Detective #27, first Batman at Heritage, sitting a $500K+ already and looks to rise... Old public auction comic book price, I laugh at you!

Feb. 23, 2010

Posted by Noah

It's been a busy few days here at Heritage, and in the world of high-end, culturally iconic comic books. If you're reading this, then you know that Heritage is on the verge of selling an epic copy of Detective #27, first appearance of "The Batman," this Thursday, Feb. 25. The previous record for a comic book offered at public auction was $317,000, last year, for an Action #1. Right now our Tec #27 is sitting at $507,000, and bidding looks to continue rising a few days from now. Hang on to your plastic sleeves, everyone! It's going to be quite a ride...

There has been much press in the last 24 hours about an Action #1 that reportedly sold (unverified at this point) for $1,000,000 in a private treaty sale in NYC yesterday. I say good for the seller and good for the overall comics business. That book, according to the reporting, was placed on the site where it sold and picked up its $1M price about a minute later.

Impressive, yes, but I wonder what it would have brought had the seller been really smart about it and placed it in a public auction. Imagine, if one buyer was willing to pay $1M in 1 minute, what would at least two buyers be willing to pay for the same book if they were both competing for it, and they had weeks to sit on it... Great price, yes, but in the humble opinion of your blogger, there seems to have been money left on the table...

Our concern here, however, is now with the 8.0 Detective #27. The excitement is certainly building and we're getting a lot of inquiries, not to mention 10s of thousands of page views on the book. It is important to note that this comic will make history for its price not as the most expensive comic ever purchased, but as the most expensive comic ever offered at public auction. It's an important distinction to make, because - at least in theory - everyone has a shot at the Detective #27. If it were a private treaty sale, well, then first come first serve...

The overriding theme in a lot of the press on the recent comics action has been on the pop culture rivalry between Supes and Bats. I prefer Bats, and given a choice I'd take the Tec #27. There are less copies available, and I believe The Dark Knight is simply more relevant to the squeaky clean Man of Steel.

Supes is true blue, and he operates strictly within the confines of good and bad. Batman, however, doesn't mind bending the rules to get what he wants. The line blurs with Batman, and in the world today, with so many competing outlets for our interests, that blurry line is the most relevant thing there is in this comic battle.

Tune in to Heritage Live at HA.com this Thursday, around 2 p.m. or so to see where the Tec #27 lands. It's going to be a public auction record, it's going to be fun, and it could be yours...

To leave a comment, click on the title of this post.

-Noah Fleisher

CGC 8.0 1939 Detective #27 comic, Batman's first appearance, on the brink of a world record at Heritage

Feb. 5, 2010

Posted by Noah

Ode to the CGC Certified 8.0 1939 all-original copy of Detective #27, The Batman's first appearance, in Heritage's Feb. 25-27 Comics and Comic Art Auction, which stands, at this very moment, one single bid away from being the single most valuable comic ever offered at public auction (currently at just more than $310,000+, which is a BIG wow) and the catalog has not even reached collectors yet:

The mintiest little Batman book

the public's ever seen

Whoever walks with this baby

will be feeling quite sanguine...

Okay, okay... so I'm not much of a poet, but you have to give me credit for using sanguine...

Speaking of sanguine, I daresay Heritage's comics department is sporting a collective smile these days. Think about it: The auction literally just opened to bidding a few days, online no less, and the bidding jumped immediately to $286,000 before moving one more notch this afternoon. There is little doubt that this book is going to surpass the record price ever paid at public auction for a comic book, and rightly so. It's a beauty.

Let's try this again:

Oh comely Detective #27

with your yellow cover still bright

you are the hobby's Holy Grail

let your price now take record flight...

Better? I didn't think so...

Facts, though, is facts, and this little comic, bought back in the 1960s by a savvy collector for about $100, is now a thing that rivals the prices paid for examples of artwork from important American painters and furniture makers. This is a storied item that speaks of a vastly different world - an era when America was quickening toward war with Germany and the public zeitgeist was indeed in need of a somber savior - that is somehow still very relevant to the war torn world of today.

My favorite take on this comic potentially setting the world record for price is that it proves, if only for now or a few years, that Batman is simply more relevant to society today than Superman. I know it's not really fair to compare this comic book with the Action #1 that sold last year for $317,000, because the grades were different - and if an 8.0 Action #1 showed up then that would probably eclipse this record - but I'm going to do it anyway.

In 2010 the general populace loves its superheroes to be flawed, plagued by doubt and conscience, in short, human. Superman is not a human, and he is almost invincible. Batman? Very flawed, even fragile, despite his incredible gadgets and intellect. Batman could easily have been destroyed many times over if only one of his foes had simply killed him on the spot instead of leaving him in a deadly, but slow, trap. That, however, is also Batman's particular luck, and don't we all live our lives in the same way - in one sense or the other?

No? Not you... Oh well... I was speaking metaphorically, of course.

Now if you'll excuse me, I have to make my way out of the ropes binding me to this giant Jack-In-The-Box, painfully plinking Pop Goes The Weasel, before it pops open, pops up and smashes me to bits in the jagged refuse of the Joker's abandoned toy factory hideout... At least that's how my commute home through Dallas traffic sometimes feels...

To leave a comment, click on the title of this post.

-Noah Fleisher

Human Target TV Show: Can’t Wait… Or Maybe I Can... (A Heritage Auctions comic expert's dissapointment...)

Jan. 14, 2010

Written By Barry Sandoval

(It's always a treat to welcome the writing of Barry Sandoval to the Heritage Blog. Besides being the Director of Comics Operations here at Heritage HQ, Barry is obviously one of the world's foremost authorities on comics and comics art, and an unbelievable font of Pop Culture knowledge.

I've turned over the digital reigns to Barry today so he could express his outrage - of sorts - about a favorite second tier character that is being made into a most likely very bad TV show debuting this weekend - Shocking, I know, to think that TV or the movies would take a character with strengths and a great back-story and make him a dime-a-dozen pretty boy dope. I wouldn't watch the show that Barry talks about, either, and I certainly share his outrage... - Noah Fleisher)

I was really looking forward to the “Human Target” TV show that premieres next weekend and has been heavily promoted during the commercial breaks of football games for weeks now.

I say WAS because while perusing the Arts and Leisure section of yesterday’s New York Times, I read that the show will change one thing about the character: he won’t be wearing any disguises.

What???

Perhaps I should backtrack.

The Human Target is a comic book character, created by Len Wein, who first appeared as a backup feature in Action Comics #419 (1972). The character’s name hints at his original twist: he’s a master of disguise who saves people who think their lives are in danger by disguising himself as the intended murder victim.

Since he can interact with suspects (who think he’s the dead-man-to-be) without arousing suspicion the way a stranger surely would, he’s able to solve the mystery of who’s out to kill his client, and he’s handy enough with his fists to subdue the bad guy. This pose-as-the-victim gimmick was unprecedented (I think), and was the one thing that separated him from the usual dime-a-dozen suave hero.

The Human Target did his thing in tightly plotted short stories running eight pages or so apiece, popping up irregularly in Action from 1972-1974 and returning in The Brave and the Bold in 1978. All of the preceding are great yarns and highly recommended. The Human Target has appeared in comics now and then in the ensuing years (check out his memorable turn in Detective #500), and believe it or not, he has had a TV show before. It ran just a few episodes in the summer of 1992, starring none other than that suitor of Jessie’s girl himself, the one and only Rick Springfield!

As the Times reported yesterday, this new show is dispensing with the whole “disguise” concept, basically because the actor playing the lead was deemed too good-looking to be encumbered with fake beards and the like.

So… the TV producers paid good money (presumably) for the rights to an obscure character, then changed the one thing worth paying for rather than just invent their own good-looking hero for free.

Whatever.

If you’re intrigued by the investment potential of the character: CGC-certified NM/MT 9.8 copies of Action #419 have been selling in the $90 - $150 range in our Sunday Internet Comics Auctions.

To leave a comment, click on the title of this post.

-Barry Sandoval

Once in a lifetime moments everyday... All part of the job at Heritage

Tuesday, August 18, 2009
Posted by Noah

As you can see by the pictures in this post, and by comments I have made in previous entries, Heritage is an amazing place to work if you have any sense of Pop Culture and/or history. Just look at the picture next to this graph.

That's one of our top comics experts, Greg Holman, holding not one, but two copies of Superman #1. That's about $100,000 worth of comic books. I'm willing to bet that most collectors will never even see a Superman #1, let alone hold one, let alone pose with two... And I would be remiss if I told you that I didn't pick them up, among others, myself.

Right before I snapped this quick pick of Greg he actually said just what I wrote. He grabbed them, looking down at them with admiration...

"Stay right there," I said. "Hold up those books."

Click.

One of the beauties of running PR here at Heritage is that I do indeed get to get close up and personal with any number of amazing pieces, Be they coins, currency, posters, comics, natural history, Space Exploration, instruments, Americana... You name it, and it's likely that I've been lucky enough to come in close contact with it, and have shortened those degrees of separation between myself and major figures in history and/or Pop Culture... Yep, that's right... Ol' George Washington and I - I like to call him GW for short - we're like this...

I hope that I never ever get jaded - so far so good - because it would be a crying shame given the amazing amount of great stuff in this building... I am indeed a lucky man...

The other picture you see here is the main group of value from last week's comics auction, all told at least $250,000. Again, for so many it would be a dream to simply be in the presence of one of them, forget being able to set them up and group them together for a photo while a local TV crew shot footage for the six o'clock news. Alas, I do not get to take them home, but I do still get to bask in their glory, and - on this day, at this time of life - that's more than enough.

As Bizarro Superman might say: Life am good.

To leave a comment, click on the title of this post.

-Noah Fleisher

Re-thinking Superman

Feb. 11, 2009
Posted by Noah

There are so many fantastic things to drool over in the upcoming comics auction – Feb. 26-27 btw – that I would be hard-pressed to choose just one or two lots were a suitcase of cash to fall out of the sky and land at my feet. I still look up every day when I leave the house, but so far nothing… Where was I? Oh, yes… Comics auction, many great lots... There is one lot in the sale, however, that I keep coming back to. It’s one of those things that has wedged its way into my brain in a way that happens only with certain rare and complex lots. I’m talking about Lot 91577, the Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster Science Fiction Fanzine "Reign of the Superman" Group from 1932. That’s right, a full five years before Supes appeared in Action Comics #1.

In this very early rendition of what was to become The Man of Steel, Superman is actually a villain, actually looks a lot more like Lex Luthor than Clark Kent and “The Superman” is used more in the sense of Friederich Nietzsche, which I am basing solely on my knowledge of Western Philosophy and my gut feeling whenever I see a maniacal bald man with an evil grit-toothed smile and creepy Montgomery Burns hands menacing me in a futuristic cityscape.

Let me be very clear: I would take The Flash, Mad Magazine or Groo the Wanderer any day over Superman. In my comics reading days – I was never so much a collector as a reader – I made a point of skipping Superman and heading to the latest JLA or Fourth World. There was never much mystery to Superman, as far as I was concerned at least. And he wasn’t particularly given to angst, which I loved dearly about Spidey or Ben Grimm, The Thing. After looking at this particular lot, and after being amazed to witness the sheer fact of its continued existence across the decades – read about it and you’ll do the same – I have definitely have to re-think the man from Krypton. How would the history of American pop culture have been different if Supes had stayed malignant?

There have always been many ways to read Superman. Siegel and Shuster were both Jews, and the comic book came about at a time when the world was heading for war, America needed a hero and the Nazis were starting their march toward world domination. Superman perfectly captured the American zeitgeist of the post-depression era. This original, villainous Superman can be seen also as an early reaction to the influence of Nietzschian thinking on Western civilization in the first half of the 20th century and its slide into totalitarianism. Either that, or it was a couple of kids jazzed by the sci-fi serials they were seeing at the movies and reading in fanzines, and they wanted to make one of their own. You choose.