A copy of Captain America Comics No. 1 that spent nearly 80 years stored in a cardboard box has sold for $716,750 at auction.
The 1941 comic came from the Merrimack Valley Collection, a recently discovered trove of Golden Age books bought off the rack by their original owner and kept in the same box ever since.
Graded 9.0 by CGC, it was the top lot at Heritage Auctions’ Comic Books Signature Auction in Dallas from September 24 to 26, according to Overstreet.
The issue is one of the most important in comics history. It introduced Captain America and Bucky, debuted the Red Skull, and features the famous cover of Cap punching Hitler.
What surprised Heritage most was how well the books had survived decades of storage.
“For an original-owner collection that spent the last 75 or 80 years in a cardboard box, the condition of the books was stunning,” said Heritage vice president Aaron White speaking to Overstreet.
The sale helped push Heritage’s comic book auction to $8.4 million, with its comic art auction adding a further $9.7 million. Jerry Robinson’s original cover art for Detective Comics No. 68, showing Two-Face’s first cover appearance from 1942, sold for $475,000.
