Rare Spider-Man comic book on sale for $35K in Western Pa.

A local comic book owner made an amazing find: Amazing Fantasy 15, the first appearance of Spider-Man and a rare gem in the comic world.

Now, he’s selling it for $35,000.

That price might be a bargain given the fair condition of the comic book. A pristine copy once sold for $3.6 million.

Todd McDevitt, owner of New Dimension Comics, has been in the comic business for 38 years. He started selling comics in the hallways of his high school. NDC has six locations: five in and around Pittsburgh and one in Ohio.

McDevitt, 55, of Ellwood City, said he bought the rare Amazing Fantasy 15 this month from the wife of the original owner, along with other books from what’s known as the Silver Age of comics in the ‘50s and ‘60. He did not disclose what he paid.

“That’s all I needed to know,” he said. “That’s a good time period. Even if they’re not great caliber comic books, I would still want them — I would buy them either way.”

Other issues of the Amazing Fantasy anthology exist, but there’s only one really good one, according to McDevitt.

While he was looking through late owner’s collection, he hit the jackpot.

“I’m like, ‘There’s no way,’” he said. “I open the binder, and there it is staring me in the face.”

It’s unknown how many were originally printed or how many still exist, according to McDevitt and Joshua Thomas, store manager of NDC’s Ellwood City location.

Spider-Man is the tale of Peter Parker, an orphaned high school student raised by his aunt an uncle. He is bitten by a radioactive spider and becomes an angst-ridden superhero with the proportionate strength of a spider. The story has spawned popular Marvel movies and numerous iterations of comic books.

“Kids when they got those books, they paid 10 cents, 12 cents, 15 cents apiece for them,” said Thomas, 35, of Fombell. “That may have been their whole allowance for a week or a month.”

Many older comic books have been read over and over again, he said, and are often not in very good condition.

“The supply is a lot smaller than the modern stuff,” Thomas said. “It’s just a lot harder to find — a lot more valuable.”

Copies of the Amazing Fantasy 15 comic book, which came out in 1962, are very rare to come by, Thomas said. This one is only the first or second one he’s ever seen or heard of since he started working at NDC in 2012.

“Something like that would probably be more like a holy grail-type item,” he said. “It is — especially with this book — such a prized possession.”

Comic books of similar infrequency command similar prices, like the $35,000 price that was put on this copy of Amazing Fantasy 15, he said.

McDevitt said there’s a chance it could be worth a little more, but he decided to price it there anyway. Since the first time Spider-Man was introduced to the world in 1962, there have been over 900 different Spider-Man comics published, McDevitt said.

“Obviously, Spider-Man has resonated with people for a very, very long time,” he said.

He’s seen a few copies of Amazing Fantasy 15 over the years, but he said they’re “definitely trickier to find.”

“There were probably hundreds of thousands of that produced, but … back then, nobody was thinking comics were something to save or would have value or anything like that,” McDevitt said.

In years past, McDevitt has sold high-priced comics, but none that he can remember very recently. There was an Action Comics #7 that went for approximately $50,000, he said.

“It’s not something you do every day,” McDevitt said.

A standard new comic book can range between $3.99 and $9.99, depending on how many pages there are and how fancy the colors or covers are.

Thomas said NDC sees a lot of regulars come in, although the store does ship around the world. Customers like to see the new releases every Wednesday, McDevitt said.

Collectors looking to purchase high-priced comic books will come in and look at the condition of individual pages, Thomas said. Depending on what’s going on in the pop culture world, different comic books will become more popular.

Hot right now, according to Thomas, is Marvel’s new Ultimate Spider-Man, which came out last week and sold out on day one at the Ellwood City store.

McDevitt said over the years, the amount of diversity in new published material has continued to increase.

“There’s definitely a comic book for everybody, so the trick … was always to try to find a match.”