Stephen Fishler was quoted in the Gulf News account: “It really is among the Holy Grail of comic books.” He also repeated his claim that “the theft greatly boosted the comic’s value during the 11 years it was missing.” The first claim is an expression of professional assessment—Fishler has spent his career in this market and is well-positioned to evaluate the significance of the issue. The second claim—that the theft boosted value—is an interesting one that deserves some unpacking.
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HOW PROVENANCE AFFECTS VALUE
In the market for collectibles—fine art, rare books, vintage wines, significant comics—the provenance of an object is a component of its value distinct from the object’s intrinsic qualities. Provenance is the documented history of an object’s ownership and whereabouts: who owned it, when they owned it, how it passed from one person to the next.
Good provenance increases value in two ways. First, it provides authentication: a documented chain of ownership that can be verified gives buyers confidence that the object is what it is represented to be, reducing the risk of fraud. Second, it provides narrative: an object with an interesting or prestigious history carries that history as a form of cultural meaning that some buyers are willing to pay for.
The Action Comics No. 1 copy’s association with Nicolas Cage—a major film star who named himself after a comic book character and named his son after Superman’s Kryptonian identity—is the kind of provenance that the collectibles market tends to assign premium value to. The celebrity association is not incidental to the object’s value in the way that a museum’s scholarly authentication is incidental to its value; it is a direct component of what buyers are purchasing when they acquire a celebrity’s former possession.