Collector stories · 20
Every collectible
has a story.
First pulls, attic finds, lost-and-found treasures and the ones that got away.
From the newsComics
Stolen in 2000, found in a storage locker
Nicolas Cage bought this copy of Action Comics #1 in 1996 and kept it framed on his wall. It was stolen from his Los Angeles home in January 2000. Eleven years later it turned up in an abandoned storage locker in the San Fernando Valley…
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Found inside the walls
While restoring an old house in Minnesota, David Gonzalez found a 1938 copy of Action Comics #1 tucked into the wall insulation. The back cover had…
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A $3.2 million eBay listing
In August 2014, Darren Adams of Pristine Comics listed a CGC 9.0 copy of Action Comics #1 with unusually white pages on eBay. After ten days of…
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Batman’s debut in a great-aunt’s closet
In 2011, Michael Rorrer was clearing out his late great-aunt’s house in Martinsville, Virginia, when he found a stack of about 345 old comics in a…
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From a Denver basement to $450,000
Edgar Church, a Denver artist, bought comics off the newsstand for decades and stacked them in his basement, where the dry air kept the pages bright…
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The copy mailed to Harper’s
This copy of Wonder Woman #1 came in a 1942 press packet that DC associate editor Alice Marble, also a tennis champion, mailed to the editors of…
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Bought off an artist’s drawing board
Comics writer Paul Kupperberg has written that he bought a near-mint Showcase #4, the first appearance of the Barry Allen Flash, straight off artist…