Several weeks ago, I wrote about one of the greatest comic book collections of all-time: the Christine Farrell Complete DC Collection. Now showing in theaters (and on streaming) is a new documentary, Selling Superman, which tells the story about another comic collection, the FANTAST collection, assembled by Dale Watts, a collector who lived in the Detroit metropolitan area.

This is a rare documentary that focuses squarely on our hobby. It premiered online for early ticket holders on November 7th, 2024.

Dale was an attorney who began collecting comics over 50 years ago. Eventually amassing over one million items, including 300,000 comics, Dale kept the details about his collection a secret from everyone including his wife, Celeste, and his son, Darren. While Dale was alive, neither Celeste nor Darren had a clear understanding about the extent or value of Dale's collection; Dale hid his comics, didn't allow them to look through its contents, and didn't allow them to speak to anyone about his collection. Darren said that their home became a "bottomless pit of overflowing collectibles."

Since Darren's father was an attorney, Darren compared his father's obsession with collecting to the scales of justice; Dale's family was on one side of the scale and his collectibles were on the other. Unfortunately, from his family's perspective, the scales always weighed in favor of the collection. Celeste and Darren resented Dale for his obsession with collecting. Celeste eventually became so frustrated by her husband's expansive collection that she divorced him.

When Dale, who had Asberger's Syndrome, died in August 2020, he left his vast collection to Darren. Able to explore his father's collection for the first time, the collection included roughly one million items including comics, baseball cards and toys that were now stored in three separate shipping containers. Dale stored the most valuable items in a vault which included a raw copy of Superman #1. Darren submitted the book to CGC and it received a 7.0, becoming the third highest graded copy on the CGC Census.

Darren also submitted the following major key issues to CGC for grading:

In recognition of this special collection, CGC named Darren's collection the "FANTAST Collection" in honor of Dale's online pseudonym. The front of the custom label also promotes the “Selling Superman” documentary while the back of the label briefly refers to Dale's life and collection:

This copy of Batman #1 from the FANTAST collection sold for over $1.1M on Heritage Auctions in 2023. Darren has also sold a number of minor items from his Dad's collection on Heritage including a number of sealed Star Wars toys and comics.

Did you see Selling Superman? Please tell us your opinion about the film in the comments section below!