Wednesday, October 10, 2007

Cleaning attic reveals rare find


"It’s the classic story that any comic book fan or shop owner wants to be a part of someday: A person, cleaning out some old stuff in a house finds a comic book. Well, not just any comic book, but a copy of one of the handful of the comic books.

In this case, it was 1939’s Detective Comics #27, featuring the first appearance of Batman. The copy is in good shape, with very minor edge wear, a light dust shadow, and a “Siamese centerfold” - meaning extra paper made it through the press during the printing process. The store/retailer whose hands it ended up in – Todd McDevitt of New Dimension Comics, a Western Pennsylvania chain with five locations around the Pittsburgh area.

“They found it and suspected it had some value, so they took it to another local comic shop where they felt like they were not being treated fairly,” McDevitt said. “Then they called me. They were skeptical at first, but once I spent some time with them and the book they agreed with my appraisal of the book and we made a deal for (it) there.”

10 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hey, I just read this article yesterday at Newsarama, a comic book website. Pretty crazy that one comic book would be worth so much money.
JDH

Greybishop said...

My attic only has pink insulation and a family of squirells in it.

Sawsee said...

JDH & GB! Another 'supply and demand' textbook case study. People will pay anything if they believe it is scarce.

GB! Look under the pink insulation! We did a kitchen reno and found a 1935 (or so) children's colouring book, stuffed amongst the studs.

Greybishop said...

Sawsee! Neato!

Once, many, many moons past, I was working on a house reno (in my teens I actually did physical labour!) and behind the bathroom mirror we found (along with about 200 razor blades that had been disposed of through a slot in the back of the mirror's cabinet) an old newspaper. Too tattered and wrecked to be of any value, but there was a Superman comic (3 panels, Superman vs. Nazi spies - like that's fair!) that I got a charge out of.

At least it wasn't a body part!

Sawsee said...

Yes, finding inanimate objects is much better than finding animate ones!

I know one builder who always, when building, places something in the wall cavity. It may be a McDonald french fry container or newspaper, anything that will be a discovery for the next carpenter.

If you still have the old comic strip, it would be cool to have it enlarged to about 4 feet and hang in your store.

Greybishop said...

Unfortunately, it's lost to the mists of time.

I really had intended to keep it, but it was just too tattered and fragile.

Greybishop said...

The latest buzz on this? The condition of the comic might be coming into question. It seems that the book might have been "trimmed", a practice where a tiny amount of the edges of the book are shaved off in order to improve its appearance and artificially inflate it's condition.

If it has indeed been "trimmed", the $250,000 guestimate of its value could drop...dramatically.

Sawsee said...

That's amazing!

Is there any speculation whether the current owner or the seller 'trimmed' the comic book?

One point that I thought interesting was that they said the book had 2 pages stuck together. Normally when this happens it would make it impossible to trim it without separating the 'stuck pages, creating a loose page. The only way the pages would remain stuck together is if the double page went through the binding in the centre.

If the seller did the trimming, I wonder if they have 'cashed' the cheque yet?

Or left town....

Greybishop said...

I saw the story during my net travels today. The owner says that his experts don't think it's been trimmed, but nothing firm came out of the story. It sounded like the seller might have been the "trimmer" to try to get a better price from the dealer who now owns the book. I'd be surprised if a dealer like the current owner didn't catch it if the book was doctored, but perhaps greed clouded his vision...

Sawsee said...

Can you imagine how your heart would sink, once you re-examined the newly purchased treasure only to confirm that it is, indeed, been altered...