1939 Superman Comic Book Smashes Records

Read this if you think you may have some old comics tucked away in your home.

Three brothers from Northern California came across the eight-decade-old comic book tucked away in a box, hidden under cobwebs in the attic of their family home while sifting through their late mother’s belongings.

In the box, the lucky brothers found five early issues of Action Comics, but Superman #1 was the most promising of the bunch - it was issued after National Allied Publications changed its name to Detective Comics, now famously known as DC. The trio, who are now in their 50s and 60s, said their mother and uncle bought the comic books between the Great Depression and World War II.

Happily for the brothers, their 1939 edition of Superman #1 sold for $9.12 million last week, becoming the most expensive comic ever sold. It “represents the pinnacle of comic collecting,” according to Heritage Auctions, which described the comic book as the “highest-graded unrestored copy Heritage has ever offered.” That's truth, justice and a whole lot of money. The sale shattered the previous record set last year for an Action Comics #1, a 1938 copy that first introduced the world to Superman, which sold for $6 million.

According to the auction house, around half a million copies of the first edition were printed, but “we presume that most every kid wanted to have a Superman pinup, and cut up the back cover along the dotted line as they were encouraged to, resulting in a lot of copies that are low-grade today if they survived at all,” Heritage Auctions said.

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