A near-new comic featuring Captain America’s first-ever appearance sold for just over $3.1 million on Thursday.
The sale marks a record for the comic strip, Captain America Comics #1, and is now one of the five most expensive comic books ever sold. The final price was $3,120,000, which included the buyer’s premium. It sold through Heritage Auctions’ comic book and comic art events that run through Sunday.
The comic hit newsstands in December 1940, a year before the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor that would plunge the United States into World War II, and features one of comics’ most iconic covers: the hero hitting Nazi leader Adolf Hitler.
Joe Simon and Jack Kirby created the hero of Timely Comics, the predecessor of Marvel Comics, with the now well-known story of a frail young man named Steve Rogers who is injected with a serum that turns him into a super-soldier. Cap’s sidekick Bucky, who would in modern times become the hero known as the Winter Soldier and would feature prominently in Marvel Studios films and a Disney+ series, was also introduced. The comic was an instant hit and sold hundreds of thousands of copies per month.
There are only three copies at the high grade CGC 9.4, and only once one of them has been auctioned. (According to the GSC census, only one 9.8 copy exists but has never seen the light of an auction house).
Vintage comics continue to fetch higher and higher prices, and this is one of only three to have sold publicly for over $3 million. In September 2021, a amazing fantasy #15, featuring Spider-Man’s first appearance, sold for $3.6 million, holding the record for the most expensive comic book. A action comics Number 1 sold for $3.2 million in 2014, before the current craze for comics and comic drawing.
Several others are part of the $2 million club. A Marvel Comics Issue 1 from 1939 sold last month for $2.4 million, while two copies of action comics have achieved sales in this range, as has a Batman No. 1, sold in January 2021 for $2.2 million.
