Wisconsin Comic Nerd Achieves $500,000 Last Laugh

Mike Paulus |

Heritage Auction Galleries in Dallas, Wisconsin will be auctioning off Ralph Chicorel’s 110-issue comic book collection. The entire collection is expected to net $500,000. So, to anyone who might tease a 78-year-old man for hording comic books his entire life … he wins.

Some of the collection’s more notable items include ''Batman'' No. 1 and ''Marvel Comics'' No. 1. But the big boy – a comic book expected to fetch around $100,000 – is ''Marvel Mystery Comics'' No. 9. This one is apparently very scarce and is sought after for its cover battle between the Human Torch and the Sub-Mariner.

Who the hell is the Sub Mariner? He’s kind of the original AquaMan – a guy in Speedos with super-strength and “aquatic abilities.” He was one of the very first superheroes and in the Golden Age of comics, he fought super villains and the Nazis in as phallic a manner as possible.

What’s crazy is that this isn’t the first time Chicorel has auctioned off a collection. WCCO.com says ...

  • Needing money for [a move to Wisconsin from Detroit in 1968], Chicorel ended up parting with the first half of his comic collection for $3,500, he said. When he sold those 900 or so comics, he thought that was his entire collection.
  • ''The comic book craze was just beginning that year and I didn't know it would skyrocket,'' said Chicorel, who said two guys ended up bidding on the comics.

Is there anything like that nowadays? Should we be collecting Hannah Montana DVDs? Probably not. Besides age, one thing that makes these comics so rare is that many of the really old comic books got lost to WWII-era paper drives.