Auction Heroes

The eyes of the art world may have been on Christie’s auction house in New York City this week where a portrait by Pablo Picasso sold for $48.4 million. But for comic-book collectors, a nondescript suite in an Irvine business park is where the action is.

There, the same people who sold Bob Dylan’s first guitar for $75,000 and a black-and-gold bustier worn by Madonna for $4,000 are conducting what is billed as an unprecedented auction of nearly $1.5 million worth of comics. That includes several rare items, the comic-book equivalents of the high-priced Picasso.

The bidding--by telephone, fax, mail and Internet--began at Executive Collectibles Gallery on Nov. 3 and continues until Saturday at 6 p.m. Or, as gallery owner Bill Hughes says, “until the phones stop ringing for 15 minutes. It usually ends up at midnight.”

As of Wednesday, the gallery already had received top bids totaling $700,000, including a $50,000 offer for the auction’s most coveted item: a copy of Action Comics No. 1, the June 1938 comic book that introduced Superman and ushered in what is considered the Golden Age of comic books.

The comic book, which originally sold for a dime, is a “very fine” grade copy valued at $70,000 to $80,000.

“That particular book is considered to be the Holy Grail of comic-book collecting,” said Hughes, who began amassing auction items from collectors six months ago.

A dozen complete comic-book collections are among the 900 lots on the block, including those featuring Batman, Superman, Spider-Man and Archie.

“Those are the biggies,” Hughes said. “Complete collections of these have never been offered before at public auction. It’s very difficult to put these collections together.”

In addition to approximately 20,000 comic books, the gallery is auctioning animation cels and science fiction/fantasy and animation movie posters.

Hughes said bids have been coming in from as far as Germany, Japan and New Zealand.

The gallery has 12 phone lines, and Monday, their busiest day so far, they were receiving two or three calls a minute, Hughes said.

Unlike a one-day auction where bidders must make a “spontaneous decision” on an item, Hughes said, bidding by phone or Internet “gives the bidders an opportunity to bid simultaneously on any of the lots.”

“If a particular lot gets out of their range they can change speed and get on something else. You don’t have that option during a live auction.”

The gallery, which recently moved from Newport Beach to Irvine, conducts four major auctions a year. It specializes in Hollywood, rock ‘n’ roll and sports memorabilia, with movie posters, baseball cards and comics being its “main activities,” Hughes said.

The gallery stirred controversy last year when it auctioned items once owned by the late rocker Kurt Cobain, who killed himself in 1994.

Cobain’s widow, Courtney Love, announced her intention to block the sale of her late husband’s possessions, but the gallery’s attorneys determined the auction was legal. And, as a result, a collector was able to buy Cobain’s hair color bottle for $175.

At the same auction, a set of Elvis Presley’s bedsheets (“used”) sold for $475, and one of his white jumpsuits (“stage worn”) sold for $50,000.

*

Hughes said it’s always a bull market for collectibles such as comic books.

“When prices are down there’s plenty of buyers getting in and buying as an investment because they know the stuff is lower than what they normally might have seen. And when prices are up, prices just seem to escalate uncontrollably. There are always people buying.”

Especially when it’s something a collector just can’t do without.

A collection of Detective Comics--issue numbers 27 through 40--is valued in the auction catalog at $75,000 to $95,000. What makes that collection significant, Hughes said, is that issue No. 27, in 1939, marked the first appearance of Batman.

The current top bid for the entire collection featuring Batman: $60,000.

A collection of Archie comics from 1940 to the present is also receiving a lot of attention, Hughes said. The current top bid is $14,500.

“That’s still a relative bargain,” Hughes said. “We expect those to go for well over $20,000.”

Not surprisingly, Hughes, 34, is a comic-book collector himself. He’s been buying comics since he was a 9-year-old Hawthorne boy. His favorites were Spider-Man, Fantastic Four and Captain America.

So what’s the appeal, besides the investment allure, for an adult to pay, say, $250 for Detective Comics No. 89, which features the last appearance of the Crimson Avenger?

“Probably a chance to relive part of one’s childhood,” Hughes said. “It’s an escape from the stress of everyday life.”

Comic auction bidders must register by noon Saturday. Executive Collectibles Gallery can be contacted at (714) 673-1742 or on its Web site, https://www.execcollect.com