What is a 'pedigree' collection of comic books?

What is a 'pedigree' collection of comic books?

Mark Zaid (Owner of Esquire Comics) gives expert video advice on: Where can I purchase pedigree collection books?; How do I know if a book is from a pedigree collection? and more...

A pedigree collection of comic books is usually interpreted to be a very high-grade, key comic book collection. It could either be by special numbers, first issues, or in a complete runs of issues that were collected by an original owner-people like Edgar Church or Lamont Larson. Also publishers like William Gaines, who published Mad Magazines, who maintained certain numbers of their comic books in extreme high grade. And these are books that garner very high premiums, anywhere from one and a half guide over street guide prices to sometimes ten times guide. The key pedigree collection in the community is the Edgar Church mile high collection, a collection of 22,000 comic books that were collected over a span of the late 1930s into the 1950s or so, and were discovered in the late 1970s in Edgar Church's home in Colorado in essentially mint condition.