Has anyone got any 60-year-old comic books lying around? A rare first edition of The Incredible Hulk comic book has sold for $490,000.
Created by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby, The Incredible Hulk comic series was first published in 1962. While the Marvel hero has commonly been associated with the colour green, the half-a-mil first edition comic depicts the character with his original grey skin tone.
According to legend, Marvel changed the colouring after the first issue due to the inconsistencies of printing colours onto the page. In addition to having the grey Hulk, the first-edition copy is made even rarer by its 9.0 Very Fine/Near Mint quality grading.
𝐂𝐫𝐚𝐳𝐲 𝐟𝐢𝐥𝐦 𝐟𝐚𝐜𝐭𝐬
The Hulk is only green because of a printer glitch. The original colour of the monster was grey but when the printer made a mistake and Hulk printed out green, Stan Lee really loved it.
Could you imagine Hulk not being green? pic.twitter.com/8rhkfNWJ2J
— Watersmeet (@WatersmeetVenue) June 18, 2020
The rare first-edition of Incredible Hulk #1 was bought by an anonymous, private collector for $490,000. Comic Connect, the auction site which handled the sale, has claimed that the sale broke a world record and is now holding the title of the most expensive copy of the first Hulk story ever sold.
According to COO of ComicConnect Vincent Zurzolo, “highly graded copies of Hulk No 1 are notoriously hard to find, due to the cheap paper used and the smudging of the grey colour on the front cover.” Speaking to the gigantic spike in the sale price, Zurzolo said that vintage comic issues in mint condition, such as The Incredible Hulk #1, would continue to grow in value.
“The new owner of this book now owns a special piece of American mythology that will continue to gain in value,” Zurzolo said. “It will be a cornerstone of his collectible investment portfolio. Hulk will only continue to get bigger with time, if you know what I mean.”
