Action #1 reportedly breaks the $2 million mark at auction

[Yoc]

Reuters is reporting the following -
First Superman comic sells for record $2.2 million

The rest is at the following link -
http://ca.news.yahoo.com/first-superman-comic-sells-record-2-2-million-121335263.html

An interesting history to the sold copy.
-Yoc

[CharlieRock]

Somebody at work told me about that on the news. But I guessed at what comic it was since he didn't remember and got it right. 

[Yoc]

I can't think of another worth as much except perhaps Detective 27 maybe.

[josemas]

I'm wondering who ended up selling the comic?   Was it sold by the person who bought the contents of the storage locker or since it was apparently stolen from Nicholas Cage in the first place did it go back to him and was he the seller?
None of the pieces I've read on the sale make this clear.  They mostly concentrate on how much the book sold for.

Curious

Joe

[Roygbiv666]

I can't think of another worth as much except perhaps Detective 27 maybe.

Motion Pictures Funnies Weekly #1?

That Sentinels #1 featuring the Mighty Cyborilla? http://www.comicartfans.com/GalleryPiece.asp?Piece=812999&GSub=107702

[Yoc]

Yep, the seller and buyer seem to be content to stay hidden.
And it would be nice to hear from Mr Cage.

[robbbyg]

Re Nicholas Cage,

Last month i contacted the Auction house that sold him the comic for 1.5 a little while ago to get his Email details (seriously) as the Auction house didnt want to put my plates in Auction, i thought if i could get hold of Mr Cage and contact him directly to see if he wanted to have a look at my Action #1  Printing plates, (even rarer than superman) ((but not as desirable to the masses))

(Hope im not breaking any rules this is NOT a sales pitch)

if your out there NC or if anyone wants to email me privately about getting in touch with him, i would really like to send him some information i have on them.

Or im happy for anyone to pass my details on to him if hes worried about privacy etc

goretzki@hotmail.com


Cheers
Rob

[RedMask]

Prices on the older, key comics are getting crazy!

Blame it on the movies...  Amazing Fantasy #15 sure wasn't that expensive before the Spider-Man live action series debuted!

I remember guides from the early 1980s putting the value of that comic at around $1500 mint.
Now, the better condition copies have pushed it to at least $60,000 mint!

Crazy...

*********

I really don't collect for values' sake.  Not affordable for me, and frankly comic storylines and most creators are fairly inconsistent.
I don't need every issue of Spider-Man or Superman because most of them suck, IMHO.
I'm not a completist!

I collect storylines and characters that I appreciate/like.

I probably borrow and read more trade reprints from the library now than I've bought in years...
I'm basically fed up with today's comics -- there's been no consistent quality since the early 1990s IMHO and the last 10 years have been a nihilistic joke; I just get a lot more pleasure from reading pre-1970s comics.  Love Marvel in the 1960s, DC as far as I'm concerned rules the 1940s and early 1950s, late 1950s. 

It's a fool's quest to buy this stuff to turn around and resell it online unless you're willing to invest in the much older stock.  Say anything before the mid-1980s.  Safe bet that 1960s Marvel and Golden Age DC/Timely will continue to grow in value.  Everything else?  Probably not so much... at least until the films based on those other comics hit theaters!   

Frankly, you can't predict which current comics will be relevant or valuable in the future.

It's almost a safe bet, though, that most of the comics (well over 90% -- I'm hedging closer to 95-98%) published after 1985 won't be worth a damn in the next 20 years considering how sick collecting has gotten!  Quality of paper's gotten too good and we have too many manic collectors bagging every damn thing under the sun.  Too many quality copies of present-day series floating around!


P.S. -- Action #1 SHOULD be the most valuable superhero comic out there.

The whole US industry is based on that issue, like it or not... 

This shouldn't be a popularity contest between that issue and Detective Comics #27.

Sorry -- no Superman, no Batman.



P.S. P.S. -- Much as I like superheroes, it's a tragedy that they're the most successful genre in the US comics industry.
They just overwhelm everything else to the point that Marvel and DC won't do anything else.

It's not like the 1980s when there were more chances being taken and actual non-superhero comics were published by DC and Marvel on a regular basis.  Sales of the indies have mostly been so insignificant that it's not funny.

The locking-in of the industry onto one genre -- as well as the stupidity in discarding newsstand distribution and depriving the historically greatest source of new readers(!) -- is what's killing the current industry as well as the incestuous recycling of old storylines.

Old comics and heroes will always be around.  The current industry?  I dunno.  I think the current distribution and lock that the Big Two have on things has to be cracked for much better conditions and new characters and concepts to follow.

So far, nobody has any solid ideas on how that's going to happen...  The digital revolution sure hasn't changed the way business is done much.

[John C]

Just stumbled across a tidbit that updates this long-dormant topic.  Hopefully this doesn't crack the seal on the tomb that releases the demon.  That seems to happen a lot on TV.

Anyway...

http://www.thehistoryblog.com/archives/32024

3.2 million, of which a measly 30k went to the Christopher and Dana Reeve Foundation to get the auction publicity.

Somehow, I missed the story when it broke.

More interesting is the book itself, though.  It was stored in a cedar chest in the mountains since the first reading, so it's about as close to new as anybody's likely to find.

CGC has what appears to be a scan of the book, though I'm a little suspicious for various reasons.

http://www.cgccomics.com/1134755001/

[Yoc]

Interesting, thanks for this John.

[erikpsmith]

Just stumbled across this posting. I broke the story about the Sept. 2014 sale, when I was writing editorials at the Seattle Times. A comic-shop merchant in Federal Way was making plans to auction a copy of Action No. 1 on eBay, which he had obtained for an undisclosed amount. Sure, a couple of bloggers had posted items about the sale, and it may have even gotten a paragraph or so in the New York Times, but I'm pretty sure I was the first in the news business to write a full-fledged story about it. Because it appeared on the editorial page, it had to take the form of a column, but once it ran there was a flurry of attention and there were many that followed. What happened was that one of the people employed by eBay's PR firm in Seattle remembered that she knew a guy at the Times who might be interested in the story, and when she called, I said of course.

I like to think the resulting publicity may have added $1 million to the price.

The cool thing about it was that I actually got to hold the thing. It was slabbed, of course, so no danger of fingerprints.

The point was that it was the best-preserved copy in the entire world, with snow-white page gutters and no indication it had ever been read. And the whole time I was working on the story, I kept thinking about how strange it was that comic books had become something you weren't supposed to read, but rather something you sent to a grading service, encased in a plastic shell, and pull out of a box from time to time and look at for a second and then put back in the box. And how much fun is that?

But still, it's as close as I'm ever going to get to an original copy.

Erik Smith
Olympia, WA

[Yoc]

Thanks for sharing that Erik.
And I agree it's a real shame comics are barely holding on and yet people treat them as an investment at the same time.  Treating them like a stamp or a coin.
These plastic coffins are an evil thing IMO working against all the work we are trying to do here on DCM.  If anyone wants to safely crack one open for reading or even better scanning and sharing there are several videos on YouTube showing how to do it.  And we have a Wanted Comics List of books we'd LOVE to see scanned for DCM here -
http://digitalcomicmuseum.com/forum/index.php/topic,6943.0.html

-Yoc

[Geo (RIP)]

New links as the old are dead:


Original story for 2.2 million:
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-superman-comic/first-superman-comic-sells-for-record-2-2-million-idUSTRE7B00YN20111201

Perhaps 3.2 million is a better story now for it:
http://www.latimes.com/books/jacketcopy/la-et-jc-first-superman-comic-book-record-price-3-point-2-million-20140825-story.html

This one was sold at a dealer that Eric {OtherEric) and I {Geo) stop at once in a while.

Geo

[OtherEric]

New links as the old are dead:


Original story for 2.2 million:
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-superman-comic/first-superman-comic-sells-for-record-2-2-million-idUSTRE7B00YN20111201

Perhaps 3.2 million is a better story now for it:
http://www.latimes.com/books/jacketcopy/la-et-jc-first-superman-comic-book-record-price-3-point-2-million-20140825-story.html

This one was sold at a dealer that Eric {OtherEric) and I {Geo) stop at once in a while.

Geo

The catch is, the dealer has roughly two speeds... high grade slabs online, and a dollar bin in the store.  The storefront is actually mostly a trading card shop.

For those who like reader books, though, the dollar bin can be spectacular.  I've probably pulled over 100 10 or 12 cent books out of there; the best find being a roughly 4.0 Fantastic Four that I got the same weekend the Action #1 auction ended.  I like to claim I got the 2nd best book they sold that weekend. :-)

[Shea6408]

CGC has what appears to be a scan of the [copy of Action Comics #1 that sold for over $3 million in 2014], though I'm a little suspicious for various reasons.

http://www.cgccomics.com/1134755001/

I normally don't post follow-up questions to posts that are over 3-1/2 years old, but Action Comics #1 is one of my interests, and I recently found out about CGC's scan and was impressed, so I have to ask.

What is it about the scan that makes you suspicious?