The auction house that hosted the sale described it as “the pinnacle of comic collecting”.
Three brothers have become overnight millionaires after making a staggering discovery while clearing out their late mother’s home.
Buried beneath a pile of old newspapers, they came across an old box filled with comics.
It contained one of the rarest issues of all time: an original copy of the first Superman, printed back in 1939.
The comic, pictured above and below, was put under the hammer with Heritage Auctions, eventually selling for an incredible $9.12 million (£6.9 million).
This smashed the previous record for the most expensive comic, a first issue of the 1938 Action Comics, which sold for $6 million (£4.5 million) in 2024.
‘A life-changing windfall for the children’
The three brothers, all aged in their 50s and 60s, had discovered the Superman comic along with five others in the loft of their mother’s San Francisco home.
They waited three months before contacting Heritage Auctions, which soon sent their VP, Jon Allen, from their Dallas base to examine the collection.
He predicted it would likely result in a life-changing windfall.
He added: “Their mom had always told them she had an expensive comics collection, but never showed them.
“It’s a twist on the old ‘Mom threw away my comics’ story.”
Image: Heritage Auctions
‘Highest-graded unrestored copy’
Heritage Auctions has described the sale of the Superman comic as “the pinnacle of comic collecting”, which seems reasonable given its record-breaking sale price.
It added: “Not only is this the highest-graded unrestored copy Heritage has ever offered, but it also holds the top position on the CGC [a third-party grading service] census, outranking the likes of several esteemed pedigreed copies, including the Mile High and Davis Crippen copies.”
An extremely rare comic book
The auction house provided a brochure to accompany the auction, which contained some fascinating insights into why the comic book was so valuable.
When this issue was first published, some 500,000 were printed, meaning many pristine versions should still be available.
However, Heritage Auctions suggested one of the main reasons why so few unblemished copies exist is that the issue came with an image on the back, with instructions to cut it out and frame it as a picture to hang on the wall.
“We presume that almost every kid wanted to have a Superman pinup, and cut up the back cover along the dotted line as they were encouraged to, resulting in a lot of copies that are low-grade today if they survived at all,” it explained.