Image: Heritage Auctions / HA.com
A rare high-grade copy of Superman #1 is currently on the block at Heritage Auctions, along with five early issues of Action Comics, all from the family of the original owner. The auction is set for November 20-22, 2025, and the current bid for the Superman comic as of this writing is $1.3 million. That’s likely to go up: A CGC 8.0 copy of Superman #1 sold for $5.3 million in a private sale in 2022 (see “‘Superman’ #1 Most Expensive Comic Ever”). Heritage sold a CGC 7.0 copy for $2.3 million in 2024.
The current sellers found the comics when they were clearing out the attic of their mother’s house. “Their mom had always said they she had some expensive comic books,” Heritage Auctions VP Lon Allen told ICv2, “but I don’t know that she ever went into any detail.”
The family submitted a form through the Heritage website saying they had a copy of Superman #1. Because there have been a number of reprints over the years, the auction site gets about three submissions a day claiming to have the comic. This time was different. “There it was, with pictures of some other comic books that came out within a few months of that, so suddenly I realized, ‘Oh, they really have it!’” Allen said. “I immediately got on the phone, found out it had been in the family forever, and said, ‘I can be there as soon as you want me there.’ And they just had them sitting there on their dining room table when I walked into their house in San Francisco.” Allen theorized that one reason they were so well preserved is the San Francisco weather. “I immediately realized the Superman #1 is going to be very special, and it’s going to be right up there with the finest known copies.”
“It’s absolutely beautiful, almost structurally perfect,” CGC President Matt Nelson told ICv2. “It has just a little bit of wear to the corners and the spine, and a little shadow in the top left corner of the front cover. What would have caused that would have been another book sitting on top covering it except for that corner where the light hit it and turned it brown.”
Image: Heritage Auctions / HA.com
The original print run of Superman #1 was 500,000, followed by second and third printings of 250,000 and 150,000, respectively, but only a few hundred remain, according to Nelson. “We’ve only graded a little over 200 copies in 25 years,” he said. “There are only 300 or 400 that have survived in the world by our estimate. And out of those, the highest grade was always an 8.5 on the [CGC] census. It was 8.5 and an 8.0, and then then it drops to two at 7.0 and then 6.0 and down. Most of them are low grade. More than half are restored.” Restoration lowers the price: A restored copy of Superman #1 with a CGC grade of 9.4 sold at ComicConnect for $121,900 in September 2025.
The new find is from the first printing; the tell is an ad on the inside back cover for Action Comics #14, which came out about the same time. In the first printing, the ad says “On sale June 2,” while in the second and third printings it says “On sale now.” Since this difference was only discovered in the past few years, Nelson said, “The market has not really spoken yet on if there’s a value difference between a first and second printing. It’s still a little too early to tell.” Still, he said, “It being a first printing does make it special in the collector’s eyes.”
Superman #1 is currently the third ranked comic on Overstreet’s Top 100 Golden Age Comics list, following Action Comics #1 and Detective Comics #27. Heritage sold a CGC 8.5 copy of Action Comics #1 for $6 million in April 2024 (see “New Record Price for a Comic.”)
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Source: ICv2
