The first part is verified with the June 29th census update. There were three new, unrestored, copies of Detective #27 added that day and one is an 8.5. As you can imagine, that's a crazy valuable book, and would garner headlines here regardless of the pedigree.
That said… I've been told, but haven't yet been able to verify, that this is the Edgar Church copy. Can anyone out there verify that? It makes sense as I've had the Church copy pegged at 8.5 forever. It would be great to verify that. So if anyone knows, let me know in the comments or shoot me an email.