It seems what we traditionally thought to be child’s play is now serious business, especially with reference to vintage memorabilia like Comic Books. The vintage comics scene has been buzzing for the past several days about word that a very high grade copy of Action Comic No1, stolen from Nicolas Cage‘s home in 2000, would soon come up for auction from well-known high-end vintage comics venue ComicConnect.
Last year, a copy of a version of the 1938 Action Comics No.1 graded by CGC at 8.5 sold for $1.5 million, a record at the time. This 9.0 copy is going up for sale at ComicConnect, and may become the first comic to ever sell for more than $2 million. The comic, featuring the first appearance of Superman by Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster, and published by DC Comics, is widely considered the most important American comic book ever released.
It is not necessarily the highest grade copy in existence. That honour is probably the Edgar Church copy, now owned by a private collector who shows no interest in selling. It sits ungraded, but is reported to be as close to perfect condition as painstakingly careful storage can achieve.
Originally sold for a price of 10c, the comic’s history is perhaps just as interesting as the contents inside. Back in 1992, a version of the 1938 Action Comics No.1 was auctioned for $82,500 and just before the turn of the new millennia, it landed up with Nicolas Cage who had acquired it from Comic Connects’ senior executive, Stephen Fishler. Later in 2000, the book was stolen under mysterious circumstances from Cage’s home in Los Angeles and remained untraced for close to a decade. This year, the book was found in a San Fernando Valley storage locker and proper verification has proved that, it is indeed the copy that was once owned by Nicolas Cage.
Sadly, Cage is still missing copies of Detective Comics #1 and Detective Comics #27, the latter being the first appearance of Batman. [ComicConnect]