A UK collector who paid just £20 for a box of comics at a car boot sale discovered years later that it contained dozens of exceptionally rare Superman editions. After remaining forgotten in his loft, 47 copies of the 1988 comic ‘This Island Bradman’ sold for a combined £63,440, including buyer’s fees, at an auction in Surrey on November 4, 2025. The sale, conducted by Ewbank’s Auctions, nearly doubled the collection’s pre-sale estimate of £35,000, according to the auction house and its published results.
The 47 lots collectively realised £63,440, including buyer’s fees, while the auction house’s later reporting put the hammer total at almost £50,000. Ewbank’s catalogue records show that individual copies sold for four-figure sums in many cases, with the most expensive example reaching £2,600 including fees. Because the hammer price is the amount at which the auctioneer sells an item, whereas the final total including buyer’s fees is higher, the distinction matters.
The auction ultimately exceeded expectations.
Ewbank’s estimated that around 200 copies may have been produced, with more than half distributed to guests. It sold for £750, according to his account to Ewbank’s. The comic subsequently appeared on the platform again with a £30,000 asking price, highlighting the gap that can exist between a completed sale and a seller’s hoped-for valuation. The comics varied in condition, with some professionally graded examples reaching CGC 9.6 out of 10.
Because of its private origins, the involvement of established creators added to the appeal of an edition that was already unusual.
Describing himself to Ewbank’s as a collector of ephemera rather than comics, he said he had no idea what he had bought. However, a member of the clean-up crew is said to have kept them, preserving a group of comics that subsequently passed through other hands before eventually reaching the car boot sale. Ewbank’s comic specialist Tom Francis-Duma said the collection presented a rare opportunity for dedicated Superman collectors to acquire an edition that had been difficult to find.
He initially had little reason to suspect that the comics were valuable. The eight-page story was written by David Levin, with artwork by Curt Swan and Angelo Torres. Swan was a major Superman artist whose work helped define the character’s comic-book appearance for decades. The precise original print run has not been definitively established. After the event, the remaining copies were reportedly supposed to be discarded. After researching the comics, the collector began investigating their potential value. He learnt about professional comic grading and tested the market by listing one copy on eBay. An asking price, however, does not establish what a comic is actually worth. Such grades indicate exceptionally well-preserved copies, although grading scores alone do not determine the final market price.
The collector, who has not been publicly identified, purchased the box roughly a decade earlier from a seller at a car boot sale following a house clearance.