Rare wartime comics sell for £15,600 at auction

A front cover of The Magic Comic as the 1939 bound collection sold at auction for more than seven times the expected price. Picture: PA

The Magic Comic was first published on July 22 1939 and ran for only 80 issues until January 25 1941.

Publisher DC Thomson stopped its production because of paper rationing following the outbreak of the Second World War.

It was estimated that the bound collection of the Magic Comic 1939, which features the first issues numbered one to 24, would have fetched more than £2,000.

However it sold for £15,600 at auction at Curr & Dewar Auctioneers of Dundee today, including a £2,600 buyer’s premium.

Auctioneer Steven Dewar said: “There was a lot of interest in it. It is one of those collecting markets that just shows how rare that comic was, and to have a whole run of numbers one-24 unbroken is a great draw and made all the difference to prospective buyers.”

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The collection was sold by a woman who had been clearing out her late father’s possessions.

It was bought by a man who lives abroad and is thought to be a collector.

Characters in the collection include Peter Piper, who looks very like DC Thomson comic character Oor Wullie, Koko the Pup and Sooty Snowball.

The auction house said there are thought to be only eight to 10 known copies of the first Magic Comic in existence.

In 2004 and 2005, number one issues were sold at auction for £1,331 and £1,925 respectively, while a number two issue sold for £558 in 2004.

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