In 2000, it disappeared from Cage’s Los Angeles home during what multiple accounts describe as a party. The LAPD theft report was filed January 21, 2000. Detective Hrycyk of the LAPD Art Theft Detail opened the investigation. Cage received an insurance payout. The book was missing.
For approximately eleven years, the book’s whereabouts were unknown. A tip in 2002 pointing to a Tennessee safe-deposit box did not result in recovery. The investigation continued as one of many open cases maintained by the Art Theft Detail.
In the spring of 2011, a man purchased the contents of an abandoned storage locker in the San Fernando Valley through American Auctioneers of Riverside, California. Among the contents, he found the comic. He contacted Mark Balelo of Balelo Inc. in Simi Valley to arrange a sale. Balelo contacted Fishler. Fishler recognized the comic as the stolen Cage copy and alerted authorities. The LAPD took possession of the comic as evidence. In April 2011, Detective Hrycyk confirmed the recovery to the press.
Cage issued his “divine providence” statement and expressed hope that the heirloom would be returned. The ownership question—complicated by the prior insurance settlement—was worked through over the following months. The comic was returned to Cage’s control.
Approximately six months after the recovery, Cage consigned the comic to ComicConnect for auction. The auction closed on November 30, 2011, with a winning bid of $2,161,000—the first comic to sell for more than $2 million. The buyer was not identified.
Subsequent transactions, tracked through the market record, brought the price to $3.2 million in 2014, continuing upward through several more transactions to the January 2026 private sale for $15 million—a new record for any comic book.