The Action Comics No. 1 occupied a special position within the collection. It was the book that introduced Superman, a character with whom Cage had a lifelong relationship significant enough to name his child after the character’s Kryptonian self. Losing it—and the circumstances of that loss, which involved a violation of his home—was not merely a financial event.
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CAGE’S FINANCIAL WORLD AT THE TIME OF THE THEFT
The year 2000 is also, in biographical retrospectives, approximately when Nicolas Cage’s spending reached its most expansive phase. He was at the peak of his earning power in Hollywood, having won the Academy Award for Best Actor in 1996 for his performance in *Leaving Las Vegas*, and having subsequently commanded some of the highest per-film fees in the industry. By various reports, he earned more than $40 million in a single year at his peak, and over his career earned a cumulative figure estimated by Celebrity Net Worth at approximately $150 million.
The spending was equally remarkable. He owned, at various points: fifteen properties, including a Newport Beach mansion, a Rhode Island estate, a private island in the Bahamas, a German castle, an English castle, and the LaLaurie Mansion in New Orleans; a Gulfstream jet; four yachts including the Sarita; nine Rolls-Royces and approximately thirty motorcycles as of 2004; two albino king cobras; a two-headed snake; an octopus; a piece of Martian meteorite; and the Tarbosaurus skull. His former business manager later said in 2009 that he had pleaded with Cage to sell some of his vehicles.