A comical way to turn £50,000 into £500: Artist makes papier mache sculpture out of rare Avengers comics without realising

An artist has constructed “the most expensive papier mache sculpture ever made” after unwittingly using vintage Avengers comics worth up to £50,000 as his building materials.

Andrew Vickers thought it was his lucky day when he spotted a box on a skip overflowing with comics from the 1960s. He thought the old issues of The Avengers would help create a 6ft sculpture for a superheroes exhibition in Sheffield.

It was only when comic expert Steve Eyre saw the statue – by now dipped in glaze – that he realised the situation.

Unaware of what he was destroying, Mr Vickers started at the top of the pile he found in the Sheffield skip. The end result is The Paper Boy – a sculpture worth no more than £500.

Mr Eyre thought the total cost of the comics was at least £30,000 but could be as high as £50,000. He said: “On the inside right leg there was a cover of Avengers number one. I’ve got a copy of that, worth well over £10,000. Then I started looking, there are six comics that together would be worth, even in the condition you can see, £20,000. As a collector it does not bear thinking about.”