If you're dying of cold, a match and a Chippendale chair are just as effective as a match and a chopped-up log. If you're dying of thirst and there's water to be had, a Ming vase and a jam jar do a very similar job, and will be equally worthless if you drop them on the floor.

Paintings are another case in point, as we were reminded recently by an artist who had found the VAT man's interest in her activities increasingly irksome.

"I'd be charging hundreds for my paintings, and what could I claim back?" she asked. "A few quid for a canvas and half a dozen tubes of paint?"

But when it comes to ultimate fragility, nothing is as vulnerable as paper. A single sheet of old card might be rubbish to most people or worth £15,000 to a Spurs fan who recognises it as a 1901 Cup Final programme.

It really can be as knife-edge as that, which is why last month's sale in New York of two long-ago comic books raised eyebrows all over the world.

The story also appealed because while most of us are pretty sure we've never inherited a Stradivarius or a Rembrandt along the way – not even the kind of Stradivarius or Rembrandt Tommy Cooper used to talk about – old magazines and comics are the kind of thing we might just be able to lay our hands on.

And the hope for collectors of comics everywhere must be that the million dollars paid for Action Comics number 1, featuring the first appearance of Superman, and the 900,000 dollars that landed Detective Comics number 27, in which Batman made his debut, will raise prices right down the line.

Both comics dated from the late Thirties, June 1938 and May 1939 respectively, and cost 10 cents each. And since World War II had little impact on the United States' mighty state-of-the-art colour presses, Superman, Batman and all the super-heroes that followed them have had the field very much to themselves continuously since then.

You're a very lucky reader if you have any comics from the very earliest days, but you never know. A good few of us have wartime memories of GIs giving us little presents as kids, and it's fair to assume that the odd 10 cents comic came our way, along with the chocolate and chewing gum.

And as the golden age of US comics lasted from 1938 right through to 1955, you're not going back into ancient history, even if it might sometimes feel like it.

You're hardly likely to get a million for your 1955 Superman, but when it comes to raising the bar, think of this: in 1995, the same copy of Action Comics number 1 sold for 150,000 dollars, and in 1999 another one, in poorer condition, made 317,000 dollars.

It's a super, soaring story – as you might expect of a guy like Superman.