As if to show the continuing viability of punching Nazis for fun and profit in a modern economy, a copy of Captain America #1 left the auction block yesterday for the fee of $343,000, the highest price ever paid for the issue so far.
The issue was part of the private collection of the man who bought the issue off a newsstand in 1941, and over the seventy intervening years kept it in such condition that it was given a grade of 9.2, tying it at second place for the most pristine copy of Cap #1 known to mankind. And, as it turns out, the owner of this copy got a bit more bang for his buck, so to speak.
That most-mint copy, rated at 9.6, sold for $265,000 in 2001. What could have caused the difference? Inflation? Nostalgia? The movie? Ultimately auctioning comics comes down to timing, and whoever’s got that can pull of sales like the million dollar mark breaking auctions of Detective Comics #27 and Action Comics #1.
But boy howdy, are we ever willing to shell out a ton of cash on items that were ultimately meant to be disposable. Come one, they made them out of the same stuff that makes newspapers.
(via Bleeding Cool.)
