread 3 3

[Frisco Larson]

On 5/16/2024 at 10:39 PM, Hepcat said:

Interesting! None of my Bethlehem Tales of the Unexpected or Adventures of the Fly which begin with 1960 issues display that stamp.

I'm by no means an expert on that collection, but I do remember hearing that the stamp stops at a certain point in the collection and that the collection goes beyond that stoppage. Hopefully, someone more knowledgeable about this collection will chime in and provide more details about when that store stamp stops.

Edited May 17 by Frisco Larson

[adamstrange]

On 5/16/2024 at 10:26 PM, Hepcat said:

All three of my Northland Atom comics are graded NM-:

I remember going to the Motor City booth when they first offered the Northlands.  I only picked up a few because they didn't have anything nice in the way of 10 centers.

[Hepcat]

I got most of my Northlands from Motor City Comics as well. The oldest Northland I have though is my Showcase 24 cover dated February 1960 and that seems to be an outlier with respect to age.

Here anyway are my Northland Mystery in Space comics:

The #99 was graded VF/NM while the rest were graded NM-.

Edited May 17 by Hepcat

[tth2]

On 5/17/2024 at 2:24 AM, adamstrange said:

For example, back in the 90s, A-1 Comics purchased an original owner late SA and BA collection that included every DC.  The gloss and pages for those was superb and yielded loads of highest graded copies.  When I slabbed 100 page giants they received a handful of 9.8s and more than 30 9.6s.  None of the pedigrees from this time period appear to me to better than what I've seen on those copies.  I believe there are many other collections out of there similar quality to pedigrees.

Yup.  I bought a bunch of late SA Marvel Golden State books from Showcase New England back in the 1990s and they were beautiful, consistently grading 9.6 and 9.8 with White pages when I eventually submitted them to CGC.  But I'd be hard pressed to say that they were really that much better than other SA Marvels from the same period that I've seen.

Similarly, Doug Schmell landed a windfall when he bought up the BA Winnipegs from SNE for pennies on the dollar and many graded out as 9.6s and 9.8s with White pages.  I bought some of them later in slabbed form and thought they were consistent with what I'd expect from a NM+ to NM/M BA book, no better, no worse.  In contrast, the preservation of early SA Winnipegs that I bought raw back in the 90s was really stellar compared to many of their counterparts, particularly in terms of cover gloss and white pages, although their structural preservation was not as good as Greenhalgh made them out to be.

[tth2]

On 5/17/2024 at 6:06 AM, adamstrange said:

Before the dawn of time, when there were no slabs, my first question to a dealer was, "What pedigrees do you have?", as I found that it was most efficient way to get to books that were likely to meet my standards.

The converse, though, was some dealers listing books in their catalogs merely as a pedigree with no grade, as if that should be all a potential buyer should need to know.  As I found out the hard way, just because a SA book was a "White Mountain" did not mean that it was a NM book.

[adamstrange]

On 5/17/2024 at 2:05 AM, tth2 said:

On 5/16/2024 at 6:06 PM, adamstrange said:

Before the dawn of time, when there were no slabs, my first question to a dealer was, "What pedigrees do you have?", as I found that it was most efficient way to get to books that were likely to meet my standards.

The converse, though, was some dealers listing books in their catalogs merely as a pedigree with no grade, as if that should be all a potential buyer should need to know.  As I found out the hard way, just because a SA book was a "White Mountain" did not mean that it was a NM book.

This pedigree question strategy worked extremely well in person.

[Hepcat]

On 5/16/2024 at 5:00 PM, Frisco Larson said:

As described above, the pedigree term DID first widely become used in reference to the Edgar Church collection. It's uniformly (but not completely) high-grade state of preservation had collectors seeking out comics from that specific collection. An aspect of that pedigree not touched on in the above post is that the comics were purchased by the same person and ALMOST exclusively purchased new (Edgar DID fill in some second-hand back issues where he could). 

I've often wondered how reliable that "original owner" designation actually is. Do many of us know comic fans/buyers from way back when who were not willing to otherwise acquire back issues they'd missed to fill out or extend their runs?

[Frisco Larson]

On 5/17/2024 at 11:51 AM, Hepcat said:

I've often wondered how reliable that "original owner" designation actually is. Do many of us know comic fans/buyers from way back when who were not willing to otherwise acquire back issues they'd missed to fill out or extend their runs?

I think it varies greatly depending on which era you're referring to. The Edgar Church collection I was discussing dated between roughly 1937 to 1957. As far as I know, the back issues he purchased were from those early days in his collecting. I wouldn't think there would be many places to acquire back issues in 1937, certainly not like there would be say from the 70s forward. Also, in regard to the Church collection, the back issues he bought looked to be very recent back issues, I'd guess within a year of them being on the newsstands. Those back issues were stored the same way as the comics he purchased new and over the decades that they were stored, their state of preservation was essentially the same as his new comics. In short, the fact that they were purchased second hand, likely only a few months after publication, doesn't seem to negatively impact their value much, unless significant defects are present. It's also worth mentioning that any secondhand comics he purchased were only a tiny fraction of his overall collection. 

 

When it comes to Silver Age on forward, I doubt there'd be any way to know if the original owner filled in any missed issues after the fact. If that detail is monumentally important to a skeptical collector, then maybe pedigree comics aren't their best option. I've known collectors who LOVE pedigrees and the back stories that go with them. I've known collectors who essentially balked at pedigrees, not caring at ALL who previously owned them or how they came to survive. Then there are people in the middle who just want high-grade comics and if it's a pedigree, that's fine with them, but they don't seek them out. There are SO many ways to collect ... 

[tth2]

On 5/17/2024 at 3:04 PM, adamstrange said:

This pedigree question strategy worked extremely well in person.

Some of us didn't have the luxury of growing up in the US. 

[kagemusha7s]

Northland

[kagemusha7s]

Pacific Coast

[Straw-Man]

On 5/18/2024 at 4:16 AM, kagemusha7s said:

Northland

WONDERFUL!

[Straw-Man]

On 5/18/2024 at 4:17 AM, kagemusha7s said:

Pacific Coast

ohhhhhhhh

[Sal]

On 5/18/2024 at 7:51 AM, Straw-Man said:

ohhhhhhhh

huge fan of the PC books with the original sticker on the case...I only have two images saved of the three i own. My Bethlehem copy is from '66 and it just has a date stamp.

[Hepcat]

Here are scans of my five Mystery in Space comics from the Dallas Stephens collection:

Edited May 18 by Hepcat

[tth2]

On 5/18/2024 at 5:17 PM, kagemusha7s said:

Pacific Coast

That's the PC under copy.

[Straw-Man]

[Hepcat]

Bethlehem

[Hepcat]

My Big Apple Challengers of the Unknown comics:

 

[Straw-Man]

just one s.a. big apple for me...