Gray Hulk

I stopped at the gas station to get a soda this morning, and the guy behind the counter likes to comment on my shirts. Today he saw my Marvel Comics T-shirt and said, "Hey, Marvel Comics, cool. Here's some trivia for you, what color was the Incredible Hulk when he was first introduced?"

"He was gray in the first comics," I said.

"That's right," he said. "Cool. Not a lot of people know that. I remember when I was a kid and I got that comic. He was butt ugly gray. I thought it was so much cooler when they made him green. When he was gray it seemed like an error or something. He was so ugly. I still have that comic book."

"Really?" I said, not really believing him. I've heard a few people claiming to have Spider-man issue #1, only to discover that it was a Spider-man #1 from the '90s, which is totally worthless. You could get more for it from a restaurant to wrap their fish and chips in than you could from a comic collector. "Wow," I was humoring him here, "A first appearance Incredible Hulk would be worth a fortune."

I had my head down, because I was typing my pin number into the machine at this point, but the man across the counter had gone eerily silent. When I looked up, he had a sort of shocked look on his face. "Really?" he asked. "You think it's worth something?"

"Sure," I said.

"I tried selling it before, but nobody was interested in it. I'll have to take a look at it again, I guess."

His reaction makes me think that he actually does have an Incredible Hulk issue #1. A quick Google search before writing this said that it could be worth around $18,000 or more. I wonder if I'll see that guy working at the gas station next week or not.