Posted in: Comics | Tagged: auction, Edgar Church, heritage, mile high comics

The First Mile High Comics Catolog Is Now Itself Being Auctioned

Of late, some comics collectors have been paying silly money for comic book catalogs featuring the first listing of a character of a comic book. But this listing goes back further. Heritage Auction has the first catalog for Mile High Comics' Edgar Church Collection up for auction itself and currently at $125, part of today's Animation & Art Weekly Online Auction 122119 listings with a couple of days to go.

It's a copy that was originally stapled inside The Buyer's Guide To Comic Fandom – later known at the Comic Buyer's Guide, and it lists the most famous – and notorious – comic book collection of all time that formed what we know as Mile High Comics today.

Edgar Church Mile High Collection Sale Listing fromBuyer's Guide to Comics Fandom(1977). This 52-page, three-section insert in issue #190 was Mile High Comics' sales catalog for what we know as the Edgar Church Mile High pedigree collection, i.e. the greatest comic book collection of all time! While about 20% of the collection had been sold off prior to this being published, you have here the vast majority of the collection (14,000 comics) with original grades. Toning and light wear. In Very Good condition.

Edgar Church was a comics collector and artist who lived from 1888 to 1978 who worked illustrating commercial telephone book advertisements. He kept thousands of miscellaneous periodicals in his Colorado home to use as references for his art. From these magazines, he would clip images which he would store in one of hundreds of labeled boxes. However, alongside the magazines, he collected comic books and stores them in pristine condition.

The collection of comic books that he amassed, later known as the "Edgar Church collection" or the "Mile High collection", is the most famous and valuable comic book collection known to surface in the history of comic book collecting. The largest and highest-quality Golden Age comics collection ever discovered, it had been preserved due to the unvarying temperature and minimal humidity of his Colorado home and consisted of 16,000 to 22,000 comic books dating from 1937 to 1955, including the first Superman comic and the first Marvel comics. Discovered and bought in 1977 by Chuck Rozanski of Mile High Comics, about 99% of it was later sold by him to various collectors. The collection is famed for holding the highest quality copies of many Golden Age comic books, including the best-known copy of Action Comics #1.

And this was Chuck Rozanski's ad for the collection going to public sale. Including every item offered, its grade, and a price – seen as high at the time, most collectors sell everything they had to buy them, at 1978 price now. Sadly, even if you win the catalog, it's a little out of date.

Enjoyed this? Please share on social media!

Stay up-to-date and support the site by following Bleeding Cool on Google News today!