Owning a comic shop awards me some pretty cool opportunities. Take this one for example. A woman popped into the shop a few months back with 3 comics that belonged to her late husband. Two of the books were nothing special and in fairly awful condition, but the third book was a beauty. It was Detective Comics #21, and she was interested in finding out the value as she wanted to move it for some coin.
This book is literally...history...as it dates back to November of 1938. Think about that for a second. This book came out 5 years after the Great Depression. FDR was just the 32nd President of the United States. Less than a year before the start of World War II. Days after Orson Wells shook the world with his realistic and panic inducing “War of the Worlds” broadcast.
It was an entirely different world then. Yet somehow...against all the odds...this flimsy book with newspaper stock, made it 83 years in what I consider immaculate shape with beautiful vibrant colors that still pop. That...is super cool and something ya just don’t see everyday as evidenced by the GCG Census.
A total of 18 of these books are graded with CGC. 6 of those are restored, 1 is qualified, and 11 are universal with the highest grade on the census being a 7.0. With this coming back a 6.5, that now makes 2 copies at that grade making it tied for the second highest graded copy. Pretty cool!!!
As far as value goes, I’m going to have to do some real hardcore research as it can be tough to tie it to a specific price. There just aren’t enough out there for sale. Here is the sales data for each of the grades listed along with the date and price. You can see what I mean by looking at some of these dates.
There’s only one of these currently listed for sale online. It’s for a raw copy in way worse shape, and the seller is asking $2k. This, will fetch way more than that...but how much more, will be the tricky part.
Either way, I’m going to dig and come up with a rough value, then try and convince the client to allow us the opportunity to find a buyer for a consignment fee. That way we only make money if she does, and it doesn’t tie up a boatload of cash in a purchase that could sit for some time until the right buyer is found.
The interesting thing about this book is if it was a mere 6 issues later at #27 instead of #21, this would be a life changing pile of paper. That’s because Detective Comics #27 was the first appearance of Batman. Yeah...friggin BATMAN!!!
If it was just 6 issues later...we would be sitting on a million plus dollar book that would make worldwide news. (Sigh)
Either way, this is a beautiful and rare book that I’m honored to share in its history...even if only for a brief while. I’ll keep ya updated on its next part of its journey through time.
Blewitt