Holy Profit Motive, Batman! -- Comic Book Worth A Dime In 1940 Nets $4,500

The price is right there on the cover of the 1940 comic book, as prominent as the muscle-bound Batman and the goofy-grinning, hard-charging Robin: 10 CENTS.

But that was then. This is the '90s.

Corey Durrell of Seattle sold the dime comic book for $4,500 this week. He probably could have gotten more by circulating it on the East Coast, but it still was a nice profit considering the comic could easily have landed in the recycling bin.

Durrell's mother was cleaning out her companion's attic last month and found the comic book, which marks the introduction of Robin the Boy Wonder. She wondered what it might be worth today, and her son quickly volunteered to find out.

Yet Durrell, whose home is decorated with antique furniture from the '50s, had no idea how lucrative, how active and how bizarre the market for aging superheroes is until he began talking to dealers.

"I knew it was worth something when I started out, but, basically, it was just a comic book to me," he said.

Dealers told him the comic book would be worth as much as $7,500 retail. He took out a tiny classified ad asking for $6,000.

The buyer, a Bothell comic-book collector/investor, Shaun Clancy, offered $4,500 cash - right now. Durrell toyed with the idea of expanding his search for buyers, but took the offer, reasoning that the sure return was worth it.

Durrell kept only a quarter of the payment, giving his mother's companion the rest.

Well-maintained vintage comic books, especially superhero tales from the so-called Golden Age of the late '30s and '40s, are hotly traded commodities and show no sign of cooling.

According to the "Overstreet Comic Book Price Guide," the industry bible, this particular comic book was worth $120 in excellent condition in 1973 but could go for $26,000 today.

Durrell's comic, titled, "The Sensational Character Find of 1940 . . . Robin - Boy Wonder!" is considered to be in "very good" or "fine" condition. Its cover is spared of doodles, wrinkles or tears, but the binding is a little frayed and curled.

The comic book, Detective No. 38, is especially valuable because it is the first appearance of Robin, a key and enduring character. (The Detective series is at No. 705 and still going).

Clancy, 29, has been a comic-book aficionado since he was 8 years old and spends about 20 hours a week searching for Golden Age comics. He says he is motivated partly by his love for comics and the excitement of searching and speculating.

"And about 20 percent of it is being able to say, `Look what I have,' but you'll find that in any type of collecting," he said.

Clancy said Durrell, unlike many people who find old comic books, knew what he was doing and got a good price.

But Clancy said that with his connections among comic-book collectors, he can sell it for $6,000 tomorrow if he wants - or watch it appreciate at a 15- to 18-percent annual rate.

Golden Age comics, often criticized as youth-corrupting schlock in their heyday, are the most expensive today, primarily because they are scarce.

During World War II, U.S. kids surrendered their comic books to help paper drives. That destroyed much of the late 1930s and mid-1940s supply. Clancy estimates there could be fewer than 100 well-maintained copies of Robin's coming-out party left in existence.

The Golden Age began with the debut of Superman in 1938. The popularity of superheroes continued through the early 1940s, but lost steam when they were replaced in the 1950s by horror, detective and Western genres.

It is not just scarcity that is driving today's market but also the nostalgia and loyalty the characters can generate.

"You have the scarcity of the books combined with millions of people who grew up as kids reading comic books as their main source of entertainment," said Robert Overstreet, who has published his annual guide for almost 25 years. "Batman comic books in good condition are rare, but there are rare Porky Pig comic books that aren't worth much."

As odd as the Durrell-Clancy transaction may seem, it's peanuts compared with recent sales of the top comic books in mint condition.

Detective Comics No. 27, which features the first appearance of Batman in 1939, recently was sold to a collector for $125,000, said Overstreet.

Then there are sales from the so-called "Mile-High Collection," an unusually pristine set that often sells for prices three times higher than normal collectible editions. A Capt. Marvel comic from that collection recently sold for $176,000, he said.

Clancy said an antique collector purchased the entire contents of a bedroom at a Seattle estate sale for $1,000 this year and only later found, buried under a stack of newspapers and magazines, a box of old comic books he eventually sold for about $60,000.

Clancy will not discuss the value of his comic collection but keeps them locked in a safety-deposit box. He carries around color copies of them, not the originals.

Batman prices in general have been boosted by Hollywood's high-profile Caped Crusader movies that began in 1989. And the comic introducing Robin became more valuable when the last Batman film did the same.

Durrell, 41, recalls owning a few comics as a kid but admits he was never a big Batman fan.

He is now.