The letters column in the February 1960 comic book Superman No. 135 carried the following request:

Dear Editor,

Insomuch as your office can’t supply back-numbers of your various Superman magazines, would it be possible for you to print my address so that readers who have old issues can swap or sell them to me?

To which Superman publisher DC Comics, Inc., responded:

Sorry, but old issues of used magazines are known disease-carriers, so we can’t encourage such swapping.

Looking back, this wasn’t a totally ignorant counter on the part of DC’s editors. Now Sotheby’s presents “DC Complete: The Ian Levine Collection,” a private sale comprising every issue of every DC Comics issue published from 1935 to the end of 2014. READ ON