Heritage May auction 5 5

[G.A.tor]

Rosie and John are surviving children 

[MrBedrock]

Nanette had Rose from a previous relationship when she and John were married. John adopted Rose. Later John and Nan had a son named John. Little John is now 17. Rose is now married and has a daughter of her own.

Edited April 11, 2018 by MrBedrock
a

[sfcityduck]

11 minutes ago, MrBedrock said:

Nanette had Rose from a previous relationship when she and John were married. John adopted Rose. Later John and Nan had a son named John. Little John is now 17. Rose is now married and has daughter of her own.

For those who were not forced to take Estates & Trusts when in Law School, Rose and John are both legal children of Verzyl as the law does not recognize a difference between adopted and genetic children.  Thus, his two children would be his sole heirs, unless he remarried. 

HOWEVER, even if he did not remarry, it is possible that in the marital dissolution Verzyl and his ex-wife agreed to some sort of joint ownership of Comic Heaven and its stock.  If so, then the ex-wife could be be a 50% owner of the comics with the children each owning 25%.  I can imagine that the divorce could have been complicated if Verzyl was married in California, a community property state with convoluted marital dissolution laws.  Parts of what we might view as his "personal" collection were likely his "separate property," but arguably nothing he bought after the marriage (and it might be hard to document what was bought before and after), unless there was some sort of pre-nuptial agreement that provides otherwise.

 

Edited April 11, 2018 by sfcityduck

[MrBedrock]

2 minutes ago, sfcityduck said:

For those who were not forced to take Estates & Trusts when in Law School, Rose and John are both legal children of John as the law does not recognize a difference between adopted and genetic children.  Thus, his two children would be his sole heirs, unless he remarried. 

HOWEVER, even if he did not remarry, it is possible that in the marital dissolution Verzyl and his ex-wife agreed to some sort of joint ownership of Comic Heaven and its stock.  If so, then the ex-wife could be be a 50% owner of the comics with the children each owning 25%.  I can imagine that the divorce could have been complicated if Verzyl was married in California, a community property state with convoluted marital dissolution laws.  Parts of what we might view as his "personal" collection were likely his "separate property," but arguably nothing he bought after the marriage (and it might be hard to document what was bought before and after).

 

A bigger question would be why we would care?

[sfcityduck]

23 minutes ago, MrBedrock said:

A bigger question would be why we would care?

Good question.  The implied point that we should respect Verzyl's family is a great one.  I am not trying to start rumors or cause his family concern or embarrassment.  I hope I didn't do that.

Sometimes the problem with attorneys is that they look at everything as a hypothetical question with interesting legal implications, and here I am guilty of that.  The only reason I care is that I've been giving thought recently to how older collectors should manage their collections and plan for their passing.  I started thinking about this when SOTIcollector posted on what he is doing in that regard.  Verzyl's unexpected death (and perhaps also the death of the seller of the current offering out of Chicago) brings home that this is a real issue. The obvious issues are whether you should liquidate the collection yourself (as Berk did), put in place a plan for post-death liquidation (as SOTIcollector elected to do), or just leave the books to your heirs to deal with (what many inadvertantly do).  These issues are all beyond the basic questions of whether you need a will or trust, and what tax implications may come into play. 

My interest was piqued because the comment up thread that Verzyl and his wife divorced brought into play a whole new consideration - dissolution law - that I hadn't even considered.  So my post above was just me thinking out loud as I identified issues that could impact a collector's estate planning.  Whether Verzyl's ex-wife specifically has an ownership interest in his comic business or collection or just the kids, is no concern of mine as I won't be trying to pester anyone to try to get books out of the estate.  But, I see how this could be a concern as there probably are dealers who might want to do so.  By selling so quickly on Heritage, the family may well have just protected themselves from precisely that.  If anyone calls them up, they can now say we've already got a plan.

 

Edited April 11, 2018 by sfcityduck

[atomised]

I talked to the Heritage guys at their booth at last weekends con in SJ about this auction.  Super nice guys, I think it was Jerry Stephan and Aaron White.  We got to talking about the Marvel Comics #1 1.0 in that auction.  I mentioned how much I liked that book and I threw out that I thought it would go north of 40k and they said yea I think that's about right. I also mentioned how it's a real nice entry level copy which in retrospect it's a bit funny to call anything in this price range entry level. 

[G.A.tor]

31 minutes ago, atomised said:

I talked to the Heritage guys at their booth at last weekends con in SJ about this auction.  Super nice guys, I think it was Jerry Stephan and Aaron White.  We got to talking about the Marvel Comics #1 1.0 in that auction.  I mentioned how much I liked that book and I threw out that I thought it would go north of 40k and they said yea I think that's about right. I also mentioned how it's a real nice entry level copy which in retrospect it's a bit funny to call anything in this price range entry level. 

I suspect it will go way north of 40

[dem1138]

7 minutes ago, G.A.tor said:

I suspect it will go way north of 40

Agreed - if I was offered this book privately for 40K, I would buy it in a heartbeat.  "Funny" that a really nice 2.5 ow/w sold at the end of November for close to 90K, which would dictate that a 1.0 should sell for around 35K.  But there's such price compression for entry-level copies of mega keys like this that this 1.0 selling for 50K would surprise no one.  And the fact that its an 'Oct' copy means that the bidding will be especially competitive.

Edited April 12, 2018 by dem1138

[Dark Knight]

And I was looking forward to upgrading my copy, oh well 

[jmg3637]

While I would love to have a vertzyl and a mile high to boot, I am sure that the price will be above what I want to $pend.  I am a cheap SOB

[batman_fan]

10 hours ago, jmg3637 said:

While I would love to have a vertzyl and a mile high to boot, I am sure that the price will be above what I want to $pend.  I am a cheap SOB

You are in good company 

[Robot Man]

John along with Redbeard bought a TON of the "lessor" Mile Highs. They really had vision I guess. And they were SOOOO cheap at the time. Along with the Carters who only bought DCs, they were the ones who bought the most of the collection. I believe Ernie Gerber bought a lot too. Chuck would usually open up the vault once a year (upon advice of his tax guy) and sell around 10K worth of books at a time. You could get a LOT of books for that kind of money then. I suspect John still has quite a few he held on to and that they will be coming to the market in droves.

I remember John McLaughlin was also a big buyer but his stuff is all sold off now. I remember seeing stacks and stacks 3 feet tall of un-bagged Mile Highs on his living room floor. Sadly his cat whizzed on some of them...

[Sqeggs]

On 4/11/2018 at 2:25 PM, G.A.tor said:

I wonder where all those mile highs came from.

 Colorado

[Timely]

Here is something I wrote years back about the MH collection for the Pedigree Book that never made it to print. Much of this information came from an interview I did with John Verzyl (along with other sources).

 

Initial Brokering of the Collection. Disbursement of the collection after Chuck bought it was slow and steady except for some raids early on by Burrell Rowe, Bruce Hamilton and Gary Carter. Burrell Rowe was one of the first to see the collection. He was one of the top collectors at that time. He was a very luck man as not only was he the first person to pick from the collection, but he bought about $17,000 worth of material at 1976 guide value. He walked away with approximately 1,000 comics, nearly 6% of the entire collection! Burrell was heavily into Fiction House and EC’s so he bought almost all of those. He also bought many of the early Fawcett titles such as Captain Marvel, Whiz Comics, Captain Marvel Jr. #1 and Special Comics #1. He also selected a few prime DC books like Detective Comics #33, 39 & 40. Bruce Hamilton also got in early and picked up many choice books for $10,000 that he quickly sold to Gary Carter. Once Gary and his brother Lane found out about where these books came from they flew out to Colorado to buy more. They were so transfixed by these comic books that Gary mortgaged his house and borrowed all they could to get more of these Mint comics form Chuck. In total the brothers amassed $44,000 and with that money they cherry-picked the main DC titles such as Action Comics, Adventure Comics, More Fun Comics and most other titles. Gary’s father Nick managed to come up with an additional $5,000 called up his sons and asked them to purchase all the off-brand DC titles like Mr. District Attorney, Dale Evans and other Western titles. He also bought funny humor titles like A Date with Judy and Leave it to Binky.

 

Due to the incredible condition of the comic books Chuck and Nanette felt these were worth MORE than what the Overstreet guide valued them at so they started to ask a multiple of guide based on the condition of the specific book and on each company. For instance, DC and Timely had a higher multiple of 2 to 2.5 times guide across the board whereas less demand books such as Fawcett which were priced at 1.5 to 2 times guide. Slow titles that had minimal interest were priced just slightly over guide. Chuck usually offered a 10% discount if you bought a sizeable portion. This was the first time any dealer had mad a list of books he was selling with ask prices HIGHER than Overstreet thus leaving many complete runs of Edgar Church/Mile Highs unsold for years and years. Most dealers back then felt the prices were too high and they could get better deals elsewhere. If only they knew then what they know now I’m sure they would have paid the excess amount asked.

 

Soon after those early raids were made the collection was cataloged by Chuck, his wife Nanette and his employee at the time, John Desbin. Once the collection was catalog and priced Chuck placed an enormous ad in Alan Lights “The Buyer’s Guide.” Even though the ad only initially generated $15,000 in sales Chuck had many repeat customers, and rightfully so.

 

There were many early significant purchases in the last 1970’s to early 1980’s. Ron Pussell (owner of Redbeard’s Book Den) bought a vast majority of the esoteric titles and sold them slowly through the 1980’s into the mid 1990’s. Ron was a smart seller as he kept the key expensive books up until the very end selling off the less expensive issues first. At the beginning of each year Ron would get a call from Chuck and Ron would tell him what he wanted from the collection. Chuck would pull those books for Ron and give them to Ron at the San Diego convention later that year. By that time the new price guide would be out and Ron would have to pay “new guide” prices. Ron was buying the books graded NM and NM+ at 1.5 times guide but would get a discount of 10% making it 1.35 times guide per book. However, Ron had a deal with John Verzyl to give him first shot at those books but John had to pay “next year” guide prices at just under 2 times guide. John bought almost every Edgar Church/Mile High Ron ever offered to him with few exceptions, one of them being Superman #1. One of the last key books Ron sold was the Edgar Church/Mile High copy of Superman #1 which he sold to Bechara Maalouf in 1997 for $180,000.

Each year Chuck would bring a vast assortment of less expensive Edgar Church/Mile Highs to sell in San Diego. Anyone could walk right up to the table and buy the books. There were many titles in those boxes that were cheap back then that are highly sought after and expensive today, such as the Suspense Comics run by Continental. Keep in mind that the Edgar Church/Mile High collection was a secret that Ron and several others wanted no one to know about. Well, at the San Diego comic show in the mid-1980’s a well-known dealer wanted to buy everything that Chuck had laid out at his tables. Ron got wind of this and was able to continue his #1 spot as Chuck’s #1 customer as he told Chuck he would buy every NM or NM+ Edgar Church/Mile High that Chuck had brought to the show. The deal was made and it took Chuck and his staff 2 days to sort and count up the hoard of books Ron had purchased. This deal left only Fine, VG or Good Edgar Church/Mile High’s for the other dealer to purchase, which he did. Even books graded Fine were generally high grade as it would only have 2-3 cover flaws.

 

Another collector who got in early on the Edgar Church/Mile High disbursement was John McLaughlin. He bought most of his massive collection of Church books from either Ron Pussell or directly from Chuck. Most of the Church books he bought were esoteric titles such as Contact Comics, Feature Comics Doll Man and many other titles. It’s estimated that his collection held about 1700 Church books! That is an amazing amount of books. Unfortunately he did not keep very good records and the Church books were intermixed with the rest of his high grade collection. John passed away in late 2005 and his collection was auctioned off the Heritage Auctions. Due to the poor record keeping and the fact that most of John’s esoteric books were not coded it was sometimes difficult for Heritage to ascertain which books were authentic Edgar Church/Mile High copies. For all of you reading this, if you already have pedigree copies in your collection learn from John McLaughlin’s mistake and KEEP DETAILED RECORDS! It will not only help you out years or decades later it will help others not to loose your books pedigree provenance.

 

John Snyder was also an early buyer of Church books who bought directly from Chuck. He kept mostly to the expensive #1 and key issues. It is common knowledge that when he bought the Church books many of them had small bindery tears and other minor imperfections that he carefully fixed. Back then repairs and restoration was insignificant in comparison to its stigma these days. Much of the mending John did is reversible and in many cases has already been removed.

 

Probably one of the most well known Edgar Church/Mile High collectors is Dave Anderson of Virginia, A.K.A. “The Dentist.” Dave has always been a high grade collector and has always wanted the “best” copy he could find. This pretty much meant he was forced to buy Church books since they are usually the best known copies and I’m sure he does not mind having them reside in his collection. However, he has sold Church books if he found another copy that was equally as nice or better such as the Detective Comics #27 MH he sold when he upgraded to the Allentown copy. Dave was a few years to late to be involved in the initial disbursement of Mile Highs so he had to have help in obtaining them.

 

The most famous and well-known book Dave owns is the Action Comics #1 Edgar Church/Mile High copy. Since he did not have direct access to buy from Chuck he had someone else broker the deal for him. In the 1985 Overstreet Price Guide #15 it reads, “The ‘Mile High’ copy of Action #1 sold to a dealer for $20,500 and Action #2-13 sold for $29,500. The dealer resold the set to a collector. The cash/trade value received for the #1 was set at $25,000.” Most people in the industry thought that was an insane price to pay at the time but Dave’s foresight paid off as he has rejected offers rumored to be as high as $2 million just a few years ago.

Of note Dave has owned many Edgar Church/Mile High runs over the years including: Action Comics #1-24, Batman #1-17, Detective Comics #28-40, Sensation Comics #1-30 and many, many other runs and single issues.

 

Robert Pennak was another buyer into the Church collection. Robert was a man ahead of his time and even many of the Church books did not meet up to his perfect condition requirements. He wanted MINT books! Over the years he earned the nickname “Perfect Pennak” due to his reputation as being a picky collector.

 

Another large buyer of Edgar Church/Mile Highs is John Verzyl. John bought Church books from any legitimate source he could find and quickly became an expert on identifying Church books. Naturally he preferred to get the books directly from Chuck Rozanski but he was a few years too late to get in on the initial offerings. One book he specifically recalls buying is the Wonder Woman #10. He goes on to say that the entire run was still intact on his 1st buying trip to Denver and he cherry-picked the #10 as the best issue in the Wonder Woman run. If you think about it that’s an incredible statement to make! If one concludes that the Edgar Church/Mile Highs are the best copies in the world and the Wonder Woman #10 is the best issue of that title then the Wonder Woman #10 must be virtually unbeatable in grade against any other Golden Age Wonder Woman issue. Even though John only bought less than 100 Edgar Church/Mile Highs on his 1st trip he told me in one deal alone he bought over 1,000 Mile Highs from Chuck. John was one of the last people to buy a significant portion of Church books from Chuck.

 

Aside from Chuck, John also bought from the Carter brothers, Ron Pussell and Steve Geppi later on. His most important source however was Alex Acevedo. Alex is an extremely wealthy man and to my knowledge is the only person who ever seriously attempted to reassemble the entire Edgar Church/Mile High collection! He figured it would be easy to do and was able to get a very large portion in a very short time. Unfortunately he ran into resistance so he simply offered higher multiples to get the books. This worked to…for a while. Unfortunately he ran into further resistance as he found many collectors would not part with their Church treasures for any price! (It should be noted that Alex’s early attempt to reassemble the books at nearly any cost is what drove the Church multiples higher than they had ever been and that was the basis on which ALL Church books had become steadily worth more than any other pedigree, even up to this date.) Due to mounting frustration that certain collectors would not part with their books for any price Alex got fed up with the whole idea and decided to sell everything off. John Verzyl was at the right place and time as Alex had amassed the majority of the Timely runs and was very accommodating to John in selling the books to him, even allowing for rather lengthy time-payments.

 

Steve Geppi saw how incredible the Edgar Church/Mile High copies were and quickly became hooked on buying and selling these four-color beauties. He bought Church books from many sources over the years including Ernie Gerber, John Verzyl and Chuck Rozanski. Steve also placed ads in many of the industries trade magazine in the 1990’s offering to buy authentic Church books that graded NM or NM+ on the original Mile High list.

 

One of the first dealers to get involved with Edgar Church/Mile Highs on a public level was Sparkle City Comics. They bought a large batch of Church books early on from Ron Pussell and in1985 they placed an ad in the March 29th edition of the Comic Buyer’s Guide (#593). This ad contained lots of prime DC and Timely titles that were soaked up by collectors. Most of those books have still not come up for sale since. Some of the highlights include full Timely runs of Human Torch #2-34, All Winners #2-19 & 21, USA #2-17, Mystic Comics #2-10 and Daring Mystery Comics #2-12. The DC’s were broken up and not complete but there were 13 All-America Comics from #21-64, 15 More Fun Comics from #57-95, 8 Green Lanterns from #2-29 and All Star Comics #1, 2, 9, 10, 16. Arguably the most important run to be offered was 24 Superman issues from #11-68!

 

Ernie Gerber came onto the scene with a huge impact in the mid 1980’s. In 1990 he finished and produced the highly popular and indispensable Photo-Journal Guide to Comic Books. During the 1980’s he photographed over 22,000 comics for his photo-journal, many of them originating from the Edgar Church/Mile High collection. He quickly saw the allure of the Church collection as he was photographing vast runs of Mile Highs. Ernie was amazed at the depth of the collection and started acquiring them. There were many times that he was forced to buy the church book because the owner would not allow him to photograph it. I can tell you Gerber did not mind being forced into it all. Once his photo-journal was released and he no longer needed the books he felt it was time to market church books he had amassed over the previous 5 years. In total his 1990 auction catalog featured 1253 Edgar Church/Mile Highs! With exception the initial offering by Chuck Rozanski in 1977 this is the single largest offering of Edgar Church/Mile Highs ever offered to the public in a single auction. That auction record still stands to this day and will likely never be beaten. In 1993 Steve Geppi bought the remaining Church copies from Gerber, which numbered about 1,000 copies.

 

One other important item I would like to mention is that Ernie Gerber and John Verzyl were the first 2 people to ever make a “Certificate of Authenticity” for books from the Church collection. They quickly realized that some less than honest people may switch books or outright cheat others intentionally by passing off “fake” Church books due to the value of Church books over regular copies of unknown origin. Over the years I have heard of several instances where the “Certificate of Authenticity” saved a potential disaster from occurring where books were switched. I personally had the All American Comics #68 Church copy stolen from the mail years ago when I sent it to Ernie Gerber but luckily I still have the “Certificate of Authenticity” that includes the scan “fingerprint” of the cover. As of yet the book has not resurfaced but I am always on the lookout for it. Hopefully sooner than later the “Certificate of Authenticity” I have on the book along with the other paperwork with help me find and claim the book that was stolen.

 

There is also a long list of collectors who bought or currently own significant yet smaller portions of Edgar Church/Mile High. Those people include: Pat Kochanek who did the 1st major study of Mile Highs back in 1990, Bob Nastasi who owned many Mile Highs in the 1980’s, Joe Smejkal who owns many prime DC superhero runs, Jon Berk who owns many of the Fox Mile Highs and other key runs, Bruce Schwartz who owns many DC issues and myself, West Stephan who acquired over 200 of the DC Superhero Edgar Church/Mile High copies.

 

One thing I should mention is that after Chuck made his initial deals in the 70's he made a list of buyers who bought large quantities from him. Supposedly, from the advice of his tax consultant, it was in Chuck’s best interest not to sell too much in a given year so his taxes would not go berserk so he put a cap of $20,000 per year that he would sell from the collection. Each year Chuck would go to his list of buyers and call to see if they were interested in buying Church books. There was a minimum $10,000 order, meaning you had to come up with $10,000 minimum to make a purchase. If you had $20,000, you would be the only purchaser of Church books that year, due to the cap Chuck put on his own selling! Ron Pussell was the 1st person in line as Chuck called each year to see if he wanted to buy more Edgar Church/Mile High books. Are you kidding??? Of course Ron was interested. Ron secured the #1 spot on Chuck’s list of buyers and stayed there all the way to the end.

 

Edited April 13, 2018 by Timely

[Sqeggs]

16 minutes ago, Timely said:

Here is something I wrote years back about the MH collection for the Pedigree Book that never made it to print. Much of this information came from an interview I did with John Verzyl (along with other sources).

 

Initial Brokering of the Collection. Disbursement of the collection after Chuck bought it was slow and steady except for some raids early on by Burrell Rowe, Bruce Hamilton and Gary Carter. Burrell Rowe was one of the first to see the collection. He was one of the top collectors at that time. He was a very luck man as not only was he the first person to pick from the collection, but he bought about $17,000 worth of material at 1976 guide value. He walked away with approximately 1,000 comics, nearly 6% of the entire collection! Burrell was heavily into Fiction House and EC’s so he bought almost all of those. He also bought many of the early Fawcett titles such as Captain Marvel, Whiz Comics, Captain Marvel Jr. #1 and Special Comics #1. He also selected a few prime DC books like Detective Comics #33, 39 & 40. Bruce Hamilton also got in early and picked up many choice books for $10,000 that he quickly sold to Gary Carter. Once Gary and his brother Lane found out about where these books came from they flew out to Colorado to buy more. They were so transfixed by these comic books that Gary mortgaged his house and borrowed all they could to get more of these Mint comics form Chuck. In total the brothers amassed $44,000 and with that money they cherry-picked the main DC titles such as Action Comics, Adventure Comics, More Fun Comics and most other titles. Gary’s father Nick managed to come up with an additional $5,000 called up his sons and asked them to purchase all the off-brand DC titles like Mr. District Attorney, Dale Evans and other Western titles. He also bought funny humor titles like A Date with Judy and Leave it to Binky.

 

Due to the incredible condition of the comic books Chuck and Nanette felt these were worth MORE than what the Overstreet guide valued them at so they started to ask a multiple of guide based on the condition of the specific book and on each company. For instance, DC and Timely had a higher multiple of 2 to 2.5 times guide across the board whereas less demand books such as Fawcett which were priced at 1.5 to 2 times guide. Slow titles that had minimal interest were priced just slightly over guide. Chuck usually offered a 10% discount if you bought a sizeable portion. This was the first time any dealer had mad a list of books he was selling with ask prices HIGHER than Overstreet thus leaving many complete runs of Edgar Church/Mile Highs unsold for years and years. Most dealers back then felt the prices were too high and they could get better deals elsewhere. If only they knew then what they know now I’m sure they would have paid the excess amount asked.

 

Soon after those early raids were made the collection was cataloged by Chuck, his wife Nanette and his employee at the time, John Desbin. Once the collection was catalog and priced Chuck placed an enormous ad in Alan Lights “The Buyer’s Guide.” Even though the ad only initially generated $15,000 in sales Chuck had many repeat customers, and rightfully so.

 

There were many early significant purchases in the last 1970’s to early 1980’s. Ron Pussell (owner of Redbeard’s Book Den) bought a vast majority of the esoteric titles and sold them slowly through the 1980’s into the mid 1990’s. Ron was a smart seller as he kept the key expensive books up until the very end selling off the less expensive issues first. At the beginning of each year Ron would get a call from Chuck and Ron would tell him what he wanted from the collection. Chuck would pull those books for Ron and give them to Ron at the San Diego convention later that year. By that time the new price guide would be out and Ron would have to pay “new guide” prices. Ron was buying the books graded NM and NM+ at 1.5 times guide but would get a discount of 10% making it 1.35 times guide per book. However, Ron had a deal with John Verzyl to give him first shot at those books but John had to pay “next year” guide prices at just under 2 times guide. John bought almost every Edgar Church/Mile High Ron ever offered to him with few exceptions, one of them being Superman #1. One of the last key books Ron sold was the Edgar Church/Mile High copy of Superman #1 which he sold to Bechara Maalouf in 1997 for $180,000.

Each year Chuck would bring a vast assortment of less expensive Edgar Church/Mile Highs to sell in San Diego. Anyone could walk right up to the table and buy the books. There were many titles in those boxes that were cheap back then that are highly sought after and expensive today, such as the Suspense Comics run by Continental. Keep in mind that the Edgar Church/Mile High collection was a secret that Ron and several others wanted no one to know about. Well, at the San Diego comic show in the mid-1980’s a well-known dealer wanted to buy everything that Chuck had laid out at his tables. Ron got wind of this and was able to continue his #1 spot as Chuck’s #1 customer as he told Chuck he would buy every NM or NM+ Edgar Church/Mile High that Chuck had brought to the show. The deal was made and it took Chuck and his staff 2 days to sort and count up the hoard of books Ron had purchased. This deal left only Fine, VG or Good Edgar Church/Mile High’s for the other dealer to purchase, which he did. Even books graded Fine were generally high grade as it would only have 2-3 cover flaws.

 

Another collector who got in early on the Edgar Church/Mile High disbursement was John McLaughlin. He bought most of his massive collection of Church books from either Ron Pussell or directly from Chuck. Most of the Church books he bought were esoteric titles such as Contact Comics, Feature Comics Doll Man and many other titles. It’s estimated that his collection held about 1700 Church books! That is an amazing amount of books. Unfortunately he did not keep very good records and the Church books were intermixed with the rest of his high grade collection. John passed away in late 2005 and his collection was auctioned off the Heritage Auctions. Due to the poor record keeping and the fact that most of John’s esoteric books were not coded it was sometimes difficult for Heritage to ascertain which books were authentic Edgar Church/Mile High copies. For all of you reading this, if you already have pedigree copies in your collection learn from John McLaughlin’s mistake and KEEP DETAILED RECORDS! It will not only help you out years or decades later it will help others not to loose your books pedigree provenance.

 

John Snyder was also an early buyer of Church books who bought directly from Chuck. He kept mostly to the expensive #1 and key issues. It is common knowledge that when he bought the Church books many of them had small bindery tears and other minor imperfections that he carefully fixed. Back then repairs and restoration was insignificant in comparison to its stigma these days. Much of the mending John did is reversible and in many cases has already been removed.

 

Probably one of the most well known Edgar Church/Mile High collectors is Dave Anderson of Virginia, A.K.A. “The Dentist.” Dave has always been a high grade collector and has always wanted the “best” copy he could find. This pretty much meant he was forced to buy Church books since they are usually the best known copies and I’m sure he does not mind having them reside in his collection. However, he has sold Church books if he found another copy that was equally as nice or better such as the Detective Comics #27 MH he sold when he upgraded to the Allentown copy. Dave was a few years to late to be involved in the initial disbursement of Mile Highs so he had to have help in obtaining them.

 

The most famous and well-known book Dave owns is the Action Comics #1 Edgar Church/Mile High copy. Since he did not have direct access to buy from Chuck he had someone else broker the deal for him. In the 1985 Overstreet Price Guide #15 it reads, “The ‘Mile High’ copy of Action #1 sold to a dealer for $20,500 and Action #2-13 sold for $29,500. The dealer resold the set to a collector. The cash/trade value received for the #1 was set at $25,000.” Most people in the industry thought that was an insane price to pay at the time but Dave’s foresight paid off as he has rejected offers rumored to be as high as $2 million just a few years ago.

Of note Dave has owned many Edgar Church/Mile High runs over the years including: Action Comics #1-24, Batman #1-17, Detective Comics #28-40, Sensation Comics #1-30 and many, many other runs and single issues.

 

Robert Pennak was another buyer into the Church collection. Robert was a man ahead of his time and even many of the Church books did not meet up to his perfect condition requirements. He wanted MINT books! Over the years he earned the nickname “Perfect Pennak” due to is reputation as being a picky collector.

 

Another large buyer of Edgar Church/Mile Highs is John Verzyl. John bought Church books from any legitimate source he could find and quickly became an expert on identifying Church books. Naturally he preferred to get the books directly from Chuck Rozanski but he was a few years too late to get in on the initial offerings. One book he specifically recalls buying is the Wonder Woman #10. He goes on to say that the entire run was still intact on his 1st buying trip to Denver and he cherry-picked the #10 as the best issue in the Wonder Woman run. If you think about it that’s an incredible statement to make! If one concludes that the Edgar Church/Mile Highs are the best copies in the world and the Wonder Woman #10 is the best issue of that title then the Wonder Woman #10 must be virtually unbeatable in grade against any other Golden Age Wonder Woman issue. Even though John only bought less than 100 Edgar Church/Mile Highs on his 1st trip he told me in one deal alone he bought over 1,000 Mile Highs from Chuck. John was one of the last people to buy a significant portion of Church books from Chuck.

 

Aside from Chuck, John also bought from the Carter brothers, Ron Pussell and Steve Geppi later on. His most important source however was Alex Acevedo. Alex is an extremely wealthy man and to my knowledge is the only person who ever seriously attempted to reassemble the entire Edgar Church/Mile High collection! He figured it would be easy to do and was able to get a very large portion in a very short time. Unfortunately he ran into resistance so he simply offered higher multiples to get the books. This worked to…for a while. Unfortunately he ran into further resistance as he found many collectors would not part with their Church treasures for any price! (It should be noted that Alex’s early attempt to reassemble the books at nearly any cost is what drove the Church multiples higher than they had ever been and that was the basis on which ALL Church books had become steadily worth more than any other pedigree, even up to this date.) Due to mounting frustration that certain collectors would not part with their books for any price Alex got fed up with the whole idea and decided to sell everything off. John Verzyl was at the right place and time as Alex had amassed the majority of the Timely runs and was very accommodating to John in selling the books to him, even allowing for rather lengthy time-payments.

 

Steve Geppi saw how incredible the Edgar Church/Mile High copies were and quickly became hooked on buying and selling these four-color beauties. He bought Church books from many sources over the years including Ernie Gerber, John Verzyl and Chuck Rozanski. Steve also placed ads in many of the industries trade magazine in the 1990’s offering to buy authentic Church books that graded NM or NM+ on the original Mile High list.

 

One of the first dealers to get involved with Edgar Church/Mile Highs on a public level was Sparkle City Comics. They bought a large batch of Church books early on from Ron Pussell and in1985 they placed an ad in the March 29th edition of the Comic Buyer’s Guide (#593). This ad contained lots of prime DC and Timely titles that were soaked up by collectors. Most of those books have still not come up for sale since. Some of the highlights include full Timely runs of Human Torch #2-34, All Winners #2-19 & 21, USA #2-17, Mystic Comics #2-10 and Daring Mystery Comics #2-12. The DC’s were broken up and not complete but there were 13 All-America Comics from #21-64, 15 More Fun Comics from #57-95, 8 Green Lanterns from #2-29 and All Star Comics #1, 2, 9, 10, 16. Arguably the most important run to be offered was 24 Superman issues from #11-68!

 

Ernie Gerber came onto the scene with a huge impact in the mid 1980’s. In 1990 he finished and produced the highly popular and indispensable Photo-Journal Guide to Comic Books. During the 1980’s he photographed over 22,000 comics for his photo-journal, many of them originating from the Edgar Church/Mile High collection. He quickly saw the allure of the Church collection as he was photographing vast runs of Mile Highs. Ernie was amazed at the depth of the collection and started acquiring them. There were many times that he was forced to buy the church book because the owner would not allow him to photograph it. I can tell you Gerber did not mind being forced into it all. Once his photo-journal was released and he no longer needed the books he felt it was time to market church books he had amassed over the previous 5 years. In total his 1990 auction catalog featured 1253 Edgar Church/Mile Highs! With exception the initial offering by Chuck Rozanski in 1977 this is the single largest offering of Edgar Church/Mile Highs ever offered to the public in a single auction. That auction record still stands to this day and will likely never be beaten. In 1993 Steve Geppi bought the remaining Church copies from Gerber, which numbered about 1,000 copies.

 

One other important item I would like to mention is that Ernie Gerber and John Verzyl were the first 2 people to ever make a “Certificate of Authenticity” for books from the Church collection. They quickly realized that some less than honest people may switch books or outright cheat others intentionally by passing off “fake” Church books due to the value of Church books over regular copies of unknown origin. Over the years I have heard of several instances where the “Certificate of Authenticity” saved a potential disaster from occurring where books were switched. I personally had the All American Comics #68 Church copy stolen from the mail years ago when I sent it to Ernie Gerber but luckily I still have the “Certificate of Authenticity” that includes the scan “fingerprint” of the cover. As of yet the book has not resurfaced but I am always on the lookout for it. Hopefully sooner than later the “Certificate of Authenticity” I have on the book along with the other paperwork with help me find and claim the book that was stolen.

 

There is also a long list of collectors who bought or currently own significant yet smaller portions of Edgar Church/Mile High. Those people include: Pat Kochanek who did the 1st major study of Mile Highs back in 1990, Bob Nastasi who owned many Mile Highs in the 1980’s, Joe Smejkal who owns many prime DC superhero runs, Jon Berk who owns many of the Fox Mile Highs and other key runs, Bruce Schwartz who owns many DC issues and myself, West Stephan who acquired over 200 of the DC Superhero Edgar Church/Mile High copies.

 

One thing I should mention is that after Chuck made his initial deals in the 70's he made a list of buyers who bought large quantities from him. Supposedly, from the advice of his tax consultant, it was in Chuck’s best interest not to sell too much in a given year so his taxes would not go berserk so he put a cap of $20,000 per year that he would sell from the collection. Each year Chuck would go to his list of buyers and call to see if they were interested in buying Church books. There was a minimum $10,000 order, meaning you had to come up with $10,000 minimum to make a purchase. If you had $20,000, you would be the only purchaser of Church books that year, due to the cap Chuck put on his own selling! Ron Pussell was the 1st person in line as Chuck called each year to see if he wanted to buy more Edgar Church/Mile High books. Are you kidding??? Of course Ron was interested. Ron secured the #1 spot on Chuck’s list of buyers and stayed there all the way to the end.

 

Great stuff.  Many thanks for posting it. 

[AJD]

31 minutes ago, Sqeggs said:

Great stuff.  Many thanks for posting it. 

+1

[lou_fine]

2 minutes ago, AJD said:

34 minutes ago, Sqeggs said:

Great stuff.  Many thanks for posting it. 

+1

Yes indeed! 

Reminds me of many of the articles written in the early pages of the CBM magazine when Gary Carter first put it out back in the 90's. 

[Robot Man]

Great stuff West. That about covers it. Redbeard also gave out certificates with Church books. Here is only one of the ones I have from him.

[Pickie]

17 hours ago, Timely said:

(...)

Ernie Gerber came onto the scene with a huge impact in the mid 1980’s. In 1990 he finished and produced the highly popular and indispensable Photo-Journal Guide to Comic Books.

(...)

Indispensable insights and summary on ist own, many thanks! I printed it out to store it with my Gerbers and with the printout of Chuck R.'s epic Edgar Church report for a good reread whenever I feel for it.  

[rob_react]

On 4/11/2018 at 3:15 PM, Junkdrawer said:

Spirit 22 CGC 9.6