Workman finds rare item worth £140,000 stuffed in wall but loses thousands after blunder | World | News
A construction worker found a rare comic book stuffed in a wall but made a single error which cost him thousands.
David Gonzalez, 44, from Hoffman, Minnesota, had always left little trinkets nestled in the insulation of the houses he remodelled so homeowners could find something in the future.
But in a twist of good fortune, he was the one making the discovery, in the wall of a property he’d just purchased.
It wasn’t just a scraggly dollar bill either. There was a comic collector’s dream sticking out like a sore thumb amidst old newspapers. “I knew it was worth money,” David told Star Tribune.
Vintage comic books can sell for astronomical sums of money. Last week, a near-perfect copy of 1963’s The Amazing Spider-Man #1 sold for an eye-watering $1.38 million at auction.
The item David discovered back in 2013 was a 1938 Action Comics #1 edition with its cover splashed with a brand-new hero called Superman. Needless to say, the dad-of-four didn’t anticipate quite how much it was set to land him.
David scurried off to auction and sold the vintage magazine for a whopping $175,000 (£138,000) to a “hardcore, golden age comic book collector,” said Stephen Fishler, CEO of online auction house Comic Connect. But little did he know, one mistake cost him an even bigger fortune.
A near-pristine edition of that specific comic can go for millions, with one ranking 8.5/10 on the scale raking in $3.25 million in April 2021.
David, however, was so excited at his discovery that he accidentally tore the cover as he picked it out of the debris in the wall.
Experts downgraded the comic all the way to just 1.5 on the scale instead of its potential score of 3.
While many Action Comics #1 comics get passed from buyer to buyer, this one was likely kept preserved by the insulation.
“That was a $75,000 tear,” Stephen revealed to a wincing David.
Despite the blunder, the workman has few regrets about ripping the front cover. “I am a humble working guy, so I didn’t get too excited when I found it with old newspapers stuffed in the walls,” he said.
The comic book even sold for more than fifteen times the price of the property David was renovating.
