A comic of Superman’s first appearance in Action Comics #1, dated June 1938, has sold at auction for $175,000 after it was discovered inside the insulation of a Minnesota house.
David Gonzalez found the comic book while demolishing a wall inside a fixer-upper house in the small town of Hoffman. The book was tucked into a pile of newspapers that had been used as insulation in the 75-year-old structure.
He might have gotten even more money for the book except for the fact that he tore the cover when he grabbed it during an argument with his wife’s aunt. The rip, which Stephen Fishler of auction house Comic Connect called a “$75,000 tear,” caused the book to be rated just 1.5 on a 10-point scale established for collectors by the Certified Guaranty Company (CGC).
By contrast, a near-perfect copy of Action Comics #1 owned by actor Nicolas Cage, which received a 9.0 CGC rating, sold for $2.16 million in 2011. Approximately 100 copies of the book are known to exist.
Fishler described the winning bidder, who was not named, as a “hardcore, Golden Age comic book collector” who beat out 50 other bids.
