AUBURN — Pity the fellow with the Avengers comic book. Had it been in pristine condition, it would have fetched $125,000 — the issue marked the first appearance of Spider-Man, you know.

But the copy was fire damaged, the outer edges blackened by flames and smoke. So instead of six figures, the man went home with $400.

Such is the nature of the pawn business.

The Ohio Valley Gold & Silver Refinery roadshow is in town this week and business is good.

“We’re slammed,” Field Manager Derik Overholser said. “There are 20 to 30 people waiting at any given time. We’ve been on a three-hour wait most of the day.”

On Wednesday afternoon, the lobby at the Fireside Inn was crammed with people holding boxes, bags and crates full of things that might be valuable. Almost everybody had coins they hoped to sell. Wheat pennies and buffalo nickels, Indian heads and liberty halves.

“We’re seeing a lot of coins,” Overholser said. “And a lot of jewelry.”

The room where they had set up looked like a treasure collector’s dream with tables everywhere heaped with stuff. There were Lionel trains, baseballs signed by the 1947 Boston Braves, weapons from just about every war in memory. On one table, gold chains, pocket watches and other treasures literally spilled from a box like a pirate chest.

A banjo here, Nazi memorabilia there.

“You never know what’s going to come through that door,” Overholser said. “One person could make the whole show by bringing in that one special thing.”

Seated together at a table and leaning over it, Joyce Michaud and Jennifer Zanca hoped they might have such treasures to sell.

Joyce brought in an old photo of a World War II soldier along with a letter from Abraham Lincoln to a grieving mother of five lost sons. She found them in a dump while looking for picture frames. She had no idea whether they were authentic or worthless.

That’s what buyer Aaron Hanover is for. He looked over the items very carefully, consulting a laptop computer now and then.

The news wasn’t great. Joyce didn’t leave the room with a pocket full of cash. Not for the photo and Lincoln letter, at any rate.

“If the letter was real,” Hancock said, holding it up so everyone could see, “it would be browned through. And it wouldn’t have Lincoln’s picture on it; it would have a presidential seal or something like that.”

Disappointing. But Joyce hadn’t expected much.

“It’ll be good to hang on a wall,” she said, taking the photo and letter back.

“And we learned something,” Jennifer said.

They weren’t finished. Jennifer had her own items to present to the buyer.

“We’ve got a box of goodies,” she said. Among them: an old salt shaker, a metal carriage with tiny riders, a few broaches that look very old indeed.

“Some of these things, I found at the farm,” said Jennifer, who lives at Bell Farms in Auburn.

Nothing there was worth big money, either. But while they were at the table, Jennifer and Joyce began to think of other things at home that might be valuable: vintage toys, the cannonball found in a field.

The really valuable stuff is rare. All those wheat pennies you kept in a jar are worth only a few cents apiece. A box containing thousands of them had already been collected.

“We see 20- to 30,000 of them a week,” Overholser said.

The buffalo head nickels don’t mean instant fortune, either. Just about all of them fetch 50 cents, which hardly seems worth hauling them out of the drawer and bringing them in. 

Unless you have one that features a three-legged buffalo, that is. Then you’re in business.

“That one is worth $3,000,” Overholser said. “They don’t come around very often.”

You might have 10 boxes filled with comic books in a closet, but only the ones with cover prices of 10 or 12 cents are worth anything substantial. And of course, fire damage is a real killer.

Tony Atlas was among those waiting for the experts to look over his stuff. Among his treasures were federal bank notes and coins dating back to the turn of the 20th century.

“I’ve had them a long time,” Atlas said. “I hope I can do something with it.”

It would be a while before he’d find out. He was still in the waiting area along with more than a dozen others with boxes, bags and big dreams.

Roxane Robichaud and Tina Daniels of Sabattus finally made it to the buying tables at 4:30 p.m. They had been waiting for three hours.

Robichaud had an impressive collection of coins, including pennies dating as far back as 1909. She was putting more of her hope in the paper money, including a $2 bill with numbers in red ink instead of green.

“There are very few of them around,” she said.

The Ohio Valley people are going to be at the Fireside Inn from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. through Friday. They expect the big crowds to keep coming. Overholser said by and large, the people who have come in have been good sports, no matter how things turned out.

“They’ve been very patient,” he said. “The people here have been a little nicer than people in other places.”

Jennifer Zanca planned to return with the cannonball and maybe some other items. It was hard to say if any of it would fetch big bucks, but there is always that chance.

“You never know,” she said. “That’s why we’re here.”