Action Comics #1 is considered the most valuable comic book on this entire planet, as no other single issue was more influential. It’s the comic that introduced Superman for the first time, using the now-iconic image of him lifting a car at a diagonal angle. In 1938, 200,000 copies of this issue were printed. Only 100 are estimated to survive today.
Of those 100, even fewer are in decent condition, like the one that Heritage Auctions put up for sale this week. The slabbed copy was given an 8.5 grade by the CGC and mentioned the following imperfections: a small tear at the top of the spine, a small crease in the top left of the back cover, a tear with a crease on the top of the front cover, and light staple rust. But it’s not like anyone’s going to be reading this thing anyway.
How much would you pay, if you could? The winning bid of this Action Comics #1 came in at six million dollars, the highest price it’s reached to date. Darn inflation!
“Without Superman and Action Comics No. 1, who knows whether there ever would have been a Golden Age of comics, or if the medium would have become what it is today,” said Heritage Auctions Vice President Barry Sandoval. “Rest assured it might be some time before a nicer copy shows up on the auction block.” The previous Action Comics #1 seen at an auction was slightly less nice, with an 8.0 grade. That one sold for $5.3 million.
While we have no reason to doubt a rare, fragile magazine of this level of importance would be worth its sticker price, public auctions have been rigged in the recent past. Those stories you heard in 2021 about the common copies of Mario NES games selling for king’s ransoms? They were artificially inflated by investors. The price has gone down considerably since.
