Subject: Original owner collection highlights Heritage’s August Auction | Author | Messages | 
Brent Frankenhoff
Posts: 3930
 | Posted: 7/14/2006 8:56:11 AM | Heritage Auction Galleries’ August Signature Auction, scheduled for Aug. 10-12 at the company’s headquarters in Dallas, Texas, will feature the first part of a massive original owner collection.
According to Heritage Auction Galleries Vice President Ed Jaster, a handful of comics from the Davis Crippen Collection “surfaced several years ago and have since been dubbed ‘D’ copies. These exquisite golden Age gems, each one lovingly handled and preserved all these years, are finally being released to the collecting public.
 “Featured in this marvelous collection are such beauties as the finest-known copy of the legendary Suspense Comics #3, as well as beautiful copies of such hard-to-find books as Walt Disney’s Comics and Stories #1 and Detective Comics #35. Golden Age aficionados won’t want to miss this, the most significant original-owner collection since the Mile High horde was discovered.”
The Crippen collection of more than 11,000 Golden Age comics from a wide variety of genres was discovered in a garage outside New York City and contains nearly every comic published from 1938 to the mid-1950s. According to Heritage, Crippen was “inspired by a family friend’s collection of Big Little Books and decided that from then on he would buy and keep every single new comic book as it came out.” Following Crippen’s death in 2005, his son cataloged the collection and the family contacted Heritage where Director of Sales Lon Allen recognized the handwriting of the codes on the comics and realized that he had discovered the source of the “D Copy” pedigreed comics.
Referring to those previously released “D Copy” comics, Allen said, “It wasn’t know that they were part of a much larger collection, certainly not one of this magnitude. When you examine some of the other famous pedigrees, you would have to rank this among the best. The date range from 1938 to 1954 gives it a far larger time span than the Tom Reilly/San Francisco or Lamont Larson collections, which were limited to the 1930s and early 1940s. Also, many of the other famous pedigrees focused only on #1 issues or certain specialized genres or publishers. Not so with Mr. Crippen, who bought absolutely everything.”
 In addition to the Crippen collection offerings, Jaster said the sale also features such Golden Age comics as “the Mile High copy of Lev Gleason’s Daredevil Comics #1, the legendary Daredevil battles Hitler issue, the Larson copy of More Fun Comics #52, and a beautiful double cover example of 1941’s Green Lantern #1.”
Original art offered in the sale includes a Frank Frazetta painting that was first used as the cover of Creepy #17 and a Jim Steranko painting of The Shadow. Jaster said the latter piece is “based on George Rozen’s original work, rendered for the Nov. 1, 1936, issue of The Shadow pulp magazine, with the story ‘Partners in Peril.” This is the scourge of evil as we all want to see him: eyes blazing and guns blaring. The original art for Steranko’s Pyramid Books Shadow covers from the 1970s never enter the market – Jim has retained all 23 of them – so this is the closest you’re likely to come to owning a Shadow painting by this legendary artist.”
A significant collection of Peanuts original art by Charles Schulz will also be on the sale, including a 1951 daily strip from the first year of the series and a 1962 Sunday featuring Snoopy on top of his dog house. Jaster said, “If you’ve been waiting for just the right time to buy an original Schulz or if you’ve been looking for just the right piece, look no further; your time has come!”
For more information, to view lots from the sale, or to register for the auction, visit Heritage’s website or call (800) 872-6467.
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Brent Frankenhoff
Posts: 3930
| Posted: 8/10/2006 9:42:17 AM | The first two sessions of the live floor auction get underway later today, Thursday, August 10, in Dallas, and we'll have more on the Crippen family online shortly.
There are also two sessions scheduled for tomorrow, Friday, August 11.
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