Robert Letscher fell in love with comic books as a child and always had a particular fondness for Marvel Comics' X-Men — "mutants" born with special powers they use to fight evil.

The 55-year-old Mesa resident's collection includes the first 1963 issue of X-Men, when key characters Professor X, Magneto, Cyclops, Marvel Girl, Beast, Angel and Iceman were introduced.

"It was the first appearance of the concept of mutants, the first appearance of their arch-villain Magneto," Letscher said. "The Professor, the leader of the team, he was in that book. Cyclops who shoots the eye beams, he debuted. All these colorful characters all appeared in this singular book."

That single comic book, which had an original cover price of 12 cents and is what Letscher calls the "Holy Grail" for X-Men fans, could sell for $100,000 in an online auction sponsored by New York-based commicconnect.com. The auction begins Monday, Aug. 19, and is scheduled to go through Sept. 13.

Letscher is parting with his beloved X-Men collection due to an unexpected illness and medical bills.

"With all my health struggles, this is the time. It will be a nice nest egg to pay the medical bills and support my family," said Letscher, an outgoing father of two who speaks with a Texas twang.

Letscher's collection of 555 X-Men comic books is worth at least a half million dollars, according to comicconnect.com chief operating officer Vincent Zurzolo. The estimate came as a shock even to Letscher, who has made a career out of collecting and trading comic books.

"He's got the best registry set X-Men collection in the world. So that's quite significant," Zurzolo said, referring to a third-party registry sponsored by comic book graders from the Florida-based Certified Guaranty Company.

The better a vintage comic book's condition, the more it is worth.

"There are a lot of high-grade (condition) books that are not easy to find that he has. ...This is just very, very impressive."

Dumbfounded by diagnosis

In early 2018, Letscher developed night sweats, and the 10-mile hikes he regularly did with his wife, Cathy, 44, were getting increasingly difficult. Letscher dismissed the symptoms as age-related. When his temperature spiked to 104 one night, Cathy forced him to get medical attention.

The diagnosis: Lymphoma.

"I couldn't get my head around it," Letscher said. "I was thinking it had to be a mistake."

He got treatment and went into remission, but late last year doctors discovered that he had esophageal cancer.

In April, he underwent esophageal resection surgery at Dignity Health Chandler Regional Medical Center. The operation included removing most of the esophagus and creating a new esophagus with part of his stomach, said his surgeon, Dr. Chirag Patel of the Norton Thoracic Institute.

Letscher is now not supposed to lie flat due to the risk of fluids getting into his airways, so he needs to make sure he's always propped up on at least two pillows while he sleeps.

"With a normal esophagus we have these mechanisms that are built in to prevent from aspirating. Aspirating means your gastric contents going into your airways. We have these muscles that close off and prevent that from happening," Patel said. "When we remove your esophagus, we've taken all that away and you are at a higher risk for aspirating."

Letscher's cancer had spread to the lymph nodes. The five-year survival rate for that level of esophageal cancer is typically 25 to 30% if patients complete their prescribed treatments, Patel said.

"It was a good thing he decided to have surgery," Patel said. "It would have been non-operable if he had waited just another two, three or four months."

Letscher's tight-knit family includes daughter TayLynn, 19, a student at Mesa Community College, and Nicole, 9, who is in fourth grade. TayLynn has been helping her dad out with his Key Comics eBay store during his illness. Both TayLynn and Cathy accompany Letscher on all his chemotherapy appointments.

Cathy works in food services at a local resort and the family has always been covered by her company health insurance. Her husband is grateful for that. He's seen some of the hospital bills — one stay was $147,000. Without insurance, he said, the cancer would have bankrupted his family.

Still, between paying their annual deductible, plus copays and other bills insurance doesn't cover, Letscher's out-of-pocket medical expenses have totaled between $20,000 and $30,000 since last year, he estimates. It's a far more reasonable cost than it would have been without insurance. But it was unexpected.

"Everyone in our house has been sad. He was so proud of his (X-Men) collection," Cathy said.

"I don't have a 401(k). I don't have a pension or an IRA or stocks, or bonds. All I have basically is the X-Men collection that I've been improving all my life," Letscher said. "I'll have peace of mind that if my struggle is unsuccessful against the cancer, at least I did provide for my family and they are going to be taken care of financially in my absence."

'The most special thing I owned'

The first time Letscher's parents ever took him to a comic book store, he paid $4.50 for a copy of issue No. 14 of X-Men.

"Number 14 is particularly sentimental. It's a key because it's the first appearance of the Sentinels. The Sentinels are these big robots that were created to destroy all mutants," Letscher said.

He eventually sold that copy for $65 and replaced it with a more pristine one. In those early days, Letscher had to rely on his own judgement on value. Once CGC began grading and encapsulating comic books in 2000, assessing comic books' authenticity and quality became more a more uniform process.

When he packed up No. 14 to ship for the auction, Letscher cried. CGC graded his copy at 9.8 out of 10. As far as Letscher knows, it's the highest grade for X-Men No. 14 in existence.

"I always knew it would be the most special thing I owned," he said.

Some single comic book copies are so valuable that they command upwards of $1 million (for instance, the first appearance of Superman), Letscher said. He stresses he's not in that league, though he's done pretty well on a shoestring budget.

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Wolverine is 'the coolest,' he says

Growing up, Letscher's family moved a lot and he relied on comic books for company.

"It was almost like seeing a little movie, but better because your imagination is filling in in between the panels," Letscher said. "To me, my comics were like my friends."

Letscher's mother was an antiques dealer and he often traveled with her to flea markets and garage sales. That's when he discovered comics from before his era, with cover prices of 10 cents or 12 cents. He then found out those comics were commanding $1 from collectors. Soon, he was on the hunt for odd jobs so that he could buy and sell more.

"I wasn't one of those people who trashed them or rolled them up," he said. "I always tried to keep them in great shape. To me they were always something very special."

Cast as outsiders, the X-Men are often judged harshly by society. Zurzolo said they were a byproduct of the 1960s counterculture. But they did not really become popular until Wolverine joined the group in 1975, he said.

"With issue 94 they created a new team of X-Men. That's when Wolverine first joined the X-Men. And Robert has an incredibly high-grade copy of 94. It could hit somewhere between $15,000 and $20,000," Zurzolo said.

Letscher's face lights up when asked about Wolverine, who has healing powers, explosive rage and retractable claws. Wolverine is "the coolest," he said.

"I like everything about Wolverine, including his hair-do, costume, attitude," he said. "He is very no-nonsense and down-to-earth."

Bittersweet though it is, Letscher predicts his X-Men comics will continue to appreciate.

"I can't complain about the results I'll get now," he said. "But in my soul I complain because I still love those comics."

Reach the reporter at Stephanie.Innes@gannett.com or at 602-444-8369. Follow her on Twitter @stephanieinnes

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