Super Collector Stephen Geppi

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Article Title: Super Collector Stephen Geppi
Author: Hector Cantu
Category: Collecting, Art, Games
Word Count: 1958
Keywords: Collecting, Geppi, Superman, Walt Disney, Heritage Auctions, comic books, price guide
Author's Email Address: hectorc@HA.com
Article Source: http://www.contentcrooner.com
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Stephen Geppi doesn't hesitate when asked to talk about his childhood.

"When I was 5, the first thing I learned to read from was a comic book," Geppi says as he recalls his boyhood in Baltimore in the 1950s. "I remember my mother bringing home comics. They were all over the place. Subsequently, I became an avid comic fan. I can't say I was a collector in the sense that I understood condition. I just loved them."

Over the next 50 years, that love would create one of the world's most important collectors of American pop culture. "You'd be hard-pressed to find another CEO who could tell you off the top of his head what the cover of Colossus Comics #1 looks like," says Barry Sandoval, director of comics at Dallas-based Heritage Auctions, the nation's largest collectibles auction house. "His passion for American pop culture is unparalleled and his collection is one of the finest ever put together."

Geppi's love for pop culture became a full-time pursuit in the 1970s when he opened a comic book store in the basement of a TV repair shop. That quickly grew to four shops and, subsequently, ownership of a company that would become Diamond Comic Distributors, the world's largest distributor of English-language comic books that today represents top publishing powerhouses like DC Comics, Marvel Comics and Dark Horse Comics.

Along the way, Geppi founded Gemstone Publishing Inc., which publishes titles such as The Overstreet Comic Book Price Guide, The Official Price Guide to Pop Culture: 150 Years of Character Toys & Collectibles, Hake's Price Guide To Character Toys, and North American editions of Disney comics. Other Geppi companies include hobby games distributor Alliance Game Distributors; and Diamond Select Toys and Collectibles. Most recently, he opened Geppi's Entertainment Museum at Baltimore's Camden Yards, which bills itself as America's premier pop-culture museum.

Like most passionate collectors, it's not all about the money for Geppi. When he was 9, he recalls finding comic book back issues in a neighborhood liquor store.

"There were these little boxes in the back room," says Geppi, 59. "They were a nickel apiece. Then the owner introduced the quarter box and the 50-cent box. He finally gave me a job at the store to support my fix, my habit. He would say, 'How do you want to be paid, kid, with comics or with money? It makes no difference to me.'
"I always took the comics."

Q. You were born in the Little Italy section of Baltimore, and you were forced to quit school early to work, correct?
A. When I graduated from St. Leo's School, which is now closed, I took the entrance exam to Calvert Hall High School, which was the quintessential high school that all of us guys wanted to go to. I aced the [entrance] test ... but unfortunately that's the day I found out I was poor. We found out it cost $400 a year to go there and I was devastated that we couldn't afford that. I eventually went to Mergenthaler. It was a very good vocational school. I took up printing. In January of my ninth-grade year my mother and father officially split, and she was getting ready to go on welfare. It was terrible. So I had to quit school and go to work to support my mom and I've been working ever since. When I was 19, I landed a job at the United States Post Office. I was a letter carrier.

Q. Were you still a collector at this time?
A. When I started working, somewhere along the line I stopped buying comics. You never really stop enjoying them. They just kind of get away from you. School. Girls. Other hobbies. Parents. That was my case. I worked for the post office from 1969 to 1974. In 1971 or 1972, I went on vacation and my nephew, who at the time was 7 or 8, was reading a comic book. I was looking over his shoulder. It was a Batman. I started getting this tremendous nostalgic flashback and I decided when I got back home I would try to find some old comics again. I made a point, every time I was on a mail route, to ask people if they had comics.

Q. And people actually gave you comics?
A. One lady had a son about my age who was in college, and she let me see this collection of about 2,500 comics. It took her three months to get his permission to let me buy them. I think I paid $125. I was thrilled. Around that time, I discovered The Overstreet Comic Book Price Guide, which was in its third edition. Armed with comics I didn't want and as I continued to advertise and find comics, I had to have an outlet for the excess. So I started going to these little comic book conventions, always on the weekends, and lo and behold, before I knew it, I was making more money on the weekends than I was on my job. I loved my job but this was a dilemma for me. If you wanted to go to conventions every weekend, you had to have about 200 years seniority at the post office to have Saturdays off. So there I was with a good, steady job and I'm quitting to open a comic book store in the basement of a TV repair shop.

Q. When did you start including more pop-culture memorabilia in your collection?
A. I focused on Golden Age comics, even Silver Age comics, but I really hadn't at that point branched into too much of the stuff you see in the museum now. I was appreciative of it, but I was focusing on Golden Age books. But little by little, I started to get into that stuff, whether it was original art, Big Little Books, posters. Being a voracious collector, once you get everything on one side, you go into another category and you have that same attitude.

Q. What were some early acquisitions that got you excited?
A. In the early 1980s, I bought the Pennsylvania Collection, as its known in the pedigree world. I paid $20,000 for it. That was a big number to spend at the time. I bought a collection from a guy in Jamaica Estates in New York for $55,000. I came home with 21 shopping bags of Golden Age. It was quite a collection.

Q. What were some of the lessons you learned from those acquisitions?
A. I learned early that condition was critical from an investment standpoint. The higher the grade, you couldn't get stuck. No matter what you paid for a high-grade book, even if it was over market, if you sat on it long enough it would eventually turn into a good investment because they're not making them anymore. Today, with the stock market and real estate market in the tank, I've been waving the flag. I even wrote an editorial for the local business newspaper. All these years we've been the Rodney Dangerfields of investments. I couldn't help myself but to say, "Hey, you're all finally realizing what I told you, that the real, true supply-and-demand market, if that's what escalating value is about, is over here in collectibles." While all this [economic news] was going on, Heritage Auctions was having record auctions, prices were going through the roof. And why? Because people are recognizing that this stuff is really, truly something that can't be replaced. You don't wake up looking at some newspaper that tells you your Superman #1 is worth half of what it was yesterday. One of the lessons I learned that really served me well was instead of putting my money in traditional things, I just kept snowballing and snowballing my wealth through buying and selling collectibles. And it has served me well.

Q. Is that when you realized that you could invest in more than just comics, things like toys, movie posters, animated-cartoon art, TV memorabilia?
A. The same principles applied. I didn't have the same knowledge initially, but I knew if I bought high grade ... not to say that you can't make money in lower grade, but in blue-chip investing, it's clear. When you buy a Walt Disney poster and there's only one known, and it's in high grade, you have to pay the price or you don't get it.

Q. What do you do, as far as research, before you make a purchase? Or is it all gut feeling now?
A. At this point in my life, I know what I'm doing. But there are cases where you have to do a little more homework. Every once in a while, no matter how much you know, you can get fooled on something. Even the most incredible expert in whatever hobby can still get fooled if they're not doing all of their due diligence.

Q. In 2003 you purchased the very first G.I. Joe doll for $200,000. It was the carved-wood prototype handcrafted in 1963 by Don Levine while he was at Hassenfeld Brothers, later re-named Hasbro Toys. Why was that important to you?
A. I don't know if prior to that I had a desire for it. I remember the great job Heritage Auctions did in hyping it and even though I bought it post auction, I liked owning something that was unique. Not only was it the first G.I. Joe, but it was the first action figure. As you branch out as a collector, you start to recognize what's unique.

Q. In 2006, you opened Geppi's Entertainment Museum at Camden Yards to spotlight the role of entertainment in mainstream culture over the past 250 years. Describe the transition from a personal collection to one put up for public display.
A. In the back of my mind, it always bugged me that as these comics were going up in value, they didn't get the respect they deserved. Typically, you'd go to a comic convention and, no disrespect, there was a guy trying to sell you a $10,000 comic book and he's in an undershirt with mustard stains on it. How are you supposed to gain confidence that this is a good investment? So I always thought that if this stuff truly is rare, is desirable and part of Americana, if it was displayed and put in the atmosphere it deserves, it would get much more respect and would attract more investors and collectors.

Q. In 2007, you decided to auction original cover art for several editions of The Overstreet Comic Book Price Guide, as well as Carl Barks' Disney paintings and original art by Hal Foster, Chester Gould and Jim Steranko. When do you decide to sell?
A. The museum in many ways is like a giant retail store disguised as a museum, and that doesn't mean there are "for sale" prices on anything. In most cases, nothing will ever be for sale. But you have to facilitate change from time to time and in some cases it's just upgrading. For example, if I have a very fine copy of Donald Duck Four Color #9 and I get a near mint to mint copy, I can put one in there and take the other one out and sell it. It keeps revenue rolling.

Q. What do you look for when you work with an auction house?
A. I'm looking for large audiences and good advertising networks. Quite frankly, because I'm only one human being, I look for someone who can do all the work. That's valuable. Heritage Auctions is a really important part of the industry. With Heritage and the fact that there's third-party grading, it's starting to establish a more predictable marketplace. I started out getting the Heritage catalog for comics and then I checked off to get all the catalogs. I flip through them and find myself sometimes buying coins or something other than comics.

Hector Cantu is editorial director at Heritage Magazine (www.HeritageMagazine.com), where this story originally appeared. For a free subscription, visit www.HeritageMagazine.com.
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