Posted on April - 22 - 2010
Ways to Wealth: Old comic books likely won’t have you laughing to the bank
Jake: I bought an October 1937 “Dime Detective Magazine” in a yard sale for a quarter. I heard about one of these selling for $1 million. How can I find out the value of mine?
Elaine: Before you pick the color of new your Ferrari, let me tell you how you find out what your comic book is worth.
Here is the comic auction story to which you refer. In February, Detective Comic #27, which originally sold for 10 cents (hence the name for this genre) and featured the first inclusion of the “Batman” character, sold for $1,075,500. The previous record for the sale of a single comic book had been $317,000, so the value of these icons has risen dramatically.
Another example of how elite comics have appreciated is the 1960 Green Lantern #1. It auctioned in 2003 for $18,975 — a smashing price, given that it was quadruple the book value at the time. Just seven years later, it realized $50,787.50.
Even Snoopy and the Red Baron are flying high in this buying frenzy. The original art from the comic strip of July 31, 1966, featuring Snoopy pursuing his arch nemesis, shot down an amazing $101,575.
Original magazine illustrations have also hit new zeniths. An illustration by Alberto Vargas for the October 1963 issue of Playboy sold for a stunning $179,250.
So you want to go out and buy every present-day comic book you can get your hands on and sell them in a decade for a fortune? Don’t bother.
Industry experts say comic books after 1980 are basically worthless. Many would-be collectors jumped into the market and bought thousands of them, resulting in massive multiple printings of every issue and ruining the market.
So what about your yard sale treasure? A quick perusal of eBay shows Dime Detective Magazines are being priced by sellers from $20 up to $130. Much depends on the condition of the magazine, the characters in the stories and the writers who wrote them.
As important as a magazine’s condition is to value, so is the first appearance of characters who later became famous. Less considered, but important to some collectors, are the writers of the tales of murder and intrigue.
In the mid- and late-’30s and early ’40s, many Hollywood screenwriters made a quick detour from newspaper writing to the world of Dime Detective Magazines before they found fame and fortune as screenplay authors. A quick Internet search of these authors yields their fascinating careers.
The 10-page dramas they wrote disclosed a thriller complete with interesting characters in exotic locations wrapped in intriguing plots that twisted to a dramatic conclusion where the “good guys” always won and the “bad guys” were punished.
The bad news is your comic book is probably not worth a fortune. But some are, so keep looking.
Questions? Write Elaine at Elainezimm@aol.com. Her Web site is elainezimmermann.com.
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