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THE 2014 SALE AND THE ESCALATING MARKET
After the November 2011 ComicConnect auction produced the first $2 million-plus comic book sale, the market for Action Comics No. 1 continued its upward movement. The record established by the 2011 sale stood until August 2014, when a CGC 9.0 copy of Action Comics No. 1 sold on eBay for $3,207,852—the first comic to sell for more than $3 million. The Wikipedia article on Action Comics No. 1 notes this as the first $3 million comic.
Whether the 2014 eBay sale was of the same copy that Cage had owned—which had sold through ComicConnect in 2011 to an anonymous buyer—is not established in available reporting. There are, according to the available accounts, two copies of Action Comics No. 1 graded CGC 9.0. If the 2011 buyer sold through eBay in 2014, it would be the same copy. If not, the 2014 sale was the other 9.0 copy.
The trajectory of the market is clear regardless of which specific copy was involved: from $82,000 in 1992 to $150,000 in the mid-1990s to $1 million in February 2010 to $1.5 million in March 2010 to $2.16 million in November 2011 to $3.2 million in August 2014 to $3.25 million in April 2021 to $6 million in April 2024 to $15 million in January 2026. The rate of appreciation accelerated dramatically in the 2010s and continued into the 2020s.
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THE $15 MILLION TRANSACTION OF JANUARY 2026