Now I’ve cleaned out my attic, closets, and old comic boxes from time to time. But never have I been so lucky as George Toman. George, a resident in Willow Springs, IL, was cleaning out his attic when he came across a box of old comics that he’d collected during the ‘60s. The box had been stored at his mother’s house since he was a kid.
Toman took his box of comics to Chimera’s Comics in neighboring La Grange to see what, if anything, his old comics were worth. Imagine the shock when comic shop ower Carmelo Chimera told him that his copy of ‘Amazing Fantasy’ #15 was worth more than $10,000!
“It was quite a surprise,” Toman said of the event. “I was in disbelief.”
The comic shop owner was also a bit taken aback. “People bring in comic books all the time,” he says. “Rarely do we get to give someone as good of news as that.”
When Chimera and his partner Steve Brown were digging through Toman’s box of comics and found the issue of ‘Amazing Fantasy’, which first published in 1962 and features the first appearance of Spider-Man, they thought it was a reprint.
“I was blown away,” Brown said. “I’ve worked in comic book stores for seven years and I’ve never seen one as great as this come in.”
Other copies of ‘Amazing Fantasy’ #15 have sold for as much as $1.2 million, Toman’s copy isn’t worth as much due to its condition. Toman was a kid when he bought his comics and not a collector so his books were stored loose in a box without the use of protective bags and boards in for over forty years. “It’s in remarkably good condition for how it’s been stored all these years,” Chimera says. Chimera’s Comics is currently offering the copy for sale at $12,000.
Toman was just happy that the comic shop didn’t rip him off. Chimera even joked about the thought, saying: “Sure, Steve could have offered him $20 for it and then kept it for himself and not even told me! But that’s not the kind of shop we want to run here. Comic books are all about self-sacrifice and doing the right thing.”
After hearing this news, I’m inclined to dig through my long boxes or maybe see if my parents have any of my old stuff stashed away anywhere.
