Friday, April 22, 2011

Dead Man's Comic Book Stash Worth - Holy Currency, Batman! - $1 Million


Gary Dahlberg of Minneapolis died last year after a lifetime of collecting comic books. They're valued above $1 million.

From a story in the Minneapolis Star-Tribune...

Erupting in the kitchen of the modest north Minneapolis home, the fire that killed a retired bus driver spared a treasure worth more than $1 million.

Stacked high and deep in a spare bedroom that escaped the flames and water hoses last July, the thousands of comic books Gary Dahlberg had spent a lifetime collecting remained just as he had kept them, carefully cataloged and perfectly preserved.

"He loved his [comic] books," his sister, Wendy Kuiper, said. Her brother was 12 or 13 years old when he began plunking down 12 cents an issue for the comic books in the early 1960s. "As he got older, my mother would ask, 'What are you going to do with all those books?' My mother used to say they couldn't be worth anything."

What neither knew was that 2,500 to 3,000 of Dahlberg's 20,000 comic-book collection would end up "easily" worth more than $1 million. "Maybe closer to $2 million," said Ed Jaster, senior vice president of Heritage Auctions.

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