Superexpensiveman
A new record for the sale of a comic book was set yesterday when a copy of Action Comics #1 sold for one million dollars.
Today thousands of 80 year old men are cursing their dead mothers for throwing out the copy they owned in 1938… I’m still a little pissed about the Star Wars bubble gum card collection my mom tossed in 1980.
The issue was sold through Metropolis Collectibles and the ComicConnect.com auction site. The seller was a guy who either paid a lot less for this comic when he bought it (the previous record of a sale of a comic book, also Action Comics #1, was for a paltry $317,000) or who’s mom that did NOT throw out his copy of Action Comics #1 in 1938.
The buyer is a guy who has way more money that anybody could ever need and either doesn’t know that Action #1 has been reprinted about a hundred times and the story and art is the same in the reprints as it is in the copy he bought for a million dollars or doesn’t care.
Comments
Tom's Newsletter!
Sign up for Tom's FREE newsletter:
Claptrap Ad
GICLEES
Workshop Ad
007 ad
Catwoman ad
Dracula ad
Doctor Who ad
Superman ad
NCS
Categories
- Classic Rock Sketch Series (60)
- Daily Coronacature (146)
- Freelancing (173)
- General (1,630)
- Illustration Throwback Thursday (107)
- It's All Geek to Me! (53)
- Just Because… (1)
- MAD Magazine (898)
- Mailbag (691)
- Monday MADness (436)
- News (1,036)
- On the Drawing Board (160)
- Presidential Caricatures (47)
- Sketch O'The Week (811)
- Stuff from my Studio (21)
- Surf's Up Dept. (29)
- Tales from the Theme Park (17)
- Tom's MADness! (131)
- Tutorials (18)
- Wall of Shame (17)
I have a stack of those old Topps Star Wars cards about 5 inches high. Are they actually worth anything if they’re not in the original wrapper?
Clearly, a copy of Action Comics #1, if kept in good condition, isn’t a bad investment… and collectors like to collect rare things. Unlikely the buyer will ever actually read it or even touch the actual paper!
We can all hope the purchaser was an actual comic book fan (or at least someone who fondly remembers them), but you’re probably right that the guy probably knows little to nothing about comics.
I read another posting on this purchase and it said that there are only about 200 copies of Action Comics #1 in existence, with only two (including the one just sold) at an 8.0 rating. As for moms throwing them away, the 80 year-olds themselves likely tossed ’em out as kids, since World War II-era paper drives were had huge participation rates, from young to old…which was the primary reason Golden Age (1940’s) comics in general are so incredibly rare and, likewise, expensive.
Yeah but it’s more fun to blame mom.
Action Comics #1 has been reprinted hundreds of times? oooh… do you think comicconnect.com has 30 day money back guarantee?