Case Closed

Cover © 1938 DC. Photo © 2010 CGC.

You may have seen the news reports that Action Comics #1, dated June 1938 and featuring the first published appearance of Superman, was sold for $1 million at a Heritage auction last month.

I mostly shrugged it off as inevitable — and not nearly as exciting as it once might
have sounded to me. Thirty years ago, when I got my first comic-book price guide, the prices themselves were to an extent beside the point; I couldn’t do more than gape at the thousands of dollars at which decades-old issues were listed in various conditions, but the details of when certain features stopped and started or which characters first appeared where and crossed over with whom fascinated me. Still, it was nice to show grown-ups that the comic books I was amassing, in particular the back issues I had begun to buy at marked-up prices, could appreciate in value.

My dad brought up the Action auction the other day, though, and I responded with surprising heat. I wasn’t able to write down my raw reaction right away, so I stewed on the topic for a while, ending up with a bit of a rant.

We probably wouldn’t have seen a price this high before the advent of CGC, I don’t think. Certified Guaranty Company came along in 2000 to do for the comic-book community what had been done for stamps, coins, and other collectibles: inspect an item, grade it, and then “slab” it — seal it up in a plastic case with a certificate of authenticity.

Had CGC not come along, then another such outfit likely would have. And someone would have paid a million bucks for a comic book eventually. Everything is worth, at least in material terms, what one person is willing to accept for it and another is willing to pay (or barter). This is especially true in extremely deprived or disaster-stricken areas, black markets, and the world of collectibles.

But seeing that CGC slab is what got me.

I have no personal experience with the company, which really revved up just as my involvement with the comic-book industry from both professional and fan perspectives regrettably halted due to illness. CGC’s first big splash was made simply by virtue of its existence, with dealers and collectors wondering what it would mean for the hobby-slash-business (agreeing, for one, that the circulation of high-profile older issues would definitely become more of a business, or investment, than a hobby). Later came the fairly unexpected boom in submission of newer, far less rare items for CGC grading, in almost every case the cost of CGC’s services for grading such an issue being greater than what the going rate was to acquire that issue.

When more commonplace comic books graded and slabbed by CGC began selling for ridiculous multiples of “Guide” — that would be a given listing in the Overstreet Price Guide, long the much-debated, much-abused standard of the community — more dealers and collectors started retaining its services for such books. Overstreet was already losing its preeminence in the hobby, not only to competing publications but to the evolving transactional ecosystem. Such online auction or marketplace sites as eBay and the involvement of established auction houses like Heritage and Christie’s are all factors new to the community in the past dozen years or so.

If you’re considering a comic book in hand purely as an investment, absolutely no
more or less than a commodity, then having it slabbed by CGC may indeed make sense if you can afford it. You then very literally seal its fate as a commodity forevermore, though; nobody will be able to open up that plastic case to turn its pages, breathe in its aged newsprint aroma, thrill to holding or even looking at it without a plastic case in the
way. Because the moment CGC’s seal is broken the grade and certificate are nullified.

It could be that CGC is run by very well-intentioned people who accept or even regret the bizarre requests to grade everyday items as a strange but inevitable consequence of their efforts to document and preserve aging cultural artifacts. Maybe the injection of its process into the hobby-slash-business has made many folks rich and others happy in the very same transaction. But lots of readers, historians, and even collectors are sad about the whole slabbing thing, and obviously I’m one of them.

Even the comic books that I’ve bought solely for their cover illustration/design are
more than merely the equivalent of trading cards to me. There are some that I own by happenstance, and more that I own by intent, which I’d like to sell if they’ll bring in cash and to trade or give away if they won’t — mostly for the space they’ll free up and, yes, that cash, but also because I enjoy the thought of helping complete another reader or researcher’s collection. I’ll admit to having used a few comic books as objects, and not just in a decorative fashion, but not as the kind of objects CGC renders either; on occasion I’ve picked up issues for a dime apiece or less to hand out at Halloween or donate to the hospital, and when there are leftovers or damaged copies I’ll repurpose them into wrapping paper.

My collection also includes a number of highly valued comic books, some in eminently sellable condition and others that were either acquired in or devolved into a much less desirable state from a high-end collector’s perspective. Those issues that I’ve owned and loved and re-read into tatters since childhood are easily the ones that I cherish most.

I once stood next to the owner of a comic-book shop as he gingerly paged through a
nice copy of Fantastic Four #4, dated May 1962. Few of us gathered had ever seen one outside a protective sleeve on a dealer’s wall, let alone in that grade; the issue is only about nine years older than I am, but not many folks kept comic books in good condition at the time, if they were even kept, and this was a key early issue featuring the reintroduction of Namor the Sub-Mariner. The experience of looking upon the original of such a landmark story, familiar but only through its various reprinted forms, was electric in a truly indescribable way.

Seeing high-grade copies of issues that I own in more well-worn form is also neat, and
a few times over the years I’ve picked up duplicates because mine are in such tentative shape that they really can’t be read. Given the choice, however, and the consequent financial opportunities aside, I wouldn’t trade my spine-rolled, faded, corner-chipped, read-to-death editions, precious exactly because they’ve survived a lifetime with me,
for trophy versions.

None of the above factored into the difficulty my father had fathoming that a bunch of stapled paper sold for a dime seventy years ago could turn into a million bucks today. He acknowledged that people have different priorities, and his never included owning Action Comics #1, adding that he hoped I’d win the lottery someday so that I could. But I haven’t dreamed of owning Action #1 for a long time, and back when I did it was a vague dream rather than a true aspiration. I’m with my dad that spending a million dollars on a comic book is crazy.

As Superman celebrated his fiftieth anniversary, the 1988 edition of the Overstreet guide listed his first appearance, theoretically, at $28,650 in Very Fine to Near Mint condition, noting that only one copy of Action Comics #1 in actual Mint was known to exist and that it had not sold. Fifteen years later, the 2003 Standard Catalog of Comic Books pegged the issue at $300,000 in Near Mint. Now a copy has sold for $1 million, and just a few days afterward its record was broken when another Heritage auction resulted in Detective Comics #27, dated May 1939 and featuring the first appearance of Batman, went for $1,075,000.

How much money I would have to have before I spent a million dollars on a comic book, even the icon that is Action Comics #1, I don’t know — but it would be many, many multiples of a million dollars. Even were I so wealthy that such an amount had become utterly negligible to me, I wouldn’t be able to stop thinking about what $1 million could translate into for people in need elsewhere. I’m truly glad to know that copies of such rare, culturally important comic books exist, but to have them entombed in plastic saddens me. I’d much rather put a million dollars towards figuring out how to preserve but display such a historic document with a device that could page through it to the delight of wondering eyes, letting it live and breathe, than “slab” it. Geez.


Related: Supermanniversary • Leaps and Bounds • Shelf Obsession