The World’s Most Expensive Comic Book
An original Superman comic, sold for 10 cents at a West Virginia newsstand in 1938, was purchased at auction Sunday night for $3.2 million, making it the most expensive comic book ever sold. The copy of Action Comics No. 1, which features a caped Superman lifting an automobile, was sold on EBay by Darren Adams of Pristine Comics, above. The previous record for a comic book was $2.1 million, for another Action Comics No. 1, sold by Nicolas Cage in 2011 to assist paying his massive debts. Cage purchased the comic in 1997 for $110,000. (FYI, Nic was cast as Superman in Tim Burton’s ill-fated, never produced filmSuperman Lives and he named his son Kal-El, Superman’s birth name.)
Action Comic No. 1 had an initial print run of 200,000 copies, but only 100 or so survived, and most of those have had some restoration work done to them. Purchased off a newsstand by a man from West Virginia in 1938, it was stored in a cedar chest “at high altitude” for four decades. A couple of owners and more than 30 years later, Darren Adams purchased it for seven figures. He first saw the copy in a bank vault.
“It wasn’t just a copy of Action Comics No. 1. It was THE copy. I was floored. The emotion was overwhelming.”
Adams and EBay are donating 1% of the sale price to the Christopher & Dana Reeve Foundation for spinal-cord injury and paralysis research.
The Most Expensive Car Ever Sold At Auction
The 1962 Ferrari 250 GTO Berlinetta, reportedly one of only 39 made, sold for $38,115,000 at Bonhams in England. The sale easily topped the previous record of any car ever sold at auction – $30 million for a 1954 Mercedes-Benz W196R F1 single-seat racer, sold last year at Bonhams. The Ferrari GTO was developed to race in the 1962 3-liter class FIA GT World Championship series, but it was involved in a crash early in its life that killed the driver, and was subsequently repaired. Experts say a crash involving a Ferrari of its type doesn’t decrease the value – it appears to only to increase the mystique. BTW, for about the same money you can get a used Gulfstream G550 (for around $33 Million) and with the $5 Million or so leftover you could buy a 2014 Lamborghini Veneno Roadster. Just sayin’.