Man's Childhood Comic Collection Sells for 3.5 Million

This guy's comic collection sold at a New York City Auction today for 1.5 million more than expected. It includes the first comic appearances of Superman and Batman.

EDIT: Added pic. Finally figured out to incorporate URL's and BB code here.

I'd do that in a heartbeat.

Now I just need to figure out what a "BB code" is.

It's the code that points to a pic you have elsewhere on the WEB, in my case Flickr. I used the code url provided here but I shouldn't have. The code Flickr provides for the pic is all inclusive here. You just copy it without further suffixes/prefixes. That's how I got it working.

Only $300,000 for Action Comics #1?

Bullwinkle wrote: Only $300,000 for Action Comics #1?

If only you'd known it was so cheap! The thing that surprised me most was this guy was cleaning out his late great uncle's basement closet after his aunt died when he discovered these perfectly preserved old comics stacked in neat piles.

You'd think they'd have been in his will or something. Three million. What a haul.

That sounds way too good to be true. Most copies of Detective #27 and Action #1 are faded or affected by natural acid in some form and yet the auctioneer is listing these as "unrestored", meaning someone deliberately and professionally preserved them. But the HuffPost story carries on as if they were just sitting in a closet. Also, it's only 300 comics (I have 100x that many sitting in storage), but somehow the bulk of the collection is first appearances from the 1930s. The Heritage site follows up with mention of a Fantastic Four run. If it's from the same collection, that's 30 years later and hardly a boyhood endeavor.

So, either the guy was deliberately collecting first appearances of various characters as a kid and was knowledgeable enough to preserve them from their natural decay and then, as an adult, later decided to enhance his collection with first appearances from another company that was borderline irrelevant to the market at the time (Marvel) or he bought these from another source and stashed them as an investment. Wonder how much his wife knew about what he was spending?

Jackwraith wrote: That sounds way too good to be true.

Perhaps but truth is often stranger than fiction. Every major news outlet is carrying the same story and the guy's been featured on the Today Show.

Bottom line is he found his great uncle's comic collection however it was put together and is now 3.5 million dollars richer.

They're all kinds of weirdo's out there and this guy qualifies. Who the hell leaves this stuff and doesn't tell anyone... in this condition?

I love comics and I've read a number of those particular issues, they're mostly garbage. Obviously their relevance is increased by their rarity and what they represent for comics history. But not the material itself. That's why this stuff always mystifies me.

I get why the cost goes so high I just can't fathom ever paying that much for something that doesn't actually improve with age. An instrument I understand, it changes in sound as it ages, a wine to a certain degree, scotch.. but comics can be bought in a newer and better format for reading the whole collectible thing has always escaped me. What is the social thought process that drives the cost so high? How does this come to happen and is it related to tulips?

Maybe I'm jealous that someone has 500,000$ to spend on a Batman comic and maybe it's the height of nerd decadence. There's all kinds of weirdo's out there.

ubarose wrote: When my a friend of mine was about 13 years old, the eldrly man who lived a few doors down from her pushed a shopping cart full of old comics up to her door and said, "My son is an asshole. These are for you." The man died a few months later. Those comic paid for her room, board and tuition for four years at MIT and three years of grad school.

Jesus Uba...that story's almost as good as the one posted here. That's fantastic! And it's also reaffirming to discover at least in this case it literally doesn't pay to be an asshole.

JonJacob wrote: I get why the cost goes so high I just can't fathom ever paying that much for something that doesn't actually improve with age.

Neither can I, but everything's relative. They are historically significant in pop art lore but to shell out that much money for what is essentially trivia you have to have money to burn...and some people do.

And it's not a losing investment long term. They're going to keep appreciating in value.

Maybe the Uncle bought them, read them, and looked after them well. Maybe he never intended to part with them and so never looked into their value. But never mind the comics, what about the 1930s games mentioned!

Notahandle wrote: Maybe the Uncle bought them, read them, and looked after them well. Maybe he never intended to part with them and so never looked into their value. But never mind the comics, what about the 1930s games mentioned!

Good pickup. I missed that. Yeah I wonder what they were! As for the Uncle, that's what I originally thought (and would like to believe) until JackWraith weighed in.

In the end, who knows?