I'm a little late this month. I have no good excuse as to why. But hey… It's still April so I can look back at March without it being awkward. Right?
Thanks for being so forgiving.
This month's market recap is all about ComicConnect and the awesome set of Golden Age Superman and Action Comics they sold last month.
Action #1 CGC 5.0 Sells for $658,000
A strong result, for sure. I speculated that it could sell for more than $600,000 and it ended up blowing right past that number and settling in at $658,000. This is the “Superman Saves the Day” copy that ComicConnect sold a few years ago for $436,000 so we know the result was a good one for the consignor. It's nice to have a good result for a buyer after having to talk about the McFarlane debacle I talked about last month.
I think this result shows that the prices really have been juiced by last year's record sale. I wonder if that's the pattern we'll see going forward- lower grade copies will lag waiting to be juiced by high grade examples? If so, Comic Connect is truly holding the keys to the kingdom right now waiting to resell the eBay Action #1.
Action Comics #13 8.0 $102,001
I was so busy ogling the Action #2 I didn't even call this book out last month.
I think I've got to reevaluate the early Actions. I haven't assessed the values on these early books in a while and after this result, I clearly need to expand the early Actions in the $100,000 Club list. For starters, I need to include the Church copies for… I don't even know how high. Pretty high. Maybe all of The Dentist's books? Many of them for sure. After that I need to research some of the other pedigrees and also take a look at the Census to fill out the early numbers. If an 8.0 #13 sells for more than $100,000 then a lot of other early Actions will as well.
Superman CBCS #1 2.5 sells for $80,333
I thought this had a chance to get over $100,000, but even falling short of that number, this result is pretty strong for a low-grade Superman #1. Especially one this ugly. Low grade Superman #1s have basically doubled in the past few years. That means, we're almost at the point where any unrestored copy of this book is over $100,000. Action #1 and Detective #27 have been at that level for a while. Soon they'll have company.
Action Comics #2 CGC 9.4 (Conserved) sells for $92,111
I wanted to see this sell for $125,000 so for me this is a bit of a disappointment. That said, I came up with that number out of thin air so I really don't have any reason to be disappointed. I figure an unrestored 9.4 would be a $250,000 book, at minimum, so getting 50% of that would be a big deal for a book in the new conserved label.
Nearly $100,000 is nothing to sneeze at but since this is likely the nicest copy we're likely to see for sale any time soon it seems like a bargain to me.
That's it for now. There was a lot of great activity last month (including my own consignment with ComicLink and two incredible purchases for my Daredevil run) but I just love the fact that, if you had the cash, you could have walked away with the foundation of a world-class Superman collection from just this auction.