Golden Rule Collection #1
The first golden rule collection was one born from timing and the underlying principles of COJ Collectibles, treating others as you would wish to be treated. In my early days of dealing, I would follow up on most Facebook Marketplace and Craigslist ads looking for collections. On one particular encounter, I met a gentleman outside a gas station in Des Moines, IA. He was hauling around two crates of pretty dusty comic books. We didn’t end up doing a deal, but I gave him some advice, essentially telling him to not take any less than $100 for the items.
Fast forward a few months, i’m perusing a local garage sale when I see a similar layout of ten or so crates filled with comics. At first I didn’t recognize the gentleman, but he remembered me. “Hey, you were that guy that met me at that gas station, told me not to sell these for any less than $100.” At that moment, my memory clicked back on and we exchanged greetings. He said, yea I remember you, you were the only one who gave me a fair appraisal of what I had.
What happened next would go down as one of our greatest finds to date. He said, come into the house, I got something to show. Hesitant, but curious, I left the garage sale and followed the gentleman into his house and up to a lofted second floor. The room was covered floor to windows in nothing but crates, produce boxes and banker boxes filled with comics. Mainly bronze and copper age from the 70s/80s. All popular titles, littered with keys and other valuable comics from the time period. He told me the story about how he came across the books and stated that since I was the only one who gave him a fair evaluation all those months ago, he wanted to sell the whole collection to me. In quantity, we were talking maybe 7,000 books of varying value. So I called in some back-up. Myself and another dealer friend spent about two nights in this gentleman’s loft, pricing and sorting books. After two days, and three trips back and forth to the house, we agreed on a price and hauled the books back to my garage. We received a number of keys that we would go onto grade (highlight being a Giant Size X-Men #1 that came back a CGC 9.4) and the gentleman received a significant amount of cash and much needed room in his house. This collection more than any other set us on a trajectory of becoming a trusted, reliable dealer in the central Iowa area and instilled the values of transparency, kindness and value as we began to acquire more collections. Can’t wait to tell ya’ll about the Golden Rule collection #2….