A modern age pedigree or just overstock?

I have been collecting outside my means. I set a goal for myself to collect the following titles in a 9.8 grade or better, pretty much I wanted the best condition possible. They are ?The New Mutants?, ?Longshot?, and ?Marvel Super Heroes Secret Wars?. Since making that decision I have purchased the ?Uncanny X-men?, Marvel Graphic Novel #4, a couple Spider-Man?s (the Amazing variety), and many other Miscellaneous comic books. My main priority was (and still is) The New Mutants. I believe that there are still twenty different issues readily available that I do not have. I wonder if I did not purchase outside my ?original? guidelines would they already be part of my collection.

I officially started collecting CGC graded comic books in April of 2009. I started with a copy of The New Mutants #1. If it were not for that book I would not be spending what I have been spending on comic books, then again I would not be having fun collecting either. I estimate by April of 2011 I will have a total of sixty issues from The New Mutants, (don?t hold me to that) after which a slow down period will begin. After all, there are not many of them. This journal was fully plotted out, it was a back story about a loss of a 9.8 (Rom Annual #3) and a readable copy purchase (also Rom Annual #3), but I have since decided to amend everything else. The Annual reminded me why I was never a Rom collector but what I found inside was interesting. It was a simple page of many different companies wanting my twenty five cents so they could send me an issue list of comics they wanted to sell me.

In the middle of that classified ads page was an ad for a company called Golden State Comics (complete with picture of Nightcrawler) and I began to wonder if it was the same Golden State Pedigree that I was now purchasing through WorldWideComics.com. It seems too much to be coincidence. I have purchased many of these books because they were what I was looking for, not because they were a pedigree. If you visit WorldWideComics.com and look at a book they will list Price, Condition, Page quality, and Pedigree, under Pedigree it will tell you what pedigree it is, or nothing at all. In a time before CGC and PGX a Pedigree usually meant you were purchasing the best conditioned book possible. I would imagine that someone would be more willing to buy a Mile High collection copy at a premium price easier than they would from a small local comic shop. Just the name Mile High would get a collectors attention.

I have noticed that pedigrees now span so many different sets. In my research (and I hate doing research) I have noticed that the same gentlemen (Stephen Ritter and Matt Nelson) who run WorldWideComics.com (by the way this is not a plug for them, but I do like their site) also started to write a book on pedigrees (collaborated with two others, Mark Haspel and West Stephan who work at CGC (at least as of 2009 when Comicpedigrees.com was last updated). The last listing I see was over a year ago (I imagine business picked up for the worldwide-guys and they since had to shelve the book idea not to mention more and more people sending books of to CGC to get graded). I do not know if the book will ever be out. It was stated there are 45 pedigrees for Golden Age comic books, has that number increased? Will there also be a comprehensive Silver Age listing (they currently have 20 listed and Golden State is not one of them), and if so will CGC honor that listing as genuine? It is quite interesting the information that they have listed and I plan on reading more of it (especially in further detail). The Golden State copies I have are marked only with a sticker on the outside of the slab.

A pedigree, coming from the words pe de gru (Anglo-Fr.) or pied de gru (Anglo-O.), which means ?Foot of a Crane?, the reason for this is because the branching lines of a genealogical chart looked like a bird?s footprint. For comics to be a pedigree it had to have come from one source, which would pretty much look like a straight line.

First off a pedigree comic book must have an Origin (and not Wolverine?s, which would be too confusing). A pedigreed collection must have been accumulated by one individual during the time the comics were released on the newsstand (since Golden State was a store, does this count?). Two is Quality. A pedigreed collection must primarily consist of high quality comic books (now with third party grading high quality grading seems to be the norm). Number Three: Completeness: A pedigreed collection must contain a substantial number of key or rare issues, or represent a significant portion of a particular genre, company, period, or classic title/character. And Lastly, Market Acceptance: CGC and the collecting community must continue to recognize the pedigree name of a collection past the point of initial sale. These points were taken from ComicBookPedigrees.com website.

So back to the Golden State books, are they actual pedigrees? As mentioned above, CGC and the collecting community must accept the pedigree name past the point of initial sale. The sticker is on the outside after all and what happens when the adhesiveness wears off and the sticker falls away. How do I prove that it is a Golden State copy, and does it matter? Will I still buy them? Will you still buy them? I will but only in a 9.8. A pedigree does not mean so much to me as does a condition of a book. I don?t care if the books were left in a hay loft, or some dry basement, or if Nicholas Cage owned them because I?ll tell you, my collection is precious to me (the ones I didn?t have to get rid of) and I would love to send them off to CGC and tell them ?Hey this is part of the Tnerb collection, make sure to mark it as such?.

I also wonder with companies like CGC and PGX not to mention any future companies that might be established to grade books are Pedigrees still going to be a pedigree. The grade is what I want, how about you? Would you rather have an Iron man #1 from Mile High as a 7.0 or one from a collection sold by a grandmother cleaning out her attic that was graded 9.0. I don?t know why I picked Iron Man as an example, maybe because at one point I did have a copy and the reason I wanted that copy is because it was a #1 from the 60?s and at the age I was, I was able to afford it. To me it was my pedigree. I feel the same way with my Sub-Mariner #38, or even better my New Mutants #15, which I predict will receive a 5.0 when I turn it in to get graded. This is our hobby, our love and our enjoyment. We read, we gawk, and we are amazed at having a book in our hands and love the feeling of winning a bid. We don?t crave who used to own it, we cherish it because we own it and that is what makes it prestigious to us. So I end with this?..

Is it OK to question the Golden State copies I have as a genuine pedigree or are they just simply overstock? What?s your opinion?

Thanks for reading

Tnerb

Bibliography:

WorldWideComics.com (love the site)

ComicBookPedigrees.com (some interesting reading)

Dictionary.com