In his decade of working construction and home
remodeling, David Gonzalez always dreamed of finding some hidden
treasure in the demolition work. He’d even put dollar bills in new walls
for folks to unearth in the future.
So he chalks up to karma the 1938 Action Comics #1 book he found amid old newspapers used to insulate a wall of a fixer-upper he was gutting in Elbow Lake, Minn. The old comic book,
from June 1938, features a new character named Superman lifting a car on
its cover...
The comic could have been worth more had it not been for a heated argument with one of his in-laws... When his wife’s aunt grabbed the comic book amid all the excitement of
the discovery, he grabbed it back and tore the back cover. Experts
downgraded the comic book’s condition to a 1.5 on a 10-point scale...
Still, it’s going for more than 10 times what Gonzalez paid for the abandoned house in Elbow Lake.. He and his wife went to the Grant County courthouse
and researched the owner, who told them a neighboring restaurant had
offered $10,000 to buy it. They planned to demolish the house and put in
a parking lot. “So I offered $100 more and got it for $10,100,” he said.
Video report at the StarTribune link. The comic
book sold at auction for $175,000.
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