The World's Most Expensive Comics (and Why Prices Keep Rising)

Wired has a gallery of the most expensive comics ever, here.


I wrote about high end comic book collecting for Fine Books Magazine in the past, here.

From the story...

His colleagues who dealt in other collectibles had hit the seven-figure mark before — the house has sold dozens of coins for $1 million or better — but this time his comics enterprise was hitting the big time.

“When we joined that million-dollar club with a comic, people took notice,” Sandoval told Wired in a recent interview. “The auction record at the time was just over $300,000. When we had that comic in our catalog, we were promoting it as a potential half-million-dollar item. Then we go into the live session and it’s like, ‘Did we say half-million? We meant 1 million!’”

That was just the beginning. The 20 most valuable comics ever auctioned off have all been sold since 2010. In the past two years, the astronomical selling prices of “holy grail” books like Action Comics No. 1 and Detective Comics No. 27 — powered at least in part by Hollywood cache — have triggered a boom in the comic book collectors’ market. Buyer interest shows no signs of slowing for first editions and other high-profile comics from long ago. (Check the gallery above for a look at the comic books and comics art that have brought in the biggest bucks to date, according to GPAnalysis.)
“With comic books, it’s partly a function of just a couple books that went on the market and went for sensational prices and that prompted other people who were just sort of holding on to these with no real motivation to sell to say, ‘Well if that one sold for that amount, then I guess I’m ready to sell mine after all,’” Sandoval said. “That was really the major factor.” 

That and pure nostalgia.