Heritage gets a big mention in this morning's WSJ about a mystery theft of comics. Well known movie poster buyer Stephen Fishler also weighs in.
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True Mystery: Who
Sold Famous Batch
Of Vintage Comics?
Big Hole in Dad's Trove;
A Determined Paper Boy
August 5, 2006; Page A1
This past winter, Tom Crippen was cleaning out his parents' house in Piermont, N.Y., after his father's death a few months earlier. There he came upon thousands of rare, pristine comic books from the 1930s, '40s and '50s -- a collection that stands to net the family several million dollars when it's sold in a series of auctions beginning this coming week.
Yet, as he discovered later, a chunk of the collection's most coveted titles had mysteriously been sold years earlier -- attracting, along the way, notice among dealers and collectors. When he found out, "I was surprised and horrified," Tom says.
Tom's father, Davis Crippen, an editor of technical manuals who died at age 75, had begun collecting comics as a child in Washington. In 1939, when he was 9, Mr. Crippen decided that he would try to buy every single comic book that came out. Using allowance money and earnings from his paper route, he bought a steady stream of comics for 10 cents apiece from the local drugstore, according to his wife, Cynthia Crippen and her sons Alex and Tom.
His growing trove spanned a wide range of genres: superhero, romance, teen humor, Western, science fiction, war and Christian. "I kept wondering, 'What the hell are you going to do with them?' but I never asked," says Paul Cree, 77, of Chevy Chase, Md., who knew Mr. Crippen since childhood. "He was mysterious about it and very systematic."
When he went off to college at the University of Michigan, family members say, Mr. Crippen continued with his collecting, sending comic books, wrapped in brown paper, to his parents' house. He even had his mother buy new issues for him while he went to graduate school in London. His collecting wound down in the early 1950s, when he was drafted into the Army.
All the books were kept in his parents' spacious basement, which was both cool and dry -- optimum storage conditions. Tom and his brother, Alex, an executive producer at CNBC, would read some of the titles when visiting their grandparents. When the boys' grandparents' house was sold in the 1970s, the comics were moved to their parent's home in Piermont, where they remained in boxes in the garage and basement.
Tom, a 44-year-old free-lance copy editor in Montreal, set out to catalog this trove of comic books, some 11,000 in all, a task that took four months. Because most of the comics were bought to be collected, and were stored for years under optimum conditions, they still had brightly colored illustrations, crease-free pages and only small amounts of mold stains, called "foxing," on the edges.
On the inside front page of many of the books there was also a puzzling code, written in pencil in Davis Crippen's handwriting, consisting of a series of numbers and letters, such as "7822-D-740," which appeared on Dick Tracy #8, published by Dell. Additionally, some of the books bore a hand-written "D" on the front cover that apparently was put there by the distributor.
When Lon Allen, a comic-book expert from Heritage Auction Galleries of Dallas, came to the house to check out the collection, he instantly recognized the handwritten code. "Hey, wait a minute -- this is the 'D' collection," he recalls saying. "It was unmistakable."
It turns out that about 15 years earlier, about 1,000 to 2,000 comic books bearing the same distinct penciled code in the same hand-writing had entered the marketplace, seemingly unbeknownst to the Crippen heirs. The "D collection" had obtained a following among collectors of "pedigree" comics -- top-condition books amassed by a single, original collector, straight off the newsstand.
'Pedigreed' Comic Books
The interest in pedigreed books comes as vintage comic-book collecting has become big business. Heritage in January sold a 1940 DC Comics' "Flash #1" book for $273,125, an auction record. The auction house began comic sales only in late 2001, but the business now accounts for some $18 million in average annual sales.
Now, comic-book collectors and hobby message boards are buzzing with news that the rest of the D books have emerged. Russell Moore, a 35-year-old Minneapolis contractor and avid comic-book collector, says that he was "totally surprised" that such a big stash of books was found. "People have been searching out old comics for so long, so it's amazing that such a huge amount of them were sitting undiscovered," says Mr. Moore, who is particularly excited about some D editions that feature Batman, pre-Robin.
But how hundreds of the books ended up on the market in the early 1990s remained a mystery. "I felt gut-punched," says Tom Crippen, when the auction company told him that many of his father's books had previously been sold. Although nobody knows the precise value of the original D books when they hit the market, they are estimated to be worth at least $1 million at today's prices. "How would you feel if your family's property turned out to have gone missing a few years ago and you had no idea? Or that millions of dollars belonging to your family had gone for a walk?"
The missing comics happened to be some of the collection's very best, including early Superman, Batman and other big-name super hero books. Since Davis Crippen did not store his books in any discernible order, whoever brought the books to market had to have the time and knowledge to ferret out some of the highest-quality books.
| 'Suspense Comics #3,' from the Davis Crippen collection, will be sold Aug. 11. |
Some collectors have speculated that Davis Crippen himself sold the comics and pocketed the income, without telling the rest of the family. Mrs. Crippen and her two sons say it's highly unlikely he sold or gave away the books. For one thing, Mr. Crippen was a hoarder, amassing piles of books, record albums, mugs and even opera programs with ticket stubs stapled to them. "He held onto everything and anything," says Mrs. Crippen. The Crippens also went through Davis's old tax returns and didn't see any sudden influx of income.
Several New York comic-book dealers remember buying the books. Richard Muchin, says that he purchased a number of high-quality D books from a young man who brought small quantities of them over the course of several months. "I did not suspect theft, only because he kept coming back," says Mr. Muchin, who says he doesn't recall the seller's name. Typically, he says, "thieves steal something and they dump it."
Stephen Fishler, owner of Metropolis Collectibles, a big New York dealer, recalls buying many of the D books about 15 years ago. Mr. Fishler says that a young man, probably in his early 30s, came to his office offering to sell him stacks of high-quality comic books, many bearing the unique code. The seller said he was related, by marriage, to the original owner of the books, says Mr. Fishler, who added that the man came back repeatedly for about a year, each time bringing fresh piles of comics.
"He clearly was able to go back many times and get books," says Mr. Fishler. "I get a sense if something's questionable," he adds, but he had no reason to doubt the man's story, so he bought the books. Mr. Fishler recently told Alex Crippen the seller's name: Eric Kechejian.
Time With the Comics
Separately, the Crippen family had begun to suspect that one or both of a pair of young contractors might have sold the comics when Davis and Cynthia Crippen hired them to do extensive home renovations that lasted for many months in 1991. Anyone working on the house would have had plenty of time alone with the comics since the couple worked away from home. One of the workmen was particularly curious about antiques. The other contractor's name: Eric Kechejian.
Contacted by a reporter at his home, Mr. Kechejian, who still lives in the area, confirmed that he had restored the house, but he denied having had anything to do with the comics. "I don't think we touched anything as far as comics," he said. "I've had nothing to do with this."
Yet even if the comics were taken without permission, the family's legal options may be limited: In New York, the criminal statute of limitations for theft of over $1,000 is generally five years from the time of a theft, while the civil statute of limitations to sue for the recovery of stolen property is three years, says Piermont lawyer Marjorie Smith, a former law professor and Mrs. Crippen's attorney. However, the civil statute of limitations might not apply if the theft was discovered years after the fact, adds Ms. Smith.
The Crippen family for now has decided not to pursue the matter of the earlier sales.
"What's done is done," says Mrs. Crippen. Still, she adds, "It is distressing."
Starting this Thursday the much-larger remainder of the collection will be auctioned by Heritage in Dallas. The collection is expected to bring in some $2.5 million, about three times the current value of the Piermont house in which the comics were stored. One highlight of the trove, according to many collectors, is a rare "Suspense #3," which has lurid cover art depicting hooded Nazis attacking a bound woman. It could fetch between $35,000 and $50,000, collectors say.
As for the code itself, nobody is quite sure what it means. The auction house and other comic experts think that the first series of numbers represent the total number of books that Mr. Crippen had collected thus far, the next set of letters stands for the book's publisher, and the third set of numbers stands for the number of books Mr. Crippen had collected from that particular publisher. But that solution doesn't work consistently for all the books. "It's still a cipher," says Ed Jaster, vice president of Heritage.
