For over 50 years, Christine Farrell quietly amassed comics across a wide spectrum of artists and genres. The Burlington, Vermont native owned a popular local comic shop in the city, named Earth Prime Comics, but otherwise collected mostly in obscurity. By the 1980s, a decade into her habit, she had about 8,000 comics piled to the ceiling in a bedroom; by the 2020s, she had some 30,000 books.
“Everybody needs an outlet of some kind or other,” Farrell told the Associated Press in 1983. “You project yourself into a fantasy world where the superhero always wins. It’s an escape.”
What marked Farrell out as a collector, though, was her complete set of every DC comic issue from 1935 onwards—a collection she built up from 1970 to 2007. She was the first person ever to achieve such a feat; the publisher even reached out to her when it was unable to reproduce specific ones.
Now, following her death in April this year, Farrell’s legendary collection is up for sale at Heritage Auctions, where it could rake in hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Detective Comics #38 (1940). Photo courtesy of Heritage Auctions.
Significantly, the auction features a handful of first-edition issues. Chief among them is Farrell’s copy of Superman No. 1 (1938), which effectively kicked off the superhero genre, currently bidding at $17,500 (a copy of this landmark issue fetched $1.6 million at auction last year). Additionally, there are her editions of 1935’s New Fun Comics No. 1, the very first DC comic book ever produced, and 1940’s Double Action Comics No. 2, of which there are only seven extant copies.
“Her dedication was simply remarkable,” said Lon Allen, the auction house’s vice president, in a statement. “She did most of this pre-internet! Now, you could put that collection together in several years if you had the money. But back then, tracking down every book took real devotion. And she did not own a single graded or certified book. They were in mylar sleeves, in boxes, sometimes in piles. It was clear that she just wanted to read these books, no matter how many thousands of dollars they were worth.”
New Fun Comics #1 (1935). Photo courtesy of Heritage Auctions.
The auctioneer also noted that Farrell’s comics were not only rare—such as the third issue of Detective Comics (1937), of which only 17 copies have been authenticated by the Certified Guaranty Company—but most remain in good quality. Among these are a copy of All-Star Comics #3 (1940), which featured the first appearance of superhero team Justice Society of America (now bidding from $4,100), and All-Flash #6 (1942), CGC’s highest-ever graded copy (from $1,450).
At the moment, the star lot remains Action Comics #1 (1938), which is bidding from $100,000. The prized issue, which introduced Superman to the world and launched a golden age for the industry, hasn’t just been a holy grail for comic collectors, but downright valuable. In May, Heritage Auctions sold one copy for a whopping $6 million, now the world’s most expensive comic book.
Action Comics #1 (1938). Photo courtesy of Heritage Auctions.
The auction’s other highlights include key pages from Bernie Wrightson’s Swamp Thing No. 1 (1972) and Frank Miller’s Batman: The Dark Knight Returns No. 4 (1986)—both currently bidding from five-figure sums. Heritage Auctions will offer more books from Farrell’s collection through 2025, continuing a sale that begun in September with the auction of New Comics No. 1 (1935), which fetched nearly $8,000.