The next time any parent is thinking about throwing out their child’s comics, they should remember Al Neumiller’s story.
The Saskatchewan resident had no idea his trip to a Saskatoon comic book shop would end with him learning that he was essentially sitting on a gold mine. Neumiller said that discovering he had a treasure trove “was just a fluke.”
An early appraisal of his collection is set at an estimated $32,000 -- money he never would have seen, if he’d followed through on throwing them out.
“I was looking at cleaning up some stuff that we had around the house and I found the books -- I don’t know why they followed [us] through all the different moves that we made,” he told CTV News Channel.
“They were there and I was just deciding if I should get rid of them or donate them somewhere,” he added. But then he started thinking they could net him a few bucks, particularly some old Archie comics he had.
So he drove to Saskatoon, where the owner of Bridge City Comics and Collectibles agreed to take a look.
“He started digging through them saying, ‘Oh, this is nice,’ and ‘that’s not bad.’ And all of a sudden, he froze and his eyes got bigger and bigger,” Neumiller said.
“And he said, ‘Oh my god’ and I thought he was going to have a heart attack,” he chuckled. Store owner Lee Pearson agreed and laughed, “You weren’t the only one, Al. You weren’t the only one.”
One of the comics that Neumiller had was an original edition of The Fantastic Four #5 -- originally published in July 1962 -- which first introduced one of Marvel’s most notorious villains, Doctor Doom.
A mint condition edition can be worth around $23,600. The majority of Neumiller’s comics were first published in the 1950s and 60s.
Initially, the store owner was ready to tell Neumiller that his long-lost comic stash wasn’t worth much. But after flipping through around 10 comics, Pearson realized how wrong he was -- particularly, when his eyes caught the vintage Fantastic Four comic.
“I had to blink for about a whole second and when I opened my eyes, it was still there,” Pearson said. “It was little bit of disbelief. My forehead started to get really hot and I got a little dizzy.”
After catching his breath, he kept flipping through Neumiller’s collection and said he found “hit after hit.” There were around 50 comics which were worth between $200 to 300 each.
Some gems included an $8,000 original edition of Tales to Astonish #27 from 1959 -- which is famed for the first appearance of Ant-Man. Alongside that was a $700 vintage edition of Journey into Mystery #73 from 1952, which introduced a forerunner for the Spider-Man character.
Neumiller laughed, saying, “and they almost made it to the garbage can.”
The comics are now locked away in a safe-deposit box while the pair try and find some buyers for the comics.
They are currently in the process of getting the comics “slabbed” which is when they’re sent to a Certified Guaranty Company which will assign it a value before it’s vacuumed into a plastic case.
