Richard Schaen, a retired electronics technician, has sold his copy of the first issue of ‘The Amazing Spider-Man’ to help contribute towards his estranged daughter Jane Schaen’s wedding.
He originally bought the comic book in a Columbus shop in March 1963 for only 12 cents. Schaen was able to sell it on Comicclink.com for US $7900 (£5000) – even though the condition was listed as 6.5 on a scale of 10. Perfect copies can sell for up to three or four times the price Schaen was able to bag.
Schaen told the Cleveland Plain Dealer, that he “gave [his] daughter a promissory note for the money with a picture of the Spider-Man comic, which [they] can use to pay for a big part of the catering for her reception.”
Richard Schaen, 69, has an entire box dedicated to storing and protecting his comic books; some of which include Superman, Batman, Flash, and Daredevil – Daredevil having been sold on Tuesday for $1600.
He tells the Cleveland Plain Dealer that he first “started reading comics before [he] was in first grade…That was in the 1950s. My father was sick in the hospital and my mother would take my brother, sister and I to visit him. On the way she would stop at a drugstore and we would each buy three, 10-cent comics.”
However, his hobby was put to rest as his daughter Jane was born in 1981.
Image via eBay
