A near-pristine copy of 1938’s Action Comics #1, featuring the first appearance of Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster’s Superman, has sold for a record US $3,207,852.00 on auction site eBay. This marks the first time that any comic has been sold for more than $3 million.
Rated by the Comics Guaranty Corporation as a CGC 9.0, the seller Darren Adams says that “compared to the other 9.0 that sold for $2.1million several years ago it has significant superior eye appeal, extremely vibrant colors and PERFECT WHITE PAGES”. He is, of course, referring to the copy sold by actor (and would-be Superman) Nicolas Cage that sold via ComicConnect in 2011 for a then-record price of $2.16 million.
This new record-breaking copy was once in the possession of buyers Joe And Nadia Mannarino, who bought the comic from the family of the original owners. A few years ago, Mannarino told his story about the discovery of the rare book:
I was immediately struck by how flat the book was. It seemed smaller that any golden age book I had seen from that period. I thought that it was perhaps a modern reprint that I was unfamiliar with as compared to the Famous First Editions or the 1976 non-glossy reprint. I opened the book to count the pages and was immediately struck by how white the pages were. As I probed a bit more, I learned that the book had been in the same chest for as long as anyone in the family could remember and that it had belonged to their father who had since passed. I compared it in size to the other books and everything checked. Just a remarkably conserved book.
It is estimated that somewhere between 50 and 100 copies of Action Comics #1 are still in existing, and there are fewer still that match the quality of this title. The original print runs, which sold for a mere 10 cents, were approximately only 200,000 copies. Many of these have been subsequently pulped.
Other record-breaking comics include Spider-Man’s first appearance in Amazing Fantasy #15 (CGC 9.6) for $1.1 million in March 2011 on ComicConnect, and the Heritage Comics listing for Batman’s debut in Detective Comics #27 (CGC 8.0) for a reported $1,075,000 in February 2010.
It’s time to start checking those basements and attics again, people. Let’s just hope this doesn’t start a new speculator boom that almost killed the comics industry in the 1990s. Perhaps it’s time to start stocking up on early appearance of Star-Lord. Just in case.
A portion of the auction’s proceeds will benefit the Christopher & Dana Reeve Foundation, a body dedicated to supporting research into spinal cord injury and other neurological disorders.
