Former President of DC Paul Levitz was instrumental in assembling a complete collection of DC comics published between 1935-2014 which is now being auctioned through Sotheby’s .
The collector of the archive, Ian Levine, posted an ad looking for some obscure entries in DC history, and Levitz scoured the DC vaults to send him a dozen titles – in other words, “buy 40,000, get 12 free” as Levitz stated in his note to Levine.
Here’s Levitz’s full story, from his Facebook page:
So a story of a quiet day at DC…I think it was over the holiday break, before the company closed for those days. Happened on an ad in one of the comics trades, probably Comic Buyers’ Guide, from a guy who was trying to assemble an absolutely complete DC collection. He was down to hunting some pretty obscure stuff, odd issues of romance and war titles, and many of our ‘custom comics,’ the giveaways we’d produce for companies to promote their products (or for good causes like keeping kids from being blown up by landmines). There were quite a few of the listed customs that were basically valueless but hard-to-find things we had large stacks of to use as samples, so I spent a few minutes in the library and my files pulling a bunch together. Sent them to him with a note that said, “Buy 40,000, get 12 free.” The collector was Ian Levine, and he kindly let Taschen use the collection for the photos for 75 YEARS OF DC. He’s now auctioning off the whole collection at Sotheby’s. Hope it goes to someone who’ll love it, or an institution with a giant endowment and great taste.