Many comics in one of the greatest comic book collections in the world is currently being LIVE auctioned by Heritage, which began on October 25 and 26: The Christine Farrell Complete DC Collection. Unbelievably, Ms. Farrell's collection consisted of every comic published by DC through 2002. It consisted of more than 30,000 comics and included the first appearances of Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman.

The collection also includes original comic art, including the original pages from Swamp Thing #1 and Batman: The Dark Knight Returns #4.

Ms. Farrell loved comic books and they instilled a love of reading in her. She initially began reading comics that featured Supergirl and Lois Lane, but later began collecting everything published by DC. Ms. Farrell bought many books off the rack, but also filled in the gaps in her collection by digging through bins at local comic book stores, and attending comic cons with a list of comics needed to complete her run. In the 1980s, she opened her own LCS, Earth Prime Comics, in Burlington, Vermont.

Because she acquired some of the comics in her collection from other collectors (and not off the rack), her collection couldn't qualify as a CGC Pedigree collection. Nonetheless, it is easily one of the most famous collections in the world having been reported on by NPR and the Associated Press in the 1980s and 1990s.

Ms. Farrell recently passed away in April 2024.

Heritage has estimated that the nearly 500 books from the collection included in the auction could sell for around $4M, and YouTuber, Ryan from Automatic Comics estimated that it would sell for just under $4.2M. In this video, Ryan noted that most of his estimates were generally correct, but there were some surprises including this restored 8.0 copy of Superman #1 selling for only $81,000.

The most valuable comics in the collection include:

It is notable that she had never had the comics above graded; more evidence that she collected comics because she loved them and wasn't interested in them as investments or selling them one day. I imagine that she might've been disappointed that many of her comics came back from CGC in restored condition.

The other 25,500 books in Ms. Farrell's collection will likely be sold at the comic book store that she owned.

CGC recently blogged about its experience grading many of the comics in this collection just prior to them being auctioned on Heritage. On their labels, CGC has provided a special designation to each book that came from Ms. Farrell's collection due to the collection's historical significance.

The auction is ongoing with many books ending in the next day or two.