In brief
A pristine copy of Action Comics No 1, the 1938 comic that introduced Superman, has been sold for $15 million to an anonymous collector. This comic, previously owned by actor Nicolas Cage and famously stolen from his home, holds significant cultural value and is one of fewer than 100 copies known to exist. The sale was facilitated by Metropolis Collectibles, and its grade of 9 out of 10 makes it one of the highest-rated copies. The sale surpasses the previous record of $9.12 million set just months ago.
A rare copy of the 1938 comic that introduced Superman to the world has sold to an anonymous collector for $15 million (£11.2 million). The private sale of the Action Comics No 1 copy - once stolen from actor Nicolas Cage's home and returned to him over a decade later - was announced on Friday. The previous record for the sale of a comic book was set in November, when a pristine Superman No 1 fetched $9.12 million at auction. Both sales far exceed the original 10-cent price tags - or around $2.25 in today's money. Superman's debut is one of several tales anthologized in Action Comics No 1, which is widely credited with having defined the superhero genre as we now know it. Fewer than 100 copies are thought to exist.Friday's Action Comics sale was negotiated by New York-based Metropolis Collectibles/Comic Connect, which said both the comic book's owner and the buyer wished to remain anonymous. The broker noted that the copy had been graded nine out of a possible 10 points by the Certified Guaranty Company, which specializes in authenticating collectibles - making it the joint-highest scoring copy of the comic to date. The comic's value was further inflated by its storied association with Hollywood star Cage, who purchased it in 1996 for $150,000 - a record at the time. However, the comic was stolen during a party at Cage's home in 2000 and was only found inside a storage unit in California in 2011.During that 11-year period, it skyrocketed in value. The thief made Nicolas Cage a lot of money by stealing it, said Metropolis/ComicConnect CEO Stephen Fishler. Cage was reunited with the copy and sold it at auction for $2.2 million just six months later. Fishler compared the comic's history to the brazen theft of Leonardo Da Vinci's Mona Lisa from the Louvre museum in Paris in 1911, which transformed the then little-known work into the world's most famous painting. The recovery of the painting made the Mona Lisa go from being just a great Da Vinci painting to a world icon - and that's what Action No 1 is. An icon of American pop culture.\
