https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heritage_Auctions#Controversie...
https://www.zipcomic.com/superman-1939-issue-1
And I dare say, someone spending 9 million clams on this comic book is more than likely going to have it sitting in a very UV-protected vault somewhere ..
EDIT: Sorry - I didn’t realize that zipcomic.com is infringing the copyright - adding this note to point that out, but I will maintain my original link as intended. Better to read it on DC Universe Infinite, if you have access, or maybe it’s available through Libby or Hoopla library apps.
While you could store your collectable in a vault, many people enjoy displaying their collectables.
[0] It’s still copyrighted, although it seems that will expire in a decade or so, though. I guess I’ll read it then.
>"I care (though not for something whose creators are long since dead and whom you can't support any more)."
>"I think it's immoral"
King Herod makes the Kill Babies Act and now you consider it immoral not to kill babies?
You justified copyright by suggesting it was about supporting creators. So you at least consider the moral justification to end at the creators death?
It just really interests me how copyright terms which were grown purely to support corporations so they wouldn't have to be creative (read that as would but need to employ people, or pay people for creativity) can have people figuratively clutching pearls.
But .. I just didn't want to encourage piracy among our community, is all.
It’s a bit hyperbolic. It’s a webpage of a comic book.
If you were just passing by when a friend did it and read their computer screen I think you'd have a stronger argument.
Until they pass away and somebody finds it then puts it for sale, and so on...
If I was lucky enough to have to defend say a billion dollars from diluting over decades, a priceless comic sounds like a decent acquisition
I have a feeling this was scanned a while back, where resolution was a balance between even being able to store it digitally due to size.
The cost of the reading copy would end up being less than the negative impact to the condition (and therefore value) of your mint copy from reading it a single time.
https://youtu.be/zw220bx88WA?si=vArVS22Oac02uNK5
I’d forgotten about prank monkey Homer.
With a little effort and research someone could come up with a reasonable estimate that read something like, “a typical 15-year-old reading through this comic once in a typical way would have cost the family X dollars”, and X might literally be $100k. Certainly well over $10k.
"This is a testament to memory, family and the unexpected ways the past finds its way back to us." """ Men going extreme in sentimental when they just sold a $9M collectible :).
This is a testament to outsourcing, laziness and the unexpected ways technology finds ways to change every press release.”
Most (all?) keyboards I've used only have a combined hyphen‐minus key (-) which is distinct from a dash (—) and isn't quite a hyphen (‐), so I get why most people don't care. All font dependent as well to add to the fun, and my examples here render differently in the textbox and the comment!
In social media comments they came across as pompous even before LLMs and werent particularly appropriate for casual comments.
Though to be fair some people enjoy coming across as pompous and embrace the 'better than the peasants and their lowly minus sign use' attitude. Makes them feel special or as if their writing is markedly better than those without fancy punctuation. (It isnt).
Also yes, im describing two writers i know that are adamant about the em dash being 'a sign of an intellectual wtiter'...they are insufferable pricks.
I think it’s a bit of a stretch to call a part of grammar pompous. It’d be analogous with me calling your post lazy due to its various typos — I’m not, I just found the comparison apt.
It's a different stylistic choice (em dashes are nice and all), but it's not how I think, and my writing reflects how I think.
I also will often use the fabled semicolon. It's easy to use with contrasting statements, but that's not its only use; I can use them in some situations to elaborate where em dashes are used.
I'm not saying they are a perfect replacement for em dashes (again, em dashes are cool), but it's just always been my personal style.
I regularly use the semicolon, especially in a sentence where this are commas use in another way. In my mind, a semicolon is a "greater" separator than a comma; used to separate parts of thought in the same sentence (vs grouping of items or a pause).
I’ve used it for literally decades for both formal and informal writing. On social media and in text messages. It is a very useful way to communicate/pace your sentences.
You can’t reliably predict the output of a non-linear model with a simple linear model, no matter how hard you wish it.
Person A: “We’re going to be so rich.”
Person B: “How many times do I have to tell you? It’s not about the money.”
Person A: “It’s about all the things we’ll be able to buy with it.”
Person B: “Exactly.”
-We're not doing this for the money... -... we're not? -We're doing this for a SHITTON of money!
https://www.ha.com/heritage-auctions-press-releases-and-news...
Even the same time and same day of the week there will never be exactly the same set of users online, and that’s even more true with regard to the users who are choosing to look at HN’s /newest page. So pure luck can determine whether a bunch of comic book lovers see it soon after submission and give it enough votes to get on HN’s front page, or just a bunch of people who think it’s a boring story worth ignoring.
(Personally I thought it sounded like it might have interesting comments worth reading, hence my being here, but I wouldn’t have found it interesting enough to upvote if I were one of the people who saw it on the new submissions page.)
That’s how we roll.
The results are likely to be that all HN front page stories will eventually be LLM-sourced.
I’m not entirely against that, if the scripts do a good job of selecting stories.
Not the actual goal, of course the actual goal of Hacker News for many people is gaming SEO and startup juice.
That said, I don't doubt for a second you're right. Trust a forum of tech bros and nerds to minmax away what little joy there is left to posting here.
I find most of the value, here, in the community commentary, though.
It’s fairly remarkable.
I do think people are trying to LLM that, as well, but not as successfully.
I think that a goal is to "cultivate" a startup community. Get nerds and tech bros together, and some synergy is bound to happen.
I'm not trying to start anything up, but I do enjoy the community. I'm not really what YC is looking for, but I suspect they like me, more than an LLM.
I have had that happen multiple times as well, but those are usually the ones I posted because I am interested in the thoughtful/knowledgeable comments that happen -- so it works out either way. I assume it's because my main source being BBC -- even though the website has a good variety of interesting (non-headline news) content that is well sourced/linked -- but also because I usually end up posting during odd/off-hours for US central. Think most of the ones I post that gain any traction had ended up in the 2nd chance pool.
This one was a bit of an anomaly for me on how quickly it picked up -- personally thought the one I posted before it was a little more interesting about Rolls-Royce finding ways to limit sand/dust from damaging jet-engines, but this here is Superman after all
[0] https://www.ha.com/heritage-auctions-press-releases-and-news...
> For decades, Allen says, nobody knew of a way to distinguish which copies came from that initial run. Then a grader noticed a key difference in a small in-house promotional spot advertising the upcoming Action Comics No. 14. In the first run, those ads included text reading “On sale June 2nd.” Subsequent print runs had updated it to “Now on sale.”
Needless to say, I kept all my old comics.
Turns out a lot of 80s kids had the same idea!
I had seen football cards take off in value and really wanted to get into comic collecting. What I remember is the big comic books were just slightly outside the price range of a 10 year old cutting the lawn. Unlike baseball cards that cost thousands for HOF rookie cards.
I don't know how accurate it is but chatGPT gives prices that sound about right from what I remember looking at comic price guides in the 80s.
X-Men #1 $60–$150
The Incredible Hulk #1 $60–$120
Avengers #1 $80–$180
I never got to start my collection then I remember as a teenager thinking what a stupid idea it was anyway. Who the hell is ever going to be that into comic book characters?
It's also not the first Superman comic, what about Action Comics #1?
Why is the Call of Cthulhu (Weird Tales, Feb 1928) about $50k?
Or in terms of characters, what makes Superman worth 3x more than MARVEL #1 or Batman?
Superman was arguably the first super-hero, and certainly the first successful/popular one. And Superman #1 is the first time a super-hero got their own dedicated comic book. It has long been generally considered the third-most desirable comic book issue in existence, after Action Comics #1 (first appearance of Superman) and Detective Comics #27 (first appearance of Batman).
This copy of Superman #1 was graded as a 9.0, which basically means it's like-new, despite being 86 years old. And it's naturally in that condition without ever undergoing restoration, which affects the value. Of all known unrestored copies of Superman #1, this copy is in the best condition.
That said, there are at least three known comic book copies that would be valued more highly: two known unrestored 9.0 copies of Action Comics #1, and one known unrestored 9.2 copy of Detective Comics #27. If any of those were to be sold at auction today, their value would almost certainly be a lot higher than $9 million, in part due to this Superman #1 auction setting a recent precedent.
it’s valuable for the same reason the mona lisa is valuable. it’s iconic, it is a singular object, it is one of a kind, it is a stable investment vehicle. they ain’t making more of them.
I always wonder exactly how difficult it would be to get the paper, ink, staples, etc exactly right. I'm sure it would be difficult but 9m is a big payoff if you can.
Even if you could duplicate it down to the molecule I would assume it wouldn't hold the same value since it doesn't have the same history. Assuming you'd want to sell it in good faith as a replica.
Les Poseuses Ensemble by Georges Seurat was sold for $149m. Very few people have heard of it, care about it, or even like it considering it's pointillism which no one buys modern versions of. The world of art and collectables is entirely rich people speculating that the price (not value) will go up in the future.
I’m a billionaire earning $100M this year.
I owe $40M as taxes for that. (Too much!)
I find a dumb banana painting by a starving artist.
I buy it from him for $1000.
I wait 6 months.
I go to a museum to get it appraised by “professionals”.
I pay the professional appraiser’s wife $50K as a gift.
The appraiser says the painting is now worth $30M!
Wow that’s awesome, I have such a keen eye for art.
You know what, I’m gonna donate this painting to a museum instead because I’m such a patron of art and culture.
Oh, look at that, I get a tax rebate for the value of my donated painting ($30M)
Now I only have to pay $40M - $30M = $10M in taxes on my $100M income.
There’s more nuance to it in practice, but that’s the gist of it.
-----
Edit: For some reason I can't reply to the comments below so I'm gonna do it here.
> That wouldn't explain the price here, since in your scam the whole idea is to buy cheap and donate dear. not buy for 139M
Now we're getting in the details but it's very suspicious for an appraiser to appraise a work of art from an unknown artist at millions. But it's not that suspicious if they take Van Gogh's Starry Night which was previously appraised at $500M to now be valued at $1B. this way the deca-billionaire still gets to save his taxes while appraiser avoids suspicion.
> As far as I know, that's not how taxes work. You can't get a rebate for the amount of taxes you would have paid, you can get a deduction for the amount of money you made.
There are a lot of loopholes in the complicated tax system for the ultra-wealthy, not for us. This video (still a simple explanation in an animated way) covers a few more of them: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dHy07B-UHkE
So:
You made $100M owe $40M in taxes.
Your painting is worth $30M! You have such a keen eye for art.
Now you made $130M and owe $50M in taxes.
You donate the painting, you're back at having made $100M and owing $40M.
Otherwise we'd all choose not to pay tax and donate our tax money to charitable institutions instead.
So if you buy painting for a dollar and wait a year then next year you make $3m and the painting is now worth $1m then if you donate it, your AGI is reduced to $3m-min($1m, 30% of income) = $3m-$900k.
You don’t count the appreciation of the painting as income. You don’t even count it as LTCG if you don’t sell it.
I think it also applies to stock option awards. When the startup I was at was acquired some people were talking about it.
Or put another way - a loophole in law/regulations is found, then the law/regulation gets changed to close the loophole. If it were not legal this change would not be necessary - you would just prosecute.
The same way a regular person might buy an autographed photo of a celebrity they like or something like that.
The entire NFT thing would work if it were restricted to things people want, even if that only amounts to bragging rights.
Somewhere along the way people lost track of the fact that being able to trade something doesn't denote value in itself
Whilst that may be true for the most part, much of the art dealt nowadays is never displayed, just stored somewhere incredibly tax efficient until it's value has gone up enough to warrant selling.
https://theswisstimes.ch/unlocking-the-secrets-of-the-geneva...
There has been a number of investigative shows arguing the valuation of collectibles in general (comics included) is largely driven by money laundering.
Is it some kind of conspiracy theory of is this legit ?
I imagine a pristine 1st edition Tintin or Asterix would be quite valuable.
For the same item.
Crazy.
Besides, I don't need to pay to test for it being legit. Just go to a bank.
Heritage has great value. It is one of the few things that cannot be manufactured at will.
Also, since its uniqueness holds its value, its value becomes a "strange attractor". You can put a lot of money into one of these artifacts, fairly sure to get most or more back. Since future buyers will have a similar assurance. So it isn't money thrown away, but money stored in a medium the provides satisfaction and pride.
Not so different from buying real estate in some exclusive area for some crazy price. It really isn't that crazy if you are likely to get your money back later if you want. Likely at a higher amount due to a growing economy pushing prices up.
Crazy would be spending millions on something unique then grinding it up.
I did buy some concrete gargoyles created by a local artist, probably a replica of one from a European church. I mounted them on the driveway entrance to scare away unwanted visitors.
The attribution to Leonardo is extremely dubious, but the whole thing seems to have been motivated as yet another attempt to wash the reputation of oil theocracies and their monarchs.
"I have a da Vinci at home."
Vs
(pointing at a picture on the phone) "I have this painting at home"
Which one impresses the other rich asshats more? Maybe even millions of dollars worth more.
It’s interesting if you were thinking of the Salvator Mundi since the discrepancy between the initial appraisal and the restored sale price is two thousand times larger than your example. And it still goes to show the seemingly insane sale price was a good investment, first being sold for $80M by someone who knew he’d make a profit, then after that $120M, then $450M.
I.e. it's worth money because it's worth money.
I’m not quite following the rest of your logic. Rare collectibles don’t often lose value after 70 years, there’s no reason I know of to suspect the ‘age-wealth point’ of the collector is particularly relevant. I’ve never heard of historicity nor seen anything collectible accrue value as a percentage of age, I don’t think markets for rare paintings work like that…? The idea of paying millions and millions for a collectible you can’t really use is foreign to most of us, so yeah it’s really weird and I can understand the feeling that it must be self-reinforcing.
I guess I’m maybe not even arguing for or against any of this, but maybe saying that given that markets for rare things exist, it does make sense that very rare+famous things bring higher prices, and that people who have money for this kind of speculation might see investment opportunity. I agree the “value” and market for these things is circular. All of the value comes from the “proof” that something is rare and collectible, purely from the story.
All this does apply a little bit to consumer goods, of course. We often have to remind ourselves that capitalist markets price things according to supply and demand, not necessarily to cost.
All I mean is I think there's a bump around the time something particularly nostalgic intersects enough of the nostalgia-havers getting rich enough to bootstrap somes things into valuable-because-valuable territory. Comics, movies, etc. You could explain some of this Superman price that way, but you can't explain a recent increase in da Vincis, for example. I suspect quite at lot of 5/6 figure comic book sales that then bump the magic-number editions into the millions are buoyed by people who have done fondness for comics they had as children.
On the other hand, I think that eventually "the story" is merely an excuse for the price and whatever it is just valuable for the sake of being a member of a class of items that are demonstrably unique, irreplaceable and that can have particularly useful properties as a store of immense value. I really doubt that an Saudi prince dropping half a billion on a da Vinci, probably fronting for MBS, really gives a hoot about da Vinci's "story" at all other then his name underpins a really advantageous wealth store. I also doubt anyone else who might pay that and support the price does either.
There's an established, global industry based around curating what does and doesn't "count" for these purposes. NFTs obviously have massive parallels with paintings and comic editions in terms of provable uniqueness, attestable sale prices and clear ownership, but failed to convince the curators and break into the stratospheric market where it actually makes sense to assign value-due-to-value. Perhaps partly because proving the above points isn't a fully public process, but it's itself carefully gated by physical access and social connections.
Numbers of famous historical artists: roughly constant, increasing very slowly
Definition of famous: defined by sale price of work.
Sale price: defined by fame
Ascent to the list of famous/high sale price artists: under control.
Club: big
Your status: ain't in it.
A more interesting example would be a convincing fake purported to be painted by a highly regarded artist who's still living and working today, and this does happen, too.
If that was a true feeling, then they wouldn't sell it away as soon as they find it, as if it is something they must dispose off immediately.
Sales culture is turning all men into drama queens.
Men sounding too sentimental, emotional, girly, too much talking, making lots of facial expressions, trying to please or convince someone,... even though it is not hard it see it's fake. The talk was all about millions, not family silver.
I’m asking in general, since your original comment looked to be a general complaint and not only specific about this case.
Further, saying that men shouldn't have emotions, or display the same emotions, lest they be labeled "drama queens", is absolutely gross behaviour. It's one of the contributors to the male loneliness / suicide epidemic, and you really should do better.
Perhaps you meant to imply that it is society that pigeonholes men this way.
>The brothers found six comic books, including Superman #1, in the loft underneath a stack of newspapers inside a cardboard box and surrounded by cobwebs in 2024, Heritage said.
> They waited a few months before contacting the auction house, but once they did, Heritage Auctions vice-president Lon Allen visited them in San Francisco within days, according to the auction house.
>The brothers, who have chosen to withhold their names, are "in their 50s and 60s, and their mom had always told them she had an expensive comics collection but never showed them", Mr Allen said.
> their mum had always told them she had an expensive comic collection
And perhaps they would have too, had they not known! (Or the mother not known either.)
It almost feels like it's gambling, because it's a sentiment that leaks into modern collectibles, like card games.
I'm not saying people don't value collectibles, or value nostalgia, or that some of these things should be limited to niches - the reality is that I can't quite put it into words, but a lot of it seems propped up... Or it's a false game everyone is knowingly playing, like a big Ponzi scheme.
These superman copies, or the first editions of mtg, or even some modern vintage games, were never intended to be collectibles - people used them and played with them, created memories, and the production runs were really limited in comparison to modern day production runs, that make those items actually rare... Like few hundreds or thousands have survived in good condition - which is an achievement for toys, games and comics that get used a lot.
Nowadays people buy stuff with high production runs, they never even create memories with the stuff... They slab stuff into a "hermetic" container right away, and get it graded...
It just feels fake.
Again I don't doubt people see value in this stuff, I just feel like they're valuing for the wrong reasons, and I can't wrap my head around how is that even sustainable.
Who is going to value the memory of "remember when I bought 5 booster boxes and pulled card X from the pack, with gloves on, put it in a sleeve and sent it to be graded straight away? Now those were the days!"
It's like people want to compress the randomness of time and social behavior into a predictable cicle of months, with minimal effort and to extract the maximum value out of it.
Am I overthinking this?
I have a similar experience: a couple of years ago I started to dip my toes into the retrogaming collecting world, and at first it was fun to get all those games that I really wanted to have as a kid, but it soon devolved into trying to track down all those overpriced "rare" games. It got exhausting, and made wonder why am I even doing this? Why would I spend several hundreds on a game or a console that I didn't even knew about until one year ago, just because some random YouTube guy told me so?
Being a kid, really wanting a game or toy, finally getting it and then enjoying it to death was awesome; this is not. As you say, it doesn't feel right, so I have decided to quit.
[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2025/11/14/world/europe/napoleon-dia...
What I am trying yo say: at least two collectors (?) or speculators (?) with deep pockets.
cm2012•2mo ago
anovikov•2mo ago
opello•2mo ago
It seems unlikely that in that time frame it would have been a 5 digit purchase. It still may have been a significant proportion of liquid cash or net worth though. I think it'd be an interesting detail to have too.
evanelias•2mo ago
onionisafruit•2mo ago