‘Superman No. 1’ Attic Find Sets $9.12M Record

Overview

• A nearly pristine copy of Superman No. 1 from 1939 has become the most valuable comic book ever sold, hammering at $9.12 million at Heritage Auctions and redefining the upper ceiling of the collectibles market.
• The book, graded a CGC 9.0, emerged from a Northern California attic where three brothers finally sorted through their late mother’s belongings and uncovered a small stash of Golden Age comics she had bought as a nine-year-old in Depression-era San Francisco.
• The discovery flips the classic “mom threw away my comics” narrative. This mother preserved hers, quietly insisting for decades that she had “rare comics somewhere,” a family legend that turned out to be very real once the box surfaced.
• Heritage positioned the sale as a once-in-a-generation event, with executives calling it a milestone in pop culture history and underscoring how condition, provenance and mythic backstory can elevate a single issue into blue-chip art territory.
• The attic copy dethrones previous record-holders like Action Comics No. 1 at $6 million and earlier high-grade sales of Superman No. 1, signaling that top-tier superhero keys remain a safe haven even as broader comic prices cool.
• For collectors and culture heads, the sale is more than a flex. It is proof that the stories around an object — a forgotten box, a Depression-era kid saving newsstand money, a house left untouched for years — now carry as much currency as the caped icon on the cover.

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