To cut right to the punchline here, this is the 2nd best known copy of Action #1.

Yeah, I was surprised, too.

What about the "other" high grade copy, you ask? This is it.

Let that sink in for a while.

Stephen Fishler emailed me last night alerting me to that (remarkable) detail. I've been discussing this stuff with people for years and no one has connected the two books before now. Some people even wondered if the Kansas city copy was the "other" book. We had the story about Dave comparing two books and keeping the Church copy and we had the 8.5 copy in front of us in the CGC Gallery. I always wondered where that "other high grade" copy was and who had it. I now know that it's been hiding in plain site this whole time.

He said:

I asked Dave about it recently. The book that was later graded 8.5 is the 2nd best copy he had ever seen. He compared it to the Mile High years ago. The Mile high was clearly better.

So the anecdote about the "new" book that Dave compared to the Church copy was actually referring to the 8.5 we know and love.

This new info, of course, changes the landscape significantly both for the Church copy (now, clearly the best copy and only known 9.+ copy) and the Kansas City copy that just sold. Depending on how nice the Larson copy is, the KC copy could be the third best copy in existence. Which makes $1,000,000 seem like less of a premium price- which is probably why he had the above conversation in the first place. Negotiating a $1,000,000 comic book sale is tricky business.

I'll be reworking the $100,000 club list today. I'm going to rework the the World's Most Valuable Comics article to reflect all of these new data points (no "other" copy, the All American 16 CGC 9.4, the new Detective 27 CGC 8.0 and the Kansas City Copy.)

What a crazy week.

The Kansas City Action #1 CGC VF 8.0 is listed as Sold on the Comic Connect site.

It's the first publicly reported sale over $1,000,000 of a comic book.

It's actually the first publicly reported sale over $500,000, but who's counting?

The price is stronger than what I feel the book is worth (by about 25%), but I'm happy to be wrong in this situation. $1,000,000 is a nice round number that will generate a lot of press. Press= good for the hobby (as long as any new people stay away from the books I want to collect )

With the speed of the sale, it's clear to me that there's a possibility that this transaction was prearranged or even consummated long before the book was even announced. Comic Connect would have been smart to do so, so as to guarantee the maximum exposure and publicity for the sale and to protect against a protracted, potentially embarrassing (if it went on long enough) $1,000,000 listing with no takers.

Here it is, the belle of the ball.

This post is exactly what the title says. All the early Actions without Superman on the cover. The later ones have him in the inset, but don't feature him. These are both awesome and kind of weird, because Superman turned out to be such a big deal and they didn't initially realize what kind of a phenomenon they had on their hands.

Enjoy!

Action Comics #2

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The focus here is on American mainstream comics. I have no apologies for that These are in no order. They are, however, presented with plenty of love for a decade chock full of good comics.

Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips' Sleeper

Comprising Sleeper: Season One and Sleeper: Season Two, this series went way too far under the radar. It was clearly one of the best superhero efforts of the decade, although at the end of the day it was more cloak and dagger than capes and cowls. Thankfully both Phillips and Brubaker went on to become fancy, big-selling stars for Marvel after finishing up this classic. I just wish a few more people had been able to check out Sleeper when it was running. It was tough talking into a vacuum.

Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips' Criminal

Criminal took the Noir aspects of Sleeper, jettisoned the superhero aspects and distilled a pure drauft of crime drama. I have an affinity for their source material and love these two guys as individual talents so I was basically made to love this book.
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Superman #1 CGC 7.0 — Investment Grade!! Rare!

Coolest book in a while. It'll slot into #20 on the all-time eBay comic book sales list.

Winning bid: US $35,000.00 Seller: floridatoytrader (144)

Description:

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It looks like we're safe from robojo33 next week. We'll have several big ticket candidates for next week's top eBay item post…

• This is a weird listing, no?

  SUPERMAN COMIC 1 GOLDEN AGE DC CGC 2.0 ORIGINAL 1939

  I mean, at first glance it looks real (and that's all I've given it), but… who the hell sells a book like that through an outlet that barely seems to know what it's selling? So strange.

• CGC 5.5 Fantastic Four #1 Marvel Silver Age Comic

  Neat Stuff, even.

• STRANGE TALES #110 cgc 9.0 1st DOCTOR STRANGE and WONG

  It won't win the race for the week, but that's still a fun book (for me at least.)

Swan/Perez 1986 SUPERMAN #423 Original Comic Art. Page 28 – "Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow?"

Super cool. This page represented a nice surprise this week. not only is it not another Robojo special, but it's a page of art from one of the best Superman stories ever written.

Winning bid: US $5,750.00 Seller: jryanj1 ( 3344 )

Description:

This page is from the final issue of the SUPERMAN series under its original print run. The page was penciled by CURT SWAN and inked by GEORGE PEREZ. The artwork measures 11" x 16" and is in excellent condition.

And here's the page:

It ended at $121,000.

Which is right in the range of the 10-15% more I predicted yesterday. Which is also 10-15% more than I thought it would sell for. So, I was wrong. Then I was right.

…and unrestored Action #1s are expensive comic books.

And currently at $109,000.

Predictions?

I feel like it might have another 10-15% in it, just because $109,000 is basically what I thought it would sell for. I just can't imagine the bidding is over.