“This January, ComicConnect.com will ring in the New Year with what is sure to be one of the most talked about comic book auctions of 2010. Now, for the first time ever, the legendary collection of Joe Desris will be brought to market,” said ComicConnect’s Rob Reynolds.

Those “in the know” in this hobby recognize the name of Joe Desris as the man who has assembled the largest known collection in the world of double covers and printing rarities. Desris was reportedly one of the first to identify the extreme rarity of double covers and has aggressively pursued documenting and collecting them for the past 35 years.

“So aggressive, in fact, those other collectors who sought them knew their chances to actually obtain double covers were pretty small once Joe Desris got wind of them,” Reynolds said.

That is, until now.

Starting in January, over 1,700 pieces from his collection will be placed on the auction block. Items up for grabs include over 1,400 double covers, plus triple covers, quadruple covers and even an octuple cover, as well as all the other printing-error anomalies also included in the collection. The list includes cover miswraps, misbound pages, and missing or misaligned ink impressions.

“Best of all, since Mr. Desris is selling, collectors everywhere will now finally have a chance. One chance. It all happens this January on ComicConnect.com,” Reynolds said.

COLLECTING 101
“Let’s assume for a minute that you, or someone you know, are a novice collector. Such a fledging collector who is asking the correct questions may inquire ‘What is the definition of rare?’ The answer to that question is not ‘1 of 125,000 limited edition poly-bag gold-cover foil variants with one of eight collector cards.’ Nor is it ‘1 of 5,000 hot-off-the-press convention exclusives,’” Reynolds said.

“No, for something to be rare, and therefore valuable, there must not be thousands or even hundreds of the same specimen available on the market. Rarity is defined by limited examples. Case in point, in respect to comic books, there may be close to 400 unrestored copies of 1970’s Green Lantern #76 on the CGC census, but how many of those have double covers? Take time to research Golden Age examples such as Action Comics #28 or All-American Comics #68, and if you’re not having heart-palpitations just thinking about the meaning of the Joe Desris auction, you’re either not getting your head around it, or you’re in the wrong hobby,” he said.

“What do we know about printing aberrations in other collectibles? Take numismatics, for example. Today, a 1955 Lincoln penny value is worth about… one cent. A 1955 Lincoln double die penny is worth about $1,000. In this example, 24,000 were minted during a one night shift at the Philadelphia mint. 24,000 is a very large number. Imagine what these pennies would be worth if only one or two examples existed?” he said.

One may refer to paper money for more examples as well. A $1 bill from 1988 with an upside-down serial number (inverted overprint) might sell for $300 - that's 300 times its value for a fairly modern bill that is still plentiful in circulation. As another example, a $1 bill from 1969 that was printed over folded paper (folding error) sells today for close to $400.

In an example from the world stamp collecting, a regular “Jenny” airplane stamp from 1924 is worth about $35, give or take. A misprinted “Inverted Jenny” stamp, of which there are at least over 100 known to exist, is worth $977,500. Imagine what these stamps might be worth if only one or two examples remained.

“We cannot even begin to do justice to the Joe Desris Double-Cover and Rarity Collection by talking about it here,” Reynolds said “To read more about the collection in his own words, we encourage you to read Mr. Desris’ short memoir of assembling the collection beneath the thumbnail gallery below. It is nothing short of a fascinating account of a collecting odyssey. He is a pillar and forefather to this great hobby so many tens-of-thousands of us enjoy today, and it is his strongest desire that the winners of each of his comics will treasure them as much as he does.”

In the coming month, ComicConnect.com will begin scanning and listing the Desris Collection for preview. For now, they’re offering a small taste.

A preview of the collection includes an 80 Page Giant #9 double cover CGC 9.4, a 3D Tales From The Crypt Of Terror #2 double cover, an Action Comics #28 double cover CGC 8.5, an All-American Comics #68 double cover CGC 5.5, and a Batman #5 double cover CGC 9.6. Also, Captain America #280 six covers, an interesting Captain Atom #78 error printing cyan printed 1-3/8" too low, a Captain Marvel Adventures #50 double cover CGC 9.0, a Creepy Things #6 triple cover CGC 9.4, and a Crime SuspenStories #14 double cover CGC 8.0.

Mr. Desris is also auctioning his Detective Comics #48 double cover CGC 8.0, Detective Comics #51 double cover, Detective Comics #90 double cover CGC 9.4, and a Doctor Solar #14 triple cover CGC 9.2 with a painted cover. The collection includes Fantastic Four #22 double cover, Fantastic Four #223 quintuple cover CGC 9.0, a Famous Funnies #40 double cover CGC 9.2, a Green Lantern #76 double cover CGC 6.0, a Green Lantern #90 triple cover CGC 9.4, a More Fun #101 double coveR CGC 9.0, an Our Army At War #30 double cover, a Superman #27 miswrap, a Terry Tunes #18 missing cover inks, a Trigger Twins #1 double cover CGC 9.6, a Wonder Woman #24 double cover CGC 7.5, and a X-Men #5 double cover CGC 3.5.

IN THE COLLECTOR'S OWN WORDS
A Brief Memoir by Joe Desris

As a youngster, I sporadically acquired comics for several years, finally getting serious about buying and saving consecutive new issues in 1967. I went with my dad to used book stores in Milwaukee and Chicago a couple times, which were opportunities to pick up older books. Dad was a writer and involved with publishing, and had an uncanny ability to accurately see that part of a layout was crooked or some text was off-center by 1/32 of an inch. Without using a ruler. While I never visited a company that printed comics, I had been to noisy print shops and seen dylux proofs and smeared set-ups along with stacks of rejected off-register pages, and the buckets where Linotype operators sent rejected metal type to be remelted, so I knew how things were done. Perhaps my interest in double covers originated from knowing that flawed material was not supposed to leave the printer, yet...there it was for sale!

On rare occasions, double covers turned up at the newsstand where I bought comics every week. The earliest example that I recall is From Beyond The Unknown #13 in 1971 (for sentimental reasons, I just had to keep that issue, so it is not in this auction; please contact ComicConnect.com in 40 years!). In 1973, after buying a large collection of about 10,000 comic books from northern Wisconsin, I encountered older comics with more than one cover, probably about 20 in all, going back to the 1940s and 1950s. Of course I would have preferred keeping every one of those 10,000 four-color treasures, but I began setting up at conventions, selling the books to repay my dad who loaned me the money, and then continuing to sell books to help finance my college tuition.

On the newsstands, magazines arrived bound with wire, and since comics usually were at the top of a bundle, they received the most damage. I eventually realized that comics were not stacked in the same order, for every bundle, at every store, so by 1975, rather than just pulling a nice one from the middle of the group, I was not only examining every available copy of titles I collected, but had begun scouring additional locations for the best copy. All of which made it a little more likely to happen across printing mistakes. I also bought double covers by mail from advertisers in The Buyer's Guide (later CBG) and at conventions. By the mid-1980s, I owned less than 70 double covers and had never encountered a triple cover. I may have had 100 double covers by the early-1990s, but considered them a minor part of my overall comic collection, probably because they were just so frustratingly uncommon.

It was not until logging onto eBay in 1999 that it became possible to build a collection more significant in quantity and quality, and even to focus on certain characters. I was then able to buy from dealers and fans who did not attend shows, from those on other continents whom I would otherwise never meet, from garage sale pickers in Pennsylvania or from folks who set up at antique shows in Florida or were just cleaning out the attic in Kansas. And I quickly learned that it was the comic collectors who called them double covers, and if I searched eBay for phrases such as "two covers" or "duplicate covers" or "error" there were additional opportunities out there. Assembling a collection like this would have been simply impossible without the internet.

I once set a goal of acquiring 1,000 double covers, figuring it would probably take a lifetime to get there, but I eventually surpassed that level. With tens of thousands of copies being printed for most comics (and quantities in the hundreds of thousands for gold and silver age books), and nearly every one being a perfect copy when it left the printer, it seemed like a good idea to look for and invest in the rarity, something that nobody else owned. Along the way, I found gems such as Famous Funnies #40 from 1937, the earliest known double cover. Other early examples include Single Series #6 from 1939, Action Comics #28 from 1940, plus Detective Comics #48 and 51 as well as Zip #13, all from 1941. There was Mighty Mouse #45 from 1953, the earliest double cover 100-page book, and Tonto #7 from 1952, the earliest known book with five covers.

I never wanted to own every double cover on the planet, although Batman and Superboy were personal favorites, and I pursued them relentlessly. Every issue had the company logo in the upper left corner of the front cover. I know it is an acronym for Detective Comics, but it was cool to see them all lined up in a box, each one verified as a DC - Double Cover!

A double cover turned up of the first Superman-Flash race in Superman #199, then double covers of the rematch in World's Finest #198 and 199, and other team-ups in Superman #220 and Action Comics #441. Finding both a double and triple cover of Batman #33 was fun, and thanks to some good trades, I was able to repeat that combination for Captain Marvel #50, Jetsons #1, Spider-Man Unlimited #1 and several other books.

Double covers are generally a matter of static electricity during the printing and binding process, and can occur for any magazine, not just comics. Printing companies generally eliminate the problem with humidifiers and other techniques, so it does not happen all the time or for every issue. Unlike miswraps, missing colors or other obvious errors which are easily noticed and removed by quality control (and thus even more difficult for collectors to find), double covers can sneak through undetected until actually sold. Double covers before 1965 are more difficult to find, even though print runs were larger; it was not uncommon for some dealers and collectors to tear off the outer cover in order to show a nicer inner cover. This reminds me of a story I once heard from a philatelist regarding a lady who went to the Post Office and insisted on buying a sheet of stamps with perforations. The previous sheet she purchased had no perfs and she had to cut the stamps apart with scissors. Of course she destroyed something valuable. Conversations with dealers who sold comics in the 1960s indicate that golden age double covers turned up more frequently back then, so it is likely that many of those books no longer exist with both covers attached.

Multiple double covers of the same issue have surfaced, as can be seen in this auction. Eight copies of X-Men #202 are offered, six of them having come from one source. I know of three more in other collections, making for eleven double covers of that issue, the most for any double cover I am aware of. As a comparison, many collectors of stamps, coins or paper money would consider eleven of any given error to be an extremely low population. Some coin errors have run into the hundreds, allowing collectors to be choosy about condition.

Whether found in good, fine or near mint condition, double cover comics typically are unique in today's market. Waiting for a double cover of your favorite comic in a higher grade? It may not exist in any grade, and the likelihood of finding a NM example is slimmer than a pressed copy of Plastic Man. Even all the Dell and Harvey file copies that surfaced in recent years produced few double covers, although the ones that were found had impeccable condition.

Grading and encapsulating comics brought an interesting twist to collecting double covers. It helped standardize terminology, it preserves and stabilizes books in the best condition, and probably settled the debate for grading a book by the outer or inner cover (the best cover is what is used). Yet the thrill of a double cover is not condition, but seeing that second (or third, or fourth) cover, especially for the first time. And it's still fun to puzzle out exactly how a miscut or miswrapped book came about, all of which is best enjoyed by holding the book and paging through it. Encapsulation has a lot of positive aspects, but when it comes to double covers, it sometimes seems sort of like not being allowed to open your Christmas presents. You know there is something great inside...but you cannot see it. Of course the plastic case can always be removed for those of us who cannot stand not knowing.

Enjoy the auction and good luck with all your bids! However many books you win, I hope you enjoy each book as much as I did.