Original Superman Comic from 1938 sells for $6 Million at Auction

Graded CGC Very Fine+ 8.5, this issue from the Kansas City Pedigree is one of the world's finest copies. Only two other unrestored issues featuring Superman's first flight – or, at least, his first leap over a tall building – have ever graded higher.

Superman leaps over the world record previously held by … Superman. According to CGC's list of most expensive comic books ever reported sold, a copy of Superman No. 1 sold privately for $5.3 million in 2022. The previous auction record was held by the CGC Near Mint+ 9.6 copy of Amazing Fantasy No. 15, featuring the debut of Spider-Man, that sold for $3.6 million at Heritage in September 2021.

There are just 78 copies of Action Comics No. 1 in CGC's population report, with the grading service estimating there are a scant 100 survivors of the comic book that launched superheroes into popular culture — 100 out of the 200,000 copies printed by DC Comics' predecessor National Allied Publications. Little wonder copies are so coveted by collectors when they appear at auction. Look no further than Heritage's September 2023 sale of an issue graded CGC 0.5 for $408,000, which leaped over the previous record in a single bound.

Action Comics No. 1 is hailed as the most important comic ever published, and the Superman who first appeared in the spring of 1938 remains remarkably like the version still filling comic-shop shelves every week or awaiting yet another big-screen turn in writer-director James Gunn's retelling of the tale. He was more violent than the Big Blue Boy Scout of the 1950s and '60s, but that's only because his creators wanted him to be "very serious about helping people in trouble and distress," Jerry Siegel once said. And in the case of Action Comics No. 1, trouble and distress were not in short supply: In his debut alone, Superman squared off against "unjust imprisonment, spousal abuse, disarmament and drunken driving," as Les Daniels summed it up in Superman: The Complete History.