A collection of rare and historically significant vintage toys and original artwork from Batman to G.I. Joe compiled by a single owner sold Wednesday at Heritage, nabbing eye-popping prices for rarities and fresh-to-market pieces.
The “Windy City Collection” was assembled as a lifelong passion project by Chicago-based collector Gary Keller, containing more than 500 items ranging from original artwork used in vintage G.I. Joe packaging to the scarcest vintage Batman toys in the hobby.
“My collection makes me feel good,” Keller told the auction house. “I don’t know how else to explain it. I have pieces all over my place. Everywhere. You can stand in my living room and see 20 pieces. I become a kid when I look at them.”
The top-selling lot in the auction, clocking in at $40,000, was a Captain Action The Green Hornet Uniform and Equipment Set produced by Ideal in 1967 and graded AFA 75. It’s the only example graded in the AFA census.
This figure is as rare as it gets in any condition. When it was first released at the end of the second wave of uniform sets, it received limited distribution because of The Green Hornet’s diminished popularity at the time.
Next came two pieces of original artwork by Don Stivers used for G.I. Joe packaging in 1972 and 1973.
The first, used for G.I. Joe Recovery of the Lost Mummy Adventure, sold for $23,750. The other, destined for the G.I. Joe Sea Adventurer with Kung Fu Grip box, fetched $22,500.
Hasbro had stored much of the original G.I. Joe packaging artwork in its basement in the following years. When the company noticed occasional flooding, it decided to throw it all away, according to Heritage’s action figures and toys consignment director Justin Caravoulias. Luckily, a few forward-thinking employees saved them from the dumpster. Eventually, these pieces ended up in the hands of a few collectors.
Over time, pieces sold via private sales, collector-to-collector, but never on the public market.
The significance of the G.I. Joe artwork comes from the experience one would have had when buying the original toys at retail.
“It was the artwork that drove people to buy the toys,” Caravoulias explained. “You could not see the figure. All you could see was the artwork, and that would inform you, to some extent, as to what you were getting.”
Two other headliners from the sale were Batman Play Sets from 1966, produced by Ideal.
A Batman and Justice League of America Play Set in its original box nabbed $15,000. Right behind it was the Batman Official Play Set, which sold for $13,750.
The former was described by Caravoulias as “grail level,” especially due to its inclusion of its original box. Both sets are made exceptionally difficult to find in top condition due to the many small pieces included inside the boxes, separated by the outside world only by cellophane.
“So you can imagine as a kid, you bring that home in the 60s, and you take everything out of the box, and your parents go, ‘Okay, well, this box is trash,’” Caravoulias said, hammering home the low odds of finding these pieces still intact so many decades later. “How in the world did something this big with cellophane over the box survive all this time without getting crushed somewhere?”
Will Stern is a reporter and editor for cllct.