Possible Million-Dollar Comic Collection Spared in Fatal Fire. Heritage Auction Galleries will sell the comic books at auction.

(click on title for video for the ABC 5 news site)

This is a sad story.
A Minneapolis house fire last year that took a man's life, spared his comic book collection that could be worth $1 million.




Gary Dahlberg was killed in that fire last July. His collection contained classics like the first-ever Spiderman, which alone could be worth up to $50,000.



Firefighters said the house was cluttered. Some called Dahlberg a hoarder, but Gary was a collector.



His friend David Saari, who also collected comic books, says Dahlberg was very careful with his collection.



Heritage Auction Galleries will sell the comic books at auction. They say the collection could be worth $1 million. The money will go to Dahlberg's estate.

Spider-Man’s first comic sells for $1.1 million on March 9th, 2011

Stephen Fishler, the CEO of ComicConnect.com, said that this sale of “Amazing Fantasy” #15 is a record for the Silver Age of comics from the late 1950s and early 1960s. “The sale of this book crushed all previous records. Up until today’s $1.1 million sale, the record sales price of a comic book from this era was $250,000.”



Fishler first acquired the book 25 years ago, and sold it for $2,500. He later acquired and sold it again for $140,000 in 2000. Fishler also created a widely-accepted grading scale in the years since (driving the prices of highly graded comics skyward), and this book is ranked as a 9.6 out of 10.



“The buyer of this amazing comic wanted to own the very best,” said ComicConnect.com partner Vincent Zuzolo. “The Amazing Fantasy #15 – 9.6 is the definition of the very best.”