On a recent trip to Denver, Colorado, Tom Gordon III, President of ComicsPriceGuide.com, former Managing Editor of Geppi’s Entertainment’s Gemstone Publishing, visited the house where the Edgar Church/Mile High collection was discovered. Impressed by the house’s comic industry stature, Tom took a photo and shared his thoughts with Scoop.

“Seeing the home that Edgar Church lived in is an intriguing sight. The house is only 768 square feet and is tucked away on a small street in Denver, Colorado. It is hard to imagine that this tiny unassuming home once held the most famous comic book pedigree collection in history which featured nearly 18,000 comic books,” Tom said.

The Edgar Church/Mile High Collection has become known as the most remarkable discovered collection of vintage comic books. Its large size of impressively graded books has influenced a shift in both price structures and the grading standard, becoming the benchmark by which other collections are measured. Determining the collection’s stature took years to develop after it was discovered in 1977, as many collectors were skeptic to believe in the immensity of this collection.

Conflict then arose regarding the value of the Mile High books, and whether or not they were worth their asking price. When Chuck Rozanski purchased the collection he asked for prices multiple of what they were graded at, fueling collectors’ denial that they were worth the higher price. But he knew that if he had asked the Guide price, they would have devalued other Golden Age books, considering their inferior condition.

It took Rozanski almost 10 years to sell the entire collection. The collecting industry embraced the Mile Highs and pedigrees in the 1990s, though Mile High still stands out above the rest, bringing in two to five times the Guide price for copies in any grade.