Holy Price Tags, Batman! The Incredible Rise of Comics at Auction

What was once merely a childhood pastime has transformed into a serious financial heavyweight, as vintage comics have become the ultimate attic treasure, especially after the recent discovery of a Superman first edition sold for a cosmic $9.12 million at auction.

Sat in a dry northern California attic for years, three brothers found their mom’s remarkably pristine original first edition of Superman’s adventures from June 1939, and when it went to auction in November 2025 it became the highest-priced comic book ever sold.

Found beneath a stack of newspapers inside a cardboard box and surrounded by cobwebs, Superman #1 easily beat the previous highest-priced comic book ever sold by $3m, when Action Comics #1 went under the hammer for $6m last year.

The price, in part, reflects the comic’s incredible condition, especially considering its age. That helped CGC, the definitive third-party comics grading service give the comic a 9.0 rating on a 10-point scale, topping the previous record of 8.5. But it also reflects the transition of comics from candy store childhood favorite to auction superstar.

Only a handful of copies of Superman #1 remain, so finding one in such pristine condition caused a swell of interest in the first comic book series devoted entirely to a single character, as collectors and enthusiasts alike have been known to bid on examples that barely hold together and still attract thousands of dollars.

The first edition, published in June 1939, tells the origin story of Clark Kent and how he rocketed to Earth as a baby from the doomed planet Krypton and grew up to become a big-city reporter who fought crime and injustice as Superman in his spare time. Its sale for $9.12 million represents a sharp increase on the CGC 7.0 copy that appeared at Heritage Auctions last year and sold for $2.34 million.

Wakanda Forever

“It is absolutely incredible,” said the comic book empresario, Stan Lee in a 1974 interview. “I would say that if someone were knowledgeable in this area, it is a much more lucrative hobby to collect comics than stamps and in some cases than to buy stocks.”

And this visionary assertion from the man who transformed Marvel from a small publishing house to a multimedia giant that has dominated the comics and film industries has been proven quite right, especially in recent years.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, the comic book that ushered in the golden age of comic books in the 1930s and ‘40s, Action Comics #1 is invariably found in the upper echelons of most expensive comic books, and one CGC 8.5 copy sold for $6 million at Heritage Auctions in 2024.

Sold for 10 cents in 1938 (equivalent to around $2.25 in 2026) Action Comics #1 marks the first appearance of Superman and remains a collector’s grail item, with Comics Buyer’s Guide estimating in 2012 that only 50 to 100 original copies of Action Comics #1 still exist today.

Once such copy belonged to the actor Nicholas Cage, an avid comic book collector, but was stolen in 2000 and was found 11 years later in a storage locker in the San Fernando Valley. It was later verified to be the copy that once belonged to Cage, who received an insurance payout for the item.

With Great Power Come Great Auction Results

Superman isn’t the only box-office attraction at auction, as the first appearance of Stan Lee’s Spider-Man in Amazing Fantasy #15 sent senses-tingling across the comic collecting world when it sold for a then record $3.6 million at auction in September 2021.

Published in 1962, Stan Lee had convinced the publisher to let him try out a new teenage hero that he’d created with Steve Ditko. Against type, it was a counter-intuitive twist on standard superhero, swapping the usual muscular protagonist for a thin teenage nerd who was bullied by his letter-sweater classmates. Thankfully a radioactive spider transformed the teenager’s outlook and sense of responsibility, and what’s more, the public loved it.

Against expectation, the issue became Marvel’s best-seller, and Spider-Man was rushed into his very own series. The grading of CGC 9.6 propelled one copy of the landmark comic to a multi-million dollar price, but for a comparative bargain, the same comic with an 8.0 grading sold for $190,000 in October 2024.

Stan Lee (as Stanley Lieber) was again involved with another comic icon when he was given his first professional fiction writing task, contributing to Captain America in issue #3. It would be the first issue in which the patriotic hero was depicted punching Adolf Hitler, and it would become highly collectible.

Published by Timely Comics (now called Marvel Comics) by Jack Kirby and Joe Simon, the comic features a classic cover and hit newsstands in December 1940, a year into World War II, but a year before the attack on Pearl Harbor, and it sold nearly one million copies.

A first edition (CGC 9.4) sold for $3.12 million at Heritage Auctions in 2022, marking a sharp increase on the $915,000 (CGC 9.4) achieved only three years previously.

Holy Price Tags, Batman!

Another pop-culture juggernaut, Batman made his first appearance as a shadowy figure on the cover of Detective Comics #27 in 1939. Not yet blessed with a Batmobile, the earliest incantation of the Dark Knight survived with just a rope and an attitude, which has drawn collectors well over $1 million for a high-grade copy.

A year later and Batman would have his first solo title in Batman #1, which also marked the first appearance of Joker and Catwoman and a CGC 9.4 copy sold for $2.22 million in 2021.

Likewise, the first family of Marvel Comics, The Fantastic Four #1 was debuted in 1961 by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby, with a CGC 9.6 rating copy selling for $2.04 million 2024, while Fantastic Four #52 (1966) introduced Black Panther, Marvel’s first Black superhero, with demand for this pristine copies of this edition surging following the success of the Black Panther movies.

And Avengers #1 (1963) has sold for over $1 million at auction while X-Men #1 (1963) has climbed into seven-figure territory, with pristine copies selling for around $1.5m. So, while mutants, (fictional) maniacal billionaires, and clown princes may be hated across all of these comics, they’re certainly not hated at auction. It might be time to check your attic!