Certified Gems: More from the Toth Collection of High-Grade DC at Heritage
The original-owner David N. Toth Collection, featuring DC comics from the mid-1950s through the 1970s, has already surpassed $500,000 in auction sales, and the weekly Sunday Internet Comic Auctions at HA.com will have hundreds more lots from the Toth Collection in the weeks to come.
Action, Batman, Detective, and Green Lantern will be among the Toth runs auctioned in the next few weeks.
“The Toth collection certainly made its mark on the CGC census,” said Lon Allen, Director of Sales of Heritage. “The Toth copies of Flash #123, Action #252, Lois Lane #1, and Detective #327 are all tied for the highest grade yet assigned. The Toth copies of Brave and the Bold #30 and Superboy #68 stand alone as the highest-graded copies.”
In the run of Justice League of America #s 1–13, 11 of the issues are certified 9.2 or better (Universal grades), with one a Qualified 9.4.
Detective Comics #s 299, 303, and 310 are certified 9.8, the only three copies of any Detective issue between #s 184 and 337 (a 13-year span) to be certified 9.8.
David N. Toth began collecting in earnest in 1955, frequenting the comic racks of a confectionery where his mother worked. He had an affinity for Dells, Harveys, and DCs, eventually concentrating on DCs, which he avidly collected until he graduated from high school.
His collecting was interrupted somewhat from 1968–72 as he pursued becoming an MD, but continued throughout moves to West Germany and five different U.S. cities. In the early 1990s, son Andrew Toth also caught the “collecting bug,” and the father-son team bought virtually every comic and comic-related item that came out.
The most astounding copies are from David’s original newsstand copies from the late 1950s and early 1960s. Dr. Toth (no relation to comic artist Alex Toth) discovered that newspaper bags were a good fit for his comic books, giving him a head-start on plastic protection before specialized comic book bags became widespread. Was his method of bagging the collection and stacking them in boxes, drawers, and bookshelves effective? Just check out the many “highest-graded” copies being auctioned!
High-resolution images of all of the David N. Toth copies are available at HA.com/Comics.
This is a guest article. The thoughts and opinions in this piece are those of their author and are not necessarily the thoughts of the Certified Collectibles Group.
