Sold in West Virginia in 1938 for 10 cents, an original Superman comic was sold on eBay for $3.2 million, setting the record for the priciest comic book ever sold.
After the original newsstand purchase over 70 years ago, the comic – Action Comics No. 1 – was stored in a cedar chest for forty years. When the owner passed away, a collector bought it from his estate. With a couple of owners in between, it was just sold online by Darren Adams of Pristine Comics in Washington.
The front of the comic features Superman lifting a car in bright, vivid colors. The inside pages show baby Superman lifting furniture, as well as him as a man jumping over a skyscraper. It had a print run of 200,000 copies, but of the approximately 100 surviving copies, this is one of the only that hasn’t had restoration done. This copy is rated at 9.0, the highest of any of the unrestored copies that exist today.
The sale far surpasses the previous record of $2.1 million, for another Action Comics No. 1 sold by Nicolas Cage in 2011. Adams and eBay are donating 1% of the $3.2 million to the Christopher & Dana Reeve Foundation.
Courtesy of The LA Times