Posted in: Comics | Tagged: chuck rozanski, mile high comics

How A Pottery Collection Saved Mile High Comics From Being Closed Down

Chuck Rozanski tells us how a pottery collection saved Mile High Comics from being closed down by the banks.

Published Tue, 30 Dec 2025 12:55:04 -0600

Article Summary

Mile High Comics faced closure after its bank collapsed, owing $1.7 million to a new bank.
Owner Chuck Rozanski was unable to secure a loan using the comic inventory as collateral.
A vast collection of valuable Pueblo pottery convinced the bank to approve the loan.
Pueblo pottery became the unlikely asset that saved Mile High Comics from liquidation in 2013.

Mile High Comics is one of the biggest comic book sellers in the world. Owner and founder Chuck Rozanski has been recalling on social media about the time when the collapse of Mile High Comics' bank meant they had to repay their $1,700,000 to the new bank that bought them out. Just after they had bought their largest building ever. And how they were saved, not by comics, but by pottery. The new bank manager came a-calling, and was not impressed with what they saw, but…

How A Pottery Collection Saved Mile High Comics — Mile High Comics logo

"the minute that the old man finished slowly and arduously climbing the stairs to our second floor, however, his demeanor visibly changed. That is because all of our visitors to our Mile High Comics corporate offices in those days were exposed to the splendors of my nascent Pueblo Treasures Museum. I had "only" about 5,000 total pieces in the collection back then, but… it turned out that the Patriarch of the bank had a wife that dragged him to Santa Fe regularly to purchase Pueblo pottery. He had developed a keen eye for pottery values, and saw immediately that my pottery (alone) was of greater market value than the $1,700,000 that I was seeking to borrow. Where all of my decades of hard work with Mile High Comics totally failed to sway him, my Pueblo pottery achieved the seemingly impossible, and made him decide to greenlight our loan. About four weeks later, we closed on our new loan, a document in which I provided an all-encompassing "personal guarantee." That meant that if Mile High Comics defaulted, that the bank could then force me to sell everything I owned (including my pottery), and then apply the proceeds against their loan."

How A Pottery Collection Saved Mile High Comics From Being Closed Down — By Daderot – Own work, CC0, Link

"Since that existential financial crisis of 2012/2013, I have slowly, but methodically, layered yet another 10,000 pieces into my museum collection, never forgetting that it was my Pueblo pottery that saved Mile High Comics from total liquidation by the FDIC, when all else failed. Ironically, I have never resold a piece of pottery that sought refuge with me, but I still derived huge financial benefit from my collection (purely as collateral), when our immense comic book inventory was written off as valueless. Go figure…."

So don't expect Mile High Pottery any time soon….

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