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Crippen collection

Started by AlexH,

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AlexH

AlexH

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This article was in the Globe and Mail today on the front page no less:

 

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20060818.wxcomics19/BNStory/Front/home

 

 

Holy windfall, Batman!

 

INGRID PERITZ

 

From Saturday's Globe and Mail

 

Montreal — Tom Crippen knew he faced a daunting task after the death of his father, an inveterate pack rat who never threw anything out. It wasn't just the stockpiles of old opera programs, paper clips, Christmas cards, baseball caps, paperbacks or souvenir coffee mugs.

 

Mainly, it was the awesome collection of 11,000 comics that had colonized the family garage and basement.

 

“The shelves were just piled high with comics,” said Mr. Crippen, a freelance editor living in Montreal. “I knew they were worth money, but I thought, $50,000, maybe $100,000.”

 

Mr. Crippen was wrong. After painstakingly dusting off and cataloguing the comics — a process that took four months — he called in the experts to the family home outside New York.

 

And — Holy windfall, Batman! — the superheroes delivered.

 

The cache of vintage comics, many of them rare and in immaculate condition, were evaluated at $2.5-million (U.S.).

 

“When they told me, it just made my jaw drop,” Mr. Crippen said. “The comic books were literally worth more than the house itself.”

 

He got a glimpse of his newfound fortune last week when Heritage Auction Galleries in Dallas sold off a first batch of 550 comics. By the time the final gavel fell, Mr. Crippen, his mother and brother were $717,000 richer.

 

The highest price went to a 1944 Suspense Comics book with a campy cover of a bound woman surrounded by hooded Nazis. Originally purchased by Davis Crippen for a dime, it sold for $47,800.

 

A 1940 Detective Comic, in which Batman puts in one of his earliest appearances, rang up at $17,925.

 

“We realized there was so much money involved,” Mr. Crippen said, “that it could change all our lives.”

 

His father had indeed left his family a legacy — a legacy that he had started to build when he was an eight-year-old boy in Washington. For reasons known only to himself, Davis Crippen soon decided to buy and save every comic book that came out, and he didn't let up for 15 years.

 

He got his mother to continue the purchases when he headed off for graduate work at the London School of Economics, and didn't stop himself until he was drafted into the army. By the time he was through, Mr. Crippen, who edited technical manuals for a living, had stashed away a gold mine.

 

“He not only kept them, he kept them in remarkably good condition,” John Petty, founding director of Heritage Auction's comics division, said in an interview from Dallas.

 

“I'm afraid the well is running dry, so finding something like this is very exciting. This is the biggest find in years.”

 

The comics date to what aficionados call the Golden Age of comics, which lasted from the late thirties to mid-fifties and marked the birth of some of our most enduring pop heroes, from Superman and Batman to the Flash.

 

One person Tom Crippen confided in about his father's collection was Marc Jetté, a friend who owns the Studio 9 comic shop in Montreal. When he raised it in 2005, Mr. Jetté instantly spotted the potential; he was so excited, he invited Mr. Crippen to address a gathering about the collection at his store.

 

“I said to myself, he's sleeping on a gold mine,” he said. “This is a collection from the Golden Age and these are superheroes. They're comics that are mythical and rare. It was a treasure trove.”

 

Mr. Crippen raised the issue of selling the comics with his father a few months before he died last year at age 75, but it became clear that the elder Crippen didn't want to part with them. So Tom Crippen let it drop.

 

Hoarding was just something that Davis Crippen did. Cynthia Crippen said she let her late husband amass his various collections as long as they didn't spill into common spaces.

 

“The comics were always there but not in my sight,” said Mrs. Crippen, who works as a book indexer. “I ignored it. People would tell me I should sell them, but I knew it was important to him. I loved him; he was a wonderful man despite his eccentricities.”

 

Unfortunately, this comic-book story does have a dark subplot. While he was poring over his father's comics, Tom Crippen noticed that, in such a methodical collection, vast numbers of copies were missing. The mystery began to unfold when the experts were called in. They told Mr. Crippen that, unbeknownst to the family, large numbers of his father's comics had been in circulation since the early nineties. Many bore distinctive marks, including a D on the front cover that earned them the name “D collection.”

 

No one is sure how the comics went missing. However, some of the comics were traced to a New York dealer who said he'd bought them in the early nineties from a man who'd entered his store. The Crippen family discovered that the seller's name was that of a contractor who'd been doing extensive renovations at the Crippen home at that time.

 

“A lot of the jewels were ripped off,” Tom Crippen said.

 

It's too late to pursue the matter criminally, and the Crippen family has decided it doesn't want to spend its sudden windfall on lawyers' fees to pursue a civil case.

 

“I'm just happy we got what we got,” said Mr. Crippen, who will be in Montreal next week clearing out his apartment near McGill University. “I'm the kind of person who worries. Now, with this windfall, I feel I don't have to worry.

 

“I'm just getting a nice big nest egg.”

 

And for that, he can thank Batman, Superman — and his pack-rat father.

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aardvark88

aardvark88

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My buddy & I were shocked, but pleased, that a large color pic of Detective #35 made it onto front cover center of a national Canadian newspaper. Now the weekend fleamarkets will be full of tattered 70s comics with outrageous, dreamy asking prices. Christo_pull_hair.gif

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SignatureSelect

SignatureSelect

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We had many articles about the collection here in dallas because heritage is located here. Since the article I have had 2 people come in with mid grade silver age collections with no keys expecting full overstreet NM guide. This collection is truly a disaster. Thefact that it brought some of the highest grade books to market and added to the amount of known golden age books is good. The fact that it will make everybody with a midgrade silver and bronze age collection think they have a gold mine is bad.

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tth2

tth2

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We had many articles about the collection here in dallas because heritage is located here. Since the article I have had 2 people come in with mid grade silver age collections with no keys expecting full overstreet NM guide. This collection is truly a disaster. Thefact that it brought some of the highest grade books to market and added to the amount of known golden age books is good. The fact that it will make everybody with a midgrade silver and bronze age collection think they have a gold mine is bad.

I don`t know why that`s bad. All you have to do is turn them away. If even 1% of those collections turns out to be a valuable find, it will be worth it. What would be far worse is if no collections are brought in at all.

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pennynike1

pennynike1

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Which pedigress, other than the Mile High's, would you place above the "D" Copies?

 

I would place Rockford near the bottom of GA pedigrees, along with the Recil Macon's. Cosmic Aeroplane's I would place above both the Rockford and Macon's for sure.

 

I have some amazing looking Chicago, Denver, Kansas City, Hawkeye, Larson, and other pedigree books. Lost Valleys are also nice. It is difficult to categorize them into a most desirable pedigree list, because of the focus of certain collections, and the size of others.

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whomerjay

whomerjay

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I found this thread after searching for Crippen. Now that the Crippen books have been auctioned off on Heritage, any body have an opinion where the "D Copy" books ranksamong Golden Age pedigrees?

 

IMO somehere around the middle perhaps a little lower. Plus side is the large # of books, with several quite nice. Down side several are also not nice, many with major foxing.

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rob_allan

rob_allan

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I need clarification here.

Am I to assume in light of this thread...that every book bearing the 'D Crippen' notation, prior to the recent Heritage sale, is in fact a STOLEN Book? (shrug)

 

I'm not sure. I thought the ones that just said "D Copy" were?

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