Pacific Book Auction Galleries (PBA) in San Francisco specializes in book auctions, but they’d never sold a comic book collection before the late Wayne Martin’s collection came up for sale. Though none of the comics were graded by CGC, or are particularity rare, they still fetched impressive sums and exceeded the auction house’s expectations.
According to Book Source Magazine, Martin was “an avid collector of autographs, books and ephemera from many fields.” The auction house seemed surprised at the high level of attention the collection warranted, noting there were telephone participants, online bidders and bidders who registered proxy bids before the auction.
The crowning piece of the collection was a very fine copy of the rare 35 cent variant of Marvel’s 1977 Star Wars #1 by Roy Thomas, which sold for $7,200. The main edition of the comic was listed at 30 cents, as Marvel tested price increases in limited runs before applying it to the whole line. Approximately 1,500 copies of the 35 cent variant are believed to exist.
A pristine copy of the first printing of Kevin Eastman and Peter Laird’s
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles from 1984 was sold for $3,900. Only 3,000 copies were printed, and it is hard to find in good condition.
(Click any image for larger view.)
There were many “Golden Age” titles in the collection including multiple lots of
Detective Comics, Action Comics and
Sensational Comics, but the highlight was two very good National Comics Publications issues of
The Flash from the late 1940s( #101 and #104). They fetched $2,700.
The most unique item in the collection was Martin’s
All in Color for a Dime, by Dick Lupoff, which had been personalized with autographs and sketches from more than 100 comic luminaries which appeared in the book, including Stan Lee, Jack Kirby, Will Eisner, Marion Zimmer Bradley, R. Crumb, Chris Claremont, John Byrne, Jaime Hernandez, Marv Wolfman, Sergio Aragone, Art Spiegelman, Rob Liefeld, Daniel Clowes, Adrian Tomine, Steve Leiaoha, P. Craig Russell, Arthur Adams, and Charles Vess.
Other books of note include a Detective Comics #142 (second appearance of the Riddler) which sold for $1,2000; a Giant Size X-Men #1 which sold for $1,080; and Myster in Space Issues #1 -3 which sold for $1,020.
