The Collection Of Joe And Nadia Mannarino
Comic Book Pedigree

 

This all began with Joe Mannarino, an avid reader and collector of Comic books, mysteries, science fiction and adventure from the age of 6 (1961). Joe, along with a generation of late baby boomers was lucky enough to have been reading comics at the inception of the “Marvel Age of Comics”. While the newsstands featured numerous Harvey and Classic comics, as well as Superman, Batman and Archie titles, it was the introduction of Marvel Comics’ new titles and the Disney characters that captured the imagination. Fantastic Four #1 had recently been published, followed quickly by The Incredible Hulk. On-going titles such as Tales Of Suspense, Tales To Astonish, Journey Into Mystery and Strange Tales began to feature Superheroes. Joe was lucky enough to store his original books at his grandparents’ house where they remained safe from Mom, “the queen of clean”! While these original purchases were well read and loved, they sparked the desire to go back and “collect” earlier issues. It was this collecting pursuit that lead to a constant search for  earlier and better copies of these cherished memories, that has persisted for over 40 years!

 

Jump ahead 20 years, buying and trading books lead to upgrading by selling of lower grade copies. This spawned Comics and Stories, a mail order and convention business, a comic book store, marriage, children, numerous new friendships and a highly successful sales management career. While constantly delving into the roots of the medium, Joe amassed a personal silver age collection that consisted of two very high grade complete sets of Marvels as well as the majority of all DC titles dating back to 1958.  Many of these books had not even been distributed having been purchased from a DC staffer and distributor returns. These books were always kept apart from the golden and silver age ‘inventory” used in the comic business.

 

As the business grew, the “core” personal collection of silver age and Disney remained untouched, sitting in stacks on open shelves in an unused climate controlled bedroom. Unfortunately, the books were not in boxes and the room had two windows. This eventually began to affect the page quality with sun shading on the edges of some of the books. When moving to a new home, the books were re-bagged, boxed and there they remained for 20 years.  Thankfully, Nadia Mannarino had developed a similar passion for the medium, becoming expert in grading and pricing, enabling her to run the business while Joe’s career became more demanding. This permitted a tenure at Christie’s the world renowned auction house, inaugurating dedicated comic collectible sales and an introduction into the world of live auctions and fine art. The collecting had expanded into all things comic character and cartoon related including, original comic art, newspaper strip art, posters, animation and toys. Eventually, this lead to All Star Auctions, http://www.allstarauctions.net.

 

Jump ahead another 20 years, the majority of the silver age books remained in cartons joining nearly 20,000 other collectibles in a personal collection that progressed more and more into historic original art from the medium as opposed to the books. 600 publisher’s bound volumes, 6000 Dell file copies, pulps, animation, posters and thousands of pages of original art made up only a portion of the collection.  Only a  handful of collecting friends had actually seen much of the collection, word spread and  we were constantly pursued in regards to selling the collection.  Nothing was done for the next 5 years, with travel demands at work increasing, the comic book collection was not a primary focus.

 

With two kids finally out of college, and the demands of the comic book business increasing, Joe decided to enter the comic book/comic art business full time.  The first order of business was to lighten the load!  With over 30,000 collectibles overtaking the house, the decision was made to sell the silver age comic collection along with a selection of golden age books privately in order to avoid any conflict of interest with All Star Auctions.  The books were not graded at the time of sale, the buyer submitted the books to CGC (Comics Guaranty LLC). When the collection was reviewed, the suggestion of creating a pedigree arose. We were approached and politely asked if our name could be applied, while reticent at first, eventually, we agreed. The rest as they say is history! 

  Comic book history that is!  

 

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