Huge Marvel Collection!

Wow, am I ever excited! I've just returned from Montreal, where I finalized a deal for Mile High Comics to purchase one million dollars (our list prices) in rare Marvel comics! With a total of 58,000 issues, this collection includes multiple copies of every early Marvel comic starting with FANTASTIC FOUR #1 (5 copies) and going up through about 1980. The earlier issues average in VG condition, but the quality (and depth) of the collection improves rapidly as you go upwards. By 1964 there are over 25 copies each of many issues, and they average in Fine condition. On issues from the early 1970's, there are up to 50 copies, with most in Fine-NM/M condition. The picture above gives you an idea of how incredible this collection truly is, can see just a few of the key issues. The books on the table retail for about $100,000.00! So who had these books? They were accumulated during the 1970's and early 1980's by Robert Crestohl, a small-time Canadian comics dealer who advertised on the classified ads page that Marvel used to offer in their books. Until that ad page was discontinued in 1988, he used to attend US comics conventions buying early Marvels (and only early Marvels) from dealers and fans, and retail them through his little catalog. I even used to meet him at conventions to wholesale him the surplus from our Mile High Comics retail stores during 1974-1978! After the classified page was discontinued by Marvel, he teamed up with Jerry Ross (another Canadian dealer), and ran a couple of half page and full page ads in Marvel. Those ads were not particularly successful, however, so by 1988 he greatly reduced the scope of his comic book mail order operations, and put his inventory of early Marvel comics into storage. There they sat until yesterday, when I spent 14 hours packing them into cartons for shipment to our Colorado warehouse. I have now received word that the shipment is in the US, and should arrive to us next Thursday. I just can't wait for them to arrive! So what are we going to do with these great comics? Well, our first priority will be to identify issues for sale in our auctions. As I've mentioned over the past few weeks, we are working very closely with Amazon.com auctions. Our goal is to make the Amazon.com auction area the premiere auction site on the Internet for comics fans. With that goal in mind, I am planning to auction a significant number of the books from this deal over the next six months. To make certain that these books sell, our plan is to offer these books with starting bids that begin at only 40-50% of our usual list prices. This should make our Amazon.com comics auctions very appealing and exciting! The remainder of the comics will gradually be entered into our main inventory system, then being offered for sale through our web site. I am planning to have our staff approach this alphabetically, so you will probably receive an e-mailing in a couple of weeks letting you know that ASTONISHING TALES through CAPTAIN AMERICA are now available. We'll continue sending weekly updates until we get all the books on the system. Individually grading and bagging 58,000 comics is going to take a while... In the meantime, I strongly encourage those of you looking for bargains to take advantage of our current 30% off sale (password MARMOTS). That sale runs through next Monday night. Once that sale is over, of necessity, it will be a while before I put up another 30% sale. You see, with all these wonderful early Marvel books going into inventory that we haven't had in stock for years, and given the high cost of this collection, it would be counter-productive for me to offer those books immediately at 30% off. I first have to recover some of the huge amount of money I paid Crestohl. Given that I had to take out a second mortgage on our warehouse to pull this deal off, I think you'll understand my concern about recovering our investment... And if you just have to have a bargain, you can always check out our Amazon.com auctions. As I stated earlier, I will be putting a significant number of these books into the Amazon.com auctions each week. In fact, we have an incredible X-MEN auction beginning on Amazon.com auctions beginning next Monday, which includes an X-MEN #2 (Good) signed by both Stan Lee and Jack Kirby. The starting bid on that book is $1. My final note for this long message (sorry!) is that we've posted my "Bonus Book" listings to the website. If you haven't already heard, these are items that I've chosen to discount massively from the new Diamond Distributors catalog. These items are shipping in April (or later). If you're willing to give us an advance order, you can save 20-40% on some incredibly cool upcoming stuff. This ongoing monthly promotion is the fastest-growing program in the history of Mile High Comics. Check out what you've been missing! That's it for now. Gosh, are things ever busy around here... I have yet another incredible deal I'm working on. Happy Collecting! Chuck Rozanski, President - Mile High Comics, Inc. Don't forget to check out the great Mile High Comics listing in the Amazon.com Auctions and zShops!