Three brothers find a 1939 “Superman n.º1” in their mother’s attic. It was worth 7.8 million euros

A copy of the 1939 edition of “Superman No. 1” has just become the most expensive comic book ever. It was sold at auction for 9.1 million dollars, dethroning… another “Superman No. 1”.

One fine day, three brothers decided it was finally time to clean out their late mother’s attic. At a good time they did so.

When her mother was 9 years old, she and her teenage brother saved money to buy a “Superman n.º 1”which at the time cost 10 cents. When he died a few years ago, he had already forgotten where he had kept it.

Last year, three brothers began emptying their recently deceased mother’s house in San Francisco.

Throughout her life, she had spoken to them of a collection of rare comics. But he didn’t know where it was, and his children had never seen it, so they weren’t even sure it really existed, says .

“It was nothing like that Let’s go look for that magazine“, says the younger brother, aged 57. They had waited several years after their mother’s death to empty the house. “It was more, let’s get the container and empty it all”.

When they reached the attic, however, found a bunch of magazines comic book inside a box with old newspapers. And the expression “rare” that the mother had used turned out to be a euphemism.

The mother had a almost impeccable copy of Superman No. 1from 1939the first issue of the Man of Steel’s solo magazine, which the family has now sold at auction, for 9.12 million dollars, approximately 7.8 million euros — a value that makes this the example of most expensive comic ever auctioned.

It is exemplary dethroned another No. 1 Supermanfrom 1938, which in April of last year was .

The 1938 comic strip was a unrestored version from Action Comics No. 1, which received a “very good” rating of 8.5 out of 10 by CGC, the grading service for pop culture collectibles. The comic found by the three brothers received a rating of 9.0.

A few months after finding the comic, the three brothers, who chose to remain anonymous, contacted the Heritage Auctions. The vice president of the Dallas-based auction house, Lon Allenthen traveled to Northern California to examine the discovery.

According to a report released in October by Heritage Auctions, the collection found in the attic included five old issues of Action Comicsseries published by National Allied Publications.

For mom and uncle, those magazines “have become a precious refuge“, says the younger brother. The two children lived in a small apartment, with little money, “but they had each other and a shared love for comics”.

Years later, his mother and uncle decided to pass the collection on to their nephewsespecially because the uncle had no children. She hid the box of magazines in the attic for safekeeping and, over time, forgot it was there.

“It was simply in an attic, inside a box“, Allen told . “It could have been thrown away easily, it could have been destroyed in a thousand different ways”.

Superman No. 1, published after National Allied Publications became Detective Comics, Inc., which would later become DC Comics, says Clark Kent origin storythe baby sent urgently to Earth from the doomed planet Krypton.

In the magazine, Kent grows up and becomes a reporter in a big cityusing his superhuman powers to fight crime and injustice as Superman. But we all know this story…

San Francisco’s cool, humid climate may have helped preserve the book. “If it had been in an attic here in Texas, it would have been ruined.,” Allen says in the October release.

Despite having broken the record for the most expensive comic book ever, this copy of Superman No. 1 “It’s more than just a comic book”, emphasizes the younger brother. “It is a testimony to the memorya, of family and of the unexpected ways in which the past finds us again”.