Megan was cleaning out her grandmother’s house in Los Angeles a few years ago when she found trash bags full of old comics. They belonged to her father, who’d worked as a paperboy in rural Maine during the Great Depression. As a teenager in the 1930s, he’d spent his earnings buying comics fresh off the rack. One stack he bought for $3 would eventually change his daughter’s life. She called Travis Landry from Retro Games Plus to take a look. The first bag was impressive. The second bag made Landry’s jaw drop. Inside was Detective Comics #27 from May 1939. The first appearance of Batman. It wasn’t in perfect condition. The comic was graded CGC 4.0, with a detached top staple, wear and tears on the front cover, and spine issues. But none of that mattered. Just having it was enough. “I would say conservatively, at an auction for this one comic, you’re going to be in the range of $200,000 to $300,000,” Landry told Megan. Her knees buckled. The collection, which Landry dubbed “The Paperboy Collection,” also included a prestigious run of Action Comics, Detective Comics #31 (which introduced the Batplane), and Platinum Age rarities. After the paperboy’s family moved from Maine to a dry desert town in California, the comics had been stored away. The stable climate preserved them in extraordinary original condition for nearly 90 years. The auction happened on April 22, 2025, at Rago Auctions in Lambertville, New Jersey. Detective Comics #27 sold for $683,000. The entire collection brought in $1,317,280. Megan split the money with her siblings and other family members. Detective Comics #27 is one of the holy grails of comic collecting. There are only four CGC 4.0 copies in existence, with just 20 graded higher. Higher-grade copies have sold for well over a million dollars. A CGC 7.0 copy sold for $1.83 million in February 2026. Before sending the comics off to be graded, Landry did something most collectors would consider insane: he actually read Detective Comics #27 and #31. “I know some collectors might think I’m crazy, but I did read them before sending them off to be graded,” he said. “I had to. They’re comics, and they’re meant to be read.” According to a MagnifyMoney survey of over 1,500 collectors, 83% believe their collections will pay off someday. Nearly six in ten Americans collect something, spending an average of $6,000 on their hobby. Most never see returns like this. The comments on Landry’s video were full of people sharing their own discovery stories. One person wrote about finding their dad’s baseball card collection from the 1950s in their grandparents’ attic: “A Hank Aaron rookie, lots of Mickey Mantles, a Roberto Clemente rookie, and much more. I couldn’t believe it.” Another said, “I actually gasped when he revealed the Detective Comics #27. What a treasure. And such a sweet lady. Her dad is taking care of her one last time.” The paperboy probably never imagined his $3 investment would turn into over half a million dollars. Still, he held onto those comics through the Depression, a cross-country move, and decades of storage. Eighty years later, they made his daughter a millionaire. The post Paperboy bought comics in the 1930s. His daughter found them and became a millionaire. appeared first on Upworthy.