'Toronto Collection' of 1950s Comics to be Auctioned by Heritage

Dallas, TX: Heritage Auction Galleries has announced the discovery of a comic book collection with an estimated total auction value of over $250,000. This collection of 1950s comics, dubbed "the Toronto Collection," will be auctioned without reserve beginning with the firm's Feb. 28-29 Dallas auction.

"It seems hard to believe now, but superhero comics were generally out of favor in the mid-1950s," said Lon Allen, Director of Sales for Heritage's Comics division. "So oddly enough, some of the 1952-54 superhero comics are harder to find than their 1940s counterparts! I was glad to see that the Toronto collection has plenty of Batman, Detective Comics, Wonder Woman, Superman, and the like, and most are among the finest copies known to exist."

Allen noted that the collection also has a complete run of the "Atlas superhero revival" issues. "The company now known as Marvel stopped publishing superheroes in the late 1940s, but from 1953-1955 they brought back Captain America and other superheroes to star in anti-Communist stories," Allen explained. "These are highly collectable now, and the Toronto collection has some of the nicer copies I've seen."

The collection, consigned by the heirs of an anonymous collector, consists primarily of U.S. comics, though it also includes a number of the Bell Features "hybrid" comics (also known as "Canadian whites"), which repackaged the U.S. stories for a Canadian audience and are considered scarce today.

Black Knight #1 (Atlas, 1955) CGC VF+ 8.5 Off-white to white pages. The highest-graded copy.

Action Comics #203 (DC, 1955) CGC NM 9.4 Off-white to white pages. The finest known copy.

Captain America Comics #78 (Timely, 1954) CGC FN/VF 7.0 Off-white to white pages.

Heritage's Vintage Comic and Comic Art auction will be held February 28-29, 2008, in Dallas, Texas. For more information, please visit www.HA.com.

Prospective consignors and sellers of Comics and Comic Art are invited to www.HA.com/Sell. Or simply email Lon Allen at LonA@HA.com, or call 1-800-872-6467, ext. 1261.

To reserve your copy of any Heritage auction catalogue, please contact Client Services at (800) 872-6467, extension 1150, or visit www.HA.com/Catalog to order by email.