Action Comics 1, the first to
join the Million Dollar
Comic Book Club!

Action Comics 1, as well as a few other comic books have sold for a million dollars or more in the last few years. A million dollar comic book! Who would have thought? And at a time when the economy is giving most everyone fits, there are those who still have enough expendable income to drop a cool mil on a comic book. I want one of those comics also!

Since early 2010 the comic book world has been put on its ear. There have been 5 comic books go for a million to slightly over 2 million dollars. I figured it was about time to document these comics on my site. Action Comics 1 (3 copies), Detective Comics 27 and Amazing Fantasy 15 have broken the million dollar ceiling.

Why I can still remember when these comics weren’t worth much more than face value of 10 or 12 cents. Boy, what we wouldn’t give now to have realized this phenomenal leap in value back in our younger days, mine being the late fifties and early sixties. I even had a box full of comics I took to college with me in the early seventies. If they had not been stolen from me, I may have been able to say I had some comic book collection worth of at least in the tens, if not hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Action Comics 1 was the first introduction of Superman. This issue also has the prestige of basically starting the Superhero phenomenon that has continued until this day!! Superman, in the beginning, could not fly. Bet you didn’t know that. He could sure jump a hell of a distance though. I have heard it said that there are only 100 copies of this comic book left in the world. And I am still looking for my copy as I scour yard sales in my neck of the woods (ha ha, if only).

On 2/22/10 a CGC graded 8.0 sold for one million dollars, the first comic in history to break a million! And then on 3/29/10 (hey, my birthday) another Action Comics 1 sold for $1.5 million. Staggering! It was an 8.5 CGC grade. Then finally on 11/30/11 the final issue of Action Comics 1 that has entered the million dollar comic book club, at the time of this writing, sold for $2.16 million. It was a 9.0 grade. This is a remarkable physical condition for a 72 year old comic book!! And as a final note, the auctions for all 3 of these comics were handled by Comic Connect.

And not to be out done by Superman, Batman had to throw his cape and cowl into the fray. Just 3 days after the first million dollar sale of Action Comics 1, on 2/25/10, Detective Comics 27, and the first appearance of Batman, claimed a $1,075,500 price tag. This was also a CGC graded 8.0 but was auctioned off by Heritage Comics.

Then apparently, wallets had to cool down from passing that much money around. It wasn’t until a little over a year later that the million dollar bug crept into someone’s money stash again. On 3/10/11 Amazing Fantasy 15, the first appearance of Spiderman, was sold at auction for $1.1 million. This was a 9.6 CGC grade and was again handled by Comic Connect.

Well, it has now been a few years, but we have another million dollar club entry! Another copy of AC #1 9.0 physical grade has gone to market. This time it was auctioned off on eBay. On August 24, 2014 it realized a final auction bid of $3,207,852.00. This is also a new all time high. Where will the ceiling top out?? And if interested, as long as the link remains functional, here is a here is a digital viewer that will allow you to review all of the stories in AC #1. 

So, as of this writing, 6 comic books have broken the million dollar ceiling. Not bad for the state of the economy. But comic book stories of interest do not end there. Just recently, an unknown comic book collection came out of hiding.

A nerd’s nirvana; a gentleman was recently cleaning out his aunt’s house whom had passed away. Upon opening a basement closet, Michael Rorrer found a neatly stacked collection of comic books that had belonged to his late uncle Billy Wright. Of the 345, apparently, well preserved comic books, most were from the 1940s and 1950s, which are well known among avid comic book collectors as the Golden Age. Some of the most sought after comic books in the world were part of this collection.

Another copy of Detective Comics 27 from 1939 surfaced and commanded an auction price of $523,000. And yet another copy of Action Comics 1 from 1938 was also present and realized an amount of $299,000. All together there were about 44 comic books that have been in the Overstreet Comic Book Price Guide’s top 100 most valuable. Heritage Comics, who handled the auction, ended up selling a good share of the collection for about $3.5 million.

Talk about walking into a landslide. Every comic book hunter’s dream!! Of course most of us totally realize that a find like this is a complete long shot, but reading about it sure gets the comic book juices flowing anyway. It will surely keep me watching the local classifieds for any comic books available at the various yard sales around.

And even though the top most revered comic books of the Golden Age are now and will always be just a collector’s dream, yards sales and the like can very well bring comics worth $20, $50 or even $100. But many times, you or me as the ever vigilant comic book collector, may not know what we are looking at as we sort through those dusty boxes of comics. It has always been my opinion that the first line of attack is in owning a copy of the latest Overstreet Comic Book Price Guide. I have come home several times with a box full of comics just to grab a few of the older ones and check through my electronic Overstreet Guide on my computer desk top. And I have found a few at the $100 mark. Of course the physical condition is a judgment call on my part.

Do keep in mind that the Guide is only your start at realizing a final comic book worth. But at least starting here will tell you if further research is needed. And if you are an oldster like me and Superman and Batman were common in your childhood collections, here is wishing you good luck on finding your own copy of Action Comics 1.

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