From 1936 until 1941 Billy Wright bought comics for 10 cents a time, amassing 345 of them in total. Then he put them away in his home in Virginia, USA, seemingly forgotten with other aspects of his childhood, never talking about them to his family.
Some 70 years later his great nephew Michael Rorrer found them neatly stacked in a basement as he was clearing out his great-aunt’s home after her death – they’ve just sold for £2.2 million.
"This really has its place in the history of great comic book collections," said Lon Allen, managing director of comics for Heritage Auctions.
Image © AP Photo/Metropolis CollectiblesA copy of Detective Comics No. 27, from 1939, sold for $523,000 (£331,000) – it’s the first appearance of Batman. Action Comics No. 1, showing the first appearance of Superman, sold for about $299,000 (£190,000). It’s frequently described as the most important comic ever published and experts believe only about 100 copies of this 1938 comic are left in the world.
"It was amazing seeing what they went for," said Rorrer, 31, who works in a plant separating oil from water in California. He didn’t understand their worth at first, his mother divided the collection in two – one half for Michael one for his younger brother.
A few months later, Rorrer mentioned seeing Captain America burst in on Adolf Hitler in one issue to a co-worker, who alerted him to the potential value of Action Comics No.1.
"I went home and was looking through some of them, and there it was," Rorrer told the Associated Press.
After that he and his mother went through the collection in earnest. They found some of the rarest and most valuable comics in history.
"The Billy Wright Collection represents not only five of the top six comics in the business, but also 45 of the top 100 comics overall,” Heritage Auction’s Allen said.
"This is just one of those collections that all the guys in the business think don't exist anymore," he added.
[Related link: Original Superman comic fetches £1.4m]
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