lighthouse

That book was stamped on the day Hurricane Camille dumped 25 inches of rain on Nelson County Virginia.

Love the placement on the date stamp there. I personally like having receiver dates on books. But it’s still nice when the dealer found a good spot for it.

Obviously I have a vested interest here. But the 3 is absolutely scarcer in grade. One 9.8 never sold publicly. One 9.6 OWW sold twice in 2012 and 2014. This is just the third 9.4. None ever sold publicly. Five public sales of 9.2s (out of 11 on the census) from 2012-2015, none with white pages. So there’s never been a white page #3 above 9.0 offered for sale. And hasn’t been a copy between 9.2-9.6 of any page quality offered publicly since 2015. I don’t need to market the book. Heritage is doing just fine and that’s why I gave them these books. But the #3 is the one book I most strongly considered holding back because it’s the least likely to appear again.

That’s not just white. That’s ultra white. Wow.

The Golden Age books in the collection are all second hand. But they are pretty. Here’s a new top census (previous high was 7.0) issue featuring Superman, grade received an hour ago.

It isn’t back in hand yet obviously. But a new top census Golden Age book featuring Superman might just warrant a cigar.

Someone else could confirm, but I’m fairly certain that’s Action 34.

We’ve done a little over $30k in consignment sales through them over the last 5 years or so. Some years not so many. Some years over $10k (this year will likely be $30k or so on its own by the time it’s done). I find them to be a particular good outlet for “leftover” slabs. We might send five copies of a book like NM98 or Hulk340 or Batman423 through Sarasota, get back a variety of grades, and decide to keep two of them for local sale and send the other three to MyComicShop. I don’t have to wait for the fifth customer to be interested in buying a slabbed Bat 423, and I can keep my local wall display constantly rotating. We aren’t a mail order store (I ship less than five packages a month and half of those are to CGC). I’m happy to give MyComicShop their cut knowing I don’t have to deal with that end of the business. Like many others I was disappointed in the grades I got when trying to consign raw books. Had some hot new releases I never even put on the rack rejected as 9.4s (given grades at 8.0 and 8.5) that I then sent to CGC as a test of my sanity and got 9.4 and 9.6 on. I suspect if I sent them 2.0-5.0 gold or silver we wouldn’t differ that much. But I’m unlikely to consign any raw 9.4+ recent moderns again, because the haircut of them getting sub-9 is too high. And that’s fine. My experience with everything else has been top notch.

Many many many hours of research looking for a name where we would “own” the Google results. Needed both domains to be available (both with and without comics on the end). Needed zero divergent results from existing companies. Google something like “comic cavern” and you get stores in five different states plus mistakes like a roadside attraction. You have to work hard to swim uphill in that scenario. And needed to be something with comic ties. The word “omega” gets used in a ton of comic stuff from omega level mutants to Darkseid’s omega beams to a slew of comic stories using it in the title. A good “comicky” name. And I like frogs.

As you can see in the pic there are three of them. I don’t recall the condition but I believe they are nice. I remember one has a GreggyNutsackCrease on the front cover. And one is definitely cut higher than the other two. But it will be a while before I get to those. Shoot me a PM and I’ll add it to the request list and circle back when the time comes.

It is what it is. I reached out multiple times from December to February and received no follow up response. But fwiw I don’t think there’s quite enough breadth in the HG OO SA portion of the collection to warrant it (and the Golden Age is all secondhand). By their previously stated definitions there aren’t enough 9.4+ SA books to meet the threshold. I would expect between 80-150 to meet that particular bar (though it could be as many as 200). There will be a lot of 9.2 White in the collection, and while that’s newsworthy on FF1 (or even FF5) it really isn’t on most Silver. And some are just really nice looking 8.0-9.0 The books are beautiful. Gorgeous color. White pages. And they’re a wonderful time capsule having been left alone for over 5 decades (heck the Church Action 1 was only 39 years old when that collection changed hands). But the pedigree question is above my pay grade.

From a managing expectations standpoint, it’s going to be quite a while. As previously stated I was already working 70-80 hours a week before these books arrived, and there’s no fast way to go through never-bagged-and-might-be-9.6 comics that are 55-61 years old. (Only two have come back from CGC at 9.6 so far but I doubt those will be the last two, especially since only 20 Silver Age have been slabbed so far.) But they will come.

Higoosadic? Hmmm. Have to work on that one. It’s going to be a LONG process. But it will come. (And no that 105 is definitely not Higoosadic. It’s most assuredly Ligoosadic.)

Introduce yourself the next time you’re in. I’ve had four boardies in that I specifically know of. Still trying to get @greggyto make the trip down. These books aren’t kept at the store but eventually a few hundred of them will hit the boxes, and some will hit the wall.

And just a few samples of some recently graded Golden Age from the collection. So far 20 Silver Age have been slabbed and all 20 have White Pages. But the Golden Age were bought second hand in the early 60s, so some have White Pages and some do not.

We are pleased to be able to bring the Truckee Meadows Collection to the public. Including hundreds of high grade original owner Silver Age comics, as well as hundreds of Golden Age comics acquired by that owner during the early 1960s, the collection sat untouched from 1965 until this winter. Some of the issues have already been certified by CGC as among the best examples yet found. We will be offering many of the books directly, but when it came to the best of the best, there was no better partner than Heritage Auctions. The experience working with Heritage to bring these books to market has exceeded all our expectations. Five books from the Truckee Meadows Collection debut in the Signature Auction closing April 7th, headlined by the CGC 9.2 Fantastic Four #1, with many more to follow in the coming months.

White Page Price Variants? *swoon*

We buy about fifty collections each month. Most are small modern collections but we see a collection of 100+ Silver at a time probably fifteen times a year. Second best at this store was probably a collection of 20,000 books that included 500 high grade silver and 3000 high grade bronze.

The family has no idea because he never talked about them. How often does someone bring up a hobby they quit five decades earlier? I’m left playing world’s mediocre-est detective and piecing together the evidence in front of me. There is no master list yet. I handled all the books exactly once to get them separated by title. They’re stacked flat, in newer boxes, separated by magazine size fullbacks about every twenty books, so I can unstack them without handling the books. Now I only handle them as I triage each title, mylaring as I go. There are already more books in both Heritage’s CGC pipeline and mine. But for obvious reasons I’m leaving it to Heritage to do what they do best and I won’t discuss those books until Heritage publishes the items. Many, many, many of the books in the collection are not particularly valuable. His low grade childhood copy of Brave and the Bold 10 is a $50 book at best, as are plenty of the other DCs from that time period. But I will never complain about Silver Age box filler.

Truckee Meadows is the name of the valley containing the Truckee River. The river begins as outflow from Lake Tahoe, meanders through northern Nevada, and ends at Pyramid Lake (an endorheic basin with no outflow). At some point I may offer books here in the marketplace but that’s a ways down the line. I’m less than a quarter done with the initial triage of the collection (it takes much longer when not a single book has ever been bagged or boarded and so many of the books are potential 9.2-9.6 candidates… there is no fast way to flip through high grade raw books lol). Once I have a more complete picture of Heritage vs local slabbed vs local raw, I’ll start on that process. But this collection is around a 600-hour part-time job* and I was already working 70-80 hours a week year round. So it will take time. * and yes, it’s the coolest part-time job I can imagine having

Best I can piece the story together it goes like this. Collector starts collecting in the mid-1950s at a young age. Doesn’t take great care of his books the first few years but as he matures he takes better and better care of his things. By 1960 or so, any of the books he chooses to read, he reads very carefully. (There are absolutely books in the collection that were never read at all.) Around 1961 he starts buying duplicates of books he likes. As many as 8 copies of some, but most are 2 or 3. Also around this time he starts buying Golden Age where he can find it and by this point he has an eye for quality and keeps them in nice shape. This is evident because any book from 1940-1953 is in significantly better shape than the books from 1956-1958. As a “longtime” DC collector (Marvel wasn’t much of an option when he started), his collection is heavily focused on DC, both in what he buys off the rack and what he buys second hand. There is a small amount of Golden Age non-DC but it’s a small amount. In the summer of 1965 he stops collecting entirely. The comics go in a closet and stay there. None are ever bagged and boarded (not much of an option in 1965). Does he leave for Vietnam that summer? I don’t know. But the last books in the collection are September 1965 cover dates (FF42 and ASM28 for example). Collection remains essentially untouched until this winter. The OO having passed on, a family member brought me samples of the books to look at, and here we are. And I say this was pieced together because it’s apparent the OO never interacted with his comics again after 1965. He didn’t talk about them with family, didn’t add to the collection, didn’t sell any. They weren’t part of his life after 1965. I’m confident he passed away having no idea whatsoever that he had an expensive collection of comics. End result is the collection includes a few hundred high grade original owner Silver, a few hundred low to mid grade original owner Silver, and a few hundred mid-to-high grade Golden that were accumulated between 1961-1965. Ultimately we expect Heritage will handle around 300-400 books from the collection. And we will sell the rest directly. As for the white pages, the conditions here are not substantially different from Denver. Altitude, low humidity, few truly hot days. The Truckee Meadows books were stored in flat stacks in boxes, in a very dry, usually cool environment with limited air exchange. It’s a pretty good recipe for paper preservation.

It was a very sleepless night the day the first few samples were brought in for me to look at. You never expect to be suddenly handed top-10 census books that have never been inside a bag and board much less a mylar.

There’s more to come on the storytelling front. But here’s the short form press release. “We are pleased to be able to bring the Truckee Meadows Collection to the public. Including hundreds of high grade original owner Silver Age comics, as well as hundreds of Golden Age comics acquired by that owner during the early 1960s, the collection sat untouched from 1965 until this winter. Some of the issues have already been certified by CGC as among the best examples yet found. We will be offering many of the books directly, but when it came to the best of the best, there was no better partner than Heritage Auctions. The experience working with Heritage to bring these books to market has exceeded all our expectations. Five books from the Truckee Meadows Collection will debut in the Signature Auction April 7th-8th, headlined by the CGC 9.2 Fantastic Four #1, with many more to follow in the coming months.”

Beautiful books indeed. And if my math is correct, it’s already broken the record for any Fantastic Four in a public sale.