The consequences of this market development for Action Comics No. 1 specifically were significant. The issue was already recognized as the most important comic in existence before CGC; what CGC provided was a way to distinguish and price the surviving copies by condition in a way that the market could rely on. The discovery and certification of high-grade copies—the 9.0 and 8.0 examples that were graded in the early 2000s—gave the market specific objects to price rather than a general category to evaluate. The price escalation from $82,000 in 1992 to $150,000 in the mid-1990s to $1 million in 2010 reflects, among other things, the maturation of this market infrastructure.
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STEPHEN FISHLER AND METROPOLIS COLLECTIBLES
Stephen Fishler’s role in the Cage comic story is central at nearly every point: he sold the comic to Cage, he recognized it when it was brought to his attention after the storage locker discovery, he alerted the authorities, he authenticated it, he arranged the 2011 ComicConnect auction at which it sold for $2.16 million, and he was identified as an intermediary in the January 2026 $15 million private transaction. He appears more times in this story than anyone except Cage himself.
Metropolis Collectibles, which Fishler founded in New York, became one of the major dealers in high-grade Golden Age and Silver Age comic books. ComicConnect, the online auction and sales platform associated with Metropolis, provided the infrastructure for the significant auction sales of the period, including multiple record-setting transactions.