Edgar Church (November 28, 1888 – 1978) was a comics collector and artist who worked independently and eventually for the telephone company in
Colorado
Colorado (, other variants) is a state in the Mountain West subregion of the Western United States. It encompasses most of the Southern Rocky Mountains, as well as the northeastern portion of the Colorado Plateau and the western edge of t ...
illustrating commercial telephone book advertisements, precursors to
Yellow Pages
The yellow pages are telephone directories of businesses, organized by category rather than alphabetically by business name, in which advertising is sold. The directories were originally printed on yellow paper, as opposed to white pages for ...
advertisements.
Church kept thousands of miscellaneous
periodicals
A periodical literature (also called a periodical publication or simply a periodical) is a published work that appears in a new edition on a regular schedule. The most familiar example is a newspaper, but a magazine or a Academic journal, journal ...
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. 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
Comic book collecting is a hobby that treats comic books and related items as collectibles or artwork to be sought after and preserved. Though considerably more recent than the collecting of postage stamps (philately) or books (bibliophilia), it ...
. The collection consisted of between 18,000 and 22,000 comic books, most of them in high quality grades, and was discovered and bought in 1977 by
Chuck Rozanski
Charles Rozanski (born March 11, 1955) is a German-American retailer and columnist, known as the President and CEO of the Denver, Colorado-based Mile High Comics Inc., and a columnist for the ''Comics Buyer's Guide''.
Early life
Rozanski was born ...
of
Mile High Comics
Mile High Comics is an online retailer and a chain of three Colorado comic book stores founded by Chuck Rozanski in 1969 from his parents' basement in Colorado Springs, Colorado.
History
In 1969, when Chuck Rozanski was 13, he began working out ...
. 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
The term Golden Age comes from Greek mythology, particularly the ''Works and Days'' of Hesiod, and is part of the description of temporal decline of the state of peoples through five Ages of Man, Ages, Gold being the first and the one during ...
comic books, including the best known copy of ''
Action Comics #1''. (Believed to be a 9.4 to a 9.6, but the current owner refuses to get any of his books graded.)
Edgar Church was married twice and had one child with each of his wives. Church died in 1978 at age 89.
References
External links
A selection of Edgar Church's commercial art*
ttp://itsalljustcomics.com/the-most-valuable-comic-books-in-the-world/ Several Edgar Church copies listed amongst the 10 most valuable comic books in the world
1888 births
1978 deaths
Comic book collecting
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