"He added: "This isn't simply a story about old paper and ink. This was never just about a collectible.
"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 :).
I've been pressing minus twice to type a dash on Mac OS for so long I've forgotten when I started. People are pointing it out to me more and more every day. I think my writing is distinct enough from an LLM for most people, but there's certainly a growing contingent that sees a telltale and assumes everything must be AI generated.
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!
It's already happened unfortunately. LLMs learned to write correctly from people who write correctly. Those people are now being blamed for sounding like AI, when AI actually sounds like them (and probably learned from their work without permission). To avoid they, they write differently.
Em dashes are still appropriate for articles, journals, scientific papers, and other academic or professional writing.
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 use em dashes for the same reason that I use semicolons: it’s how I’m hearing the sentence in my head as I’m typing it.
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.
Not the GP, but I often just use commas and parenthetical asides (like this).
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).
The problem to me doesn’t seem to be the em dashes but rather the multiple people around you that actively talk about “being an intellectual writer“ and how they need to signal it with their choice of punctuation. Frankly they sound ridiculous. But again, that has nothing to do with the actual punctuation itself. Writing off a writing tool because of two people you agree are ridiculous doesn’t seem like the right way to respond to their behavior.
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.
They’re using a crude linear model to identify AI output, which is not that much different from that which the AI safety industry is peddling, or the people that sell solutions to identify AI output.
You can’t reliably predict the output of a non-linear model with a simple linear model, no matter how hard you wish it.
I've been using it as well for a long while (though using option shift -), but I don't care what people think. I won't change my style to appease Temu Sherlocks, or anyone really. How I write doesn't change the value of the message. I invite you to join me in not giving a crap.
Ive had to change how i write so that people don’t think its chat bot. Probably more a me thing but it has sadly ruined my heavy use of m dash and personal style. Small minority i know.
Time of day definitely plays a part, but there’s also luck/randomness to it.
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.)
> Funny how the time of day affects the visibility of posting
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
I strongly suspect that a number of HN members have been training LLMs on HN headlines, then using these LLMs to recommend stories and times for submission. Maybe they have even set up the scripts to post submissions automatically.
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.
Hacker News is for human beings to share stories they find interesting so that other human beings can discuss those stories to gratify their intellectual curiosity. Automating that process with the goal of maximizing visibility and karma defeats the intended goal of the forum.
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 don't think it's that simple. It's my opinion that YC doesn't need much buzz, except within this very community. Since they own the venue, they get the benefit.
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 remember a painting was discovered, and there was speculation that it was a da Vinci. It was appraised at $30,000. If it could be proven to be a da Vinci, it would be worth a million.
Do you think a sculpture by a pre-civilization human is worth more than something banged out yesterday?
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.
Can you elaborate further on the tax evasion part? The money laundering part I can see since the value of art is subjective and volatile, but how does what OP said explain how art can be used for tax evasion?
I've seen a lot of ancient art in museums. I have simply no desire to spend $$$ acquiring them simply because they are old.
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.
Is it crazy? Clearly the value is the proof itself, not the item, right? Certainly a genuine da Vinci is an investment you can very likely recoup and make a profit on. If I could buy one that’s proven, for a million, and I had a million sitting around, I would. That would be a smart move. The $30k non da Vinci, who knows, could be everything from love of art and total loss to perhaps a small profit. It depends on how good the remainder of the story is. Even for today’s working artists, the narrative is most often the important & valuable part, and the item is just a pretty artifact that backs up the story. For expensive collectible investment art, the importance of the narrative goes way up.
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.
Hehe, I like it. Yeah that’s a valid, if funny and tautological way to summarize it. I am arguing that the monetary value comes from the story attached something that’s unique, historical, famous, etc. The artifact itself didn’t change value when it was proven to be a da Vinci, a new and very valuable story was attached to it. Without the story/proof it really is worth less.
Yes but there has to be some kind of self-reinforcing circularity to the value of that story, or the price of a da Vinci would be roughly inflationary or even under it and therefore not a good investment. Da Vinci's story isn't substantially changing (and doesn't even have a bunch of aging, rich, nostalgic people at exactly the right age-wealth point relative to the material in question to drive prices like Superman) and there are only more famous people over time, so the percentage of all famous pointings taken by da Vinci will decrease. There are no new practical uses for paintings being discovered. While the older the work gets the more it is worth, it's 500 years old already, so even an extra 50 years is only a small increase in its relative historicity (0.2% per year, so well under the region of inflation)
Sure the claim that an artifact like a painting is valuable because it’s rare & famous is somewhat self-reinforcing, I agree. I also think it’s fair to call it circular in the sense that people investing and making a profit when they re-sell will cause more people to want to invest, and will drive the prices of collectibles higher. The value of a collectible is a social construct rather than a reflection of, say, skill or materials or cost to make, and so normal economics doesn’t really apply.
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.
> there’s no reason I know of to suspect the ‘age-wealth point’ of the collector is particularly relevant.
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.
I'm not interested in speculating on art. It's far too risky for my taste. There's always a high risk of them being counterfeits. Verification by even top experts is pretty chancy.
The salvator mundi was bought at an auction for $1.2k, restored & appraised, then eventually sold for $450 million. The art/collection world is fascinate everything latches onto experts putting their reputation on the line, precious metals and gem stones make way more sense to me as their authenticity is undeniable for now
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.
This isn't a great example because da Vinci was a famous historical figure and lived 500 years ago. Just the history of a real da Vinci is remarkable, regardless of the artistic merit.
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.
Isnt it just cause more people want to own a da Vinci than a non-da Vinci, so therefore the price goes higher cause more people are willing to outbid the other?
this is true a lot in the world of paintings. there are regularly auctions where you can buy items "attributed" to (meaning it's speculated but not confirmed) very famous Modern Art painters like Van Gogh, Monet, etc for under $5,000 which, if confirmed, would send the valuation many multiples higher
Let's say that I gift you a suitcase with ten thousand $100 bills that seem legit, but you're not sure. How much would you be willing to pay for a proof that they are indeed legit?
The legality does break the analogy, but my point was just that a suitcase with ten thousand $100 bills has a non-zero value on its own, but that proving its provenance would significantly increase its value, despite the suitcase staying the same. The argument then is that this is not unique to art - it's (financially) valuable for us to know who made an artifact and what its journey was until it got to us.
>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.
Yep, it's not right away. They hesitated a few months to get rid of the 80-year old family piece, which their mother didn't bother selling. Family possessions should be treated as reserves to help off-springs down the family hierarchy in the needy times. Not to cash out because they are in 50s and 60s. 50s and 60s are just middle age when some people do a fresh start of their lives.
It's more of an emotional reaction to the life-changing impact of $9 million, expressed that way, rather than a literal feeling to be taken word for word.
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.
In this case, it is fake because they didn't value the very sentiment they were talking about. In general, those attributes in men make them drama queens.
That doesn't follow. I could be incredibly sentimental about something and still very happily part with it for millions of dollars. You are inventing a dichotomy that doesn't exist.
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.
Having irrational and excessive emotions and the associated negative feelings is the primary cause of extreme actions. You can do better at knowing things.
What's out of place in your comment is probably "men" and then "drama queens". It makes it sound like you have some rigid idea of how men are supposed to be.
Perhaps you meant to imply that it is society that pigeonholes men this way.
It's not worth twice as much. There was a buyer willing to pay twice as much. For something like this, the fact that value is completely subjective really sticks out. Trying to sell it again tomorrow might go for half or double.
With this kind of case it's impossible to read the comic book, and it doesn't protect it from UV light. I prefer using covers that block UV light. This both protects it and allows you to read it.
It really doesn't make sense to read a 9.0 condition key comic like this. If you really wanted to read it, you would be better off buying a second reading copy in terrible condition.
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.
In that episode a bored Mr. Burns hires Homer as his „prank monkey”, paying him with loose cash to play cruel pranks on others and humiliate himself. Homer eventually regains his dignity after refusing to ruin the Thanksgiving day parade, even for a million dollars.
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.
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.
I can't understand why the inside covers were scanned by someone, but at crazy low res. Yes the comic is important, but even the ads are fun and a memory blast.
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.
Sorry .. I didn’t realize that zipcomic.com was illegal .. I’d assumed the copyright had expired[0], and checking on DC Universe Infinite isn’t possible, since it’s geolocked and I’m not in a country deemed worthy of it. It’s probably available in Libby or Hoopla, legally.
[0] It’s still copyrighted, although it seems that will expire in a decade or so, though. I guess I’ll read it then.
back in my day, we had these buildings called 'libraries' which were filled wall-to-wall with many different types of copyright material. Mainly books, but also comics, newspapers and magazines, that you could legally read and also borrow and take home for a few days, for FREE!!
This might be genuinely the first time I can remember hearing someone say they don’t want to commit piracy. No offence, but who cares?
Especially for something from 1939.
True, I guess if I'd spent 9 million buckaroonies on the original, I'd feel compelled to download the digital version .. from wherever .. and put the physical edition in an air-tight preservation vault, deep in some bank somewhere.
But .. I just didn't want to encourage piracy among our community, is all.
I mean, I care (though not for something whose creators are long since dead and whom you can't support any more). But in general, I certainly try to avoid piracy. I think it's immoral and while I don't think it makes one a bad person (I myself used to pirate a ton of stuff when I had no money to buy it), I do think it's a thing that a good person should strive to avoid.
At the time that it was published, it would've been public domain by 1995 (so its creators might reasonably be alive at expiration). Anyone would be able to legally reprint it. Was that immoral? Or was it immoral to monopolize culture for another 1-2 generations?
It was a bad policy (immoral? your words) to "grandfather" everything in when the new law was passed. But I understand that wad the entire point (Disney) of that law.
>"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.
I'm not sure the reader would be breaking the law. Copyright law is about distribution, so the site would be violating the copyright by making it available. However, reading it is not distribution so simply reading it would not be an issue.
It is interesting to me that something like this can have such a high value. It speaks meanly for the our shared cultural global connection when it comes to items like these. For what purpose other than saying: “I have a …” would you buy this? Or is it the believe the price only goes up and it gets bought as an investment? I mean specifically this item with this high price.
I ask because I think the price is only as high if the item in question is still cultural relevant. So I assume you buy it and start shadow produce new Superman projects :)
I ask because I think the price is only as high if the item in question is still cultural relevant.
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.
Ah damn. I forgot to add in the whole world of art collection which of course this item belongs in as well. Still baffles me how we humans can put such high prices on some items
Dunno why I can't reply to your other comment explaining what you mean but hot damn. False evaluation of a cheap painting to save on taxes? That's mental.
Different tax loopholes depending on region etc, but basically like this:
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
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.
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.
I’m pretty sure he’s right in how taxes work. There’s no moment where the value of the painting is realized but you are allowed to deduct the FMV if you make enough and if the donation goes to the charity’s exempt use (which it will if it’s a museum or whatever).
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.
Yes, there are lots of “loopholes” available if you are willing to commit tax fraud! But that’s something anyone can do, it’s not particularly harder to lie about the value of charitable donations if you’re not ultra-wealthy.
Correct. Fraud is fraud, loopholes are loopholes. One is legal, the other is not.
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 price is determined by the depths of pockets of buyers. High price for such items means only that too many stupid people have too much money in our time.
"only for thing people would legitimately like to have."
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.
In that respect I suspect it is much the same as bored apes. The price can go up while there are people with funds to put into things they don't care about. When the time comes that they have less money than the cost of things important to them, the 'value' can swiftly evaporate.
The ha.com press release that this summarizes makes it clear that the mother and uncle bought the comics for their own enjoyment then decided to pass them down to the sons once they knew the comics were valuable. It doesn’t explicitly say they bought them on the news stand, but that’s the impression I get.
What's missing in the story is when did she buy it and how much she spent... Maybe it was an expensive purchase at that point already, like in 5 digits, and she invested a considerable portion of her savings?
> Their mother had held on to the comic books since she and her brother bought them between the Great Depression and the beginning of World War Two, Heritage said.
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.
It came out in 1939, which is in that time frame, so she probably bought it at a newsstand for the 10 cent cover price. I could be mistaken, but I don't think there was any real second-hand market for comic books at the time.
Growing up, I had a closet full of terrific toys in great condition, many of them unusual and fairly rare. When I got back from my first year of college, I found that my Mom, unlike the mother in the article, had given them all away. I was so disappointed.
I have a b&w photo of my (considerably) older brother, from the early 1960s, reading a pile of comic books a foot high. The only cover visible is Spiderman #4. When I was a kid I used to stare at that picture and dream.
I use to collect baseball cards as a kid in the 80s and I can remember I would see comics at card shows.
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?
I had a British edition of Star Wars #1 at my parent's house that an English friend gave me when we were kids back in the early 80's. I always wondered what it was worth, as I could only find price guides for the US edition. But when I finally got around to go get it a couple years ago, it was nowhere to be found. So the question became only academic.
Does anyone know why this particular issue is so valuable? I'm assuming it's some mix of investment, timing, sentimental value, and rarity. But which ones particularly?
An earlier submission of the auction house source had some details like it's one of only seven copies that have a grading score over 6.0 (it scored a record 9.0), and one of only 100 ever of any quality ever auctioned there.
the article explicitly states that this original Superman #1 is the highest graded copy of all-time
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.
Stable investment vehicle I am not so sure. I think an index fund or even gold will outperform it over 100 years. Superman comics rely on people giving a shit about superman which will fade over time. Superman isnt a big thing for gen z for example.
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.
I assume the content isn't as important as the fact the object itself is the original. Original paper, original ink, original release date. The object itself comes from the original factory, survived through time etc. I would expect some tests will verify it uses the correct paper, has the signs of age, etc.
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.
I get that it's more valuable than Superman #200, but why 9 million dollars valuable. There's a poorer quality one at 5 million, but that also means that there's other copies in existence.
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.
What are the odds it's a forgery? Couldn't find any details on their grading method and how it was "positively identified to originate from the first print run of the issue" [0].
For how they could tell it was from the first run, it says in the article you referenced:
> 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.”
My first thought reading the headline was that I would have no idea - could so easily throw away something apparently very valuable in such a scenario just because it's not something I know about.
> 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.)
There's this new sentiment in the society of finding something rare with high value to flip it and make a bank. But the way it's being pursued... It just doesn't feel right.
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.
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.
Superman depicts a common racist and misogynist view that white men are more important, virtuous, and stronger than everyone else. The early comic books in particular make this obvious.
That this obscenity is apparently worth millions of dollars is a sad reflection of the bigotries in society we continue to endure today.
I know nothing of this world of comics, I guess because it is essentially part of the US culture and did not penetrate much of Europe.
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 ?
As usual, generalising all of Europe based on your individual country is a mistake as there are some Euro counties where comics are quite popular. France, Belgium, Italy and the UK all have thriving native comic book industries, and I have Swedish friends who tell me Donald Duck comics are very popular there.
I imagine a pristine 1st edition Tintin or Asterix would be quite valuable.
I wouldn't say comics are really popular in France. But we may have different interpretations of what comics are, as I don't consider "bandes dessinées" (e.g. Tintin) as comics.
As an avid reader of BDs, I would agree with you, but for the purpose of this discussion, and for the general public, these two are indistinguishable. Even to the actual translation, which is (pardon my rusty French) somewhere in the ballpark of "cartoon strips".
For this, it is pretty legit since it is old. What is thought to be driven by money laundering is people paying crazy amounts of money for graded VHS movies or NES games.
"He added: "This isn't simply a story about old paper and ink. This was never just about a collectible.
"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 :).
He added: “This isn’t simply a blurb of words and phrases. This is not just a stock statement from an LLM.
This is a testament to outsourcing, laziness and the unexpected ways technology finds ways to change every press release.”
All it needed was the emdash
I've been pressing minus twice to type a dash on Mac OS for so long I've forgotten when I started. People are pointing it out to me more and more every day. I think my writing is distinct enough from an LLM for most people, but there's certainly a growing contingent that sees a telltale and assumes everything must be AI generated.
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!
Yeah it actually saddens me a little, if using good and correct typography will be avoided because of LLM.
It's already happened unfortunately. LLMs learned to write correctly from people who write correctly. Those people are now being blamed for sounding like AI, when AI actually sounds like them (and probably learned from their work without permission). To avoid they, they write differently.
Em dashes are still appropriate for articles, journals, scientific papers, and other academic or professional writing.
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 use em dashes for the same reason that I use semicolons: it’s how I’m hearing the sentence in my head as I’m typing it.
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.
I would love to know what sequence of characters you normally use in place of an em-dash to express the same nuance of relationship and timing.
Not the GP, but I often just use commas and parenthetical asides (like this).
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 also will often use the fabled semicolon
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).
The problem to me doesn’t seem to be the em dashes but rather the multiple people around you that actively talk about “being an intellectual writer“ and how they need to signal it with their choice of punctuation. Frankly they sound ridiculous. But again, that has nothing to do with the actual punctuation itself. Writing off a writing tool because of two people you agree are ridiculous doesn’t seem like the right way to respond to their behavior.
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.
If people only fixate on your emdashes, they're just lazy. The bigger AI smell to me is the "it's not X — it's Y," of which the emdash is a part.
They’re using a crude linear model to identify AI output, which is not that much different from that which the AI safety industry is peddling, or the people that sell solutions to identify AI output.
You can’t reliably predict the output of a non-linear model with a simple linear model, no matter how hard you wish it.
Perfectly said. The safety industry is such a grift, propped up by ignorant VCs who don't want to miss their rocket ship
That’s not an LLM indicator —it’s totally acceptable grammar.
I've been using it as well for a long while (though using option shift -), but I don't care what people think. I won't change my style to appease Temu Sherlocks, or anyone really. How I write doesn't change the value of the message. I invite you to join me in not giving a crap.
It wasn't clear from my comment, but I absolutely don't care and I'm going to keep typing how I type.
I’d actually just figured out the compose binding to type it on Linux just before chatgpt got popular
Ive had to change how i write so that people don’t think its chat bot. Probably more a me thing but it has sadly ruined my heavy use of m dash and personal style. Small minority i know.
I wouldn't bother. Who gives a flying fuck. The only people I know talking about it aren't particularly good at writing anyway.
“Why should I change? He’s the one who sucks.”
Why this matters: <bullet point list>.
And here's the kicker:
Here's why this works:
With red X’s, green checkmarks, and bullseye icons for each bullet.
You're absolutely right!
[dead]
Reminded me of an exchange I saw decades ago in some TV show or movie (I forget where it was from but it stayed with me):
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.”
Also, from a classic that is finally getting a sequel: Spaceballs!
-We're not doing this for the money... -... we're not? -We're doing this for a SHITTON of money!
The Jerk?
Could be. I honestly have zero idea. I don’t even recall the people or the setting, just the exchange.
To them I’m sure it really is all that plus the $9M they get, but mostly the $9M.
gotta add those "values" so the bidder got worth its money
Made me want to vomit
Yea, would he have said the same for some old worthless TV program magazine?
Did Silicon Valley VCs give that comic its valuation?
Found a bit more on the story behind this copy
https://www.ha.com/heritage-auctions-press-releases-and-news...
Funny how the time of day affects the visibility of posting on HN https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46002609 :)
Time of day definitely plays a part, but there’s also luck/randomness to it.
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.)
> Funny how the time of day affects the visibility of posting
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
I strongly suspect that a number of HN members have been training LLMs on HN headlines, then using these LLMs to recommend stories and times for submission. Maybe they have even set up the scripts to post submissions automatically.
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.
Hacker News is for human beings to share stories they find interesting so that other human beings can discuss those stories to gratify their intellectual curiosity. Automating that process with the goal of maximizing visibility and karma defeats the intended goal of the forum.
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.
Sadly, I agree.
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.
The actual actual goal is to promote Ycombinator to make money for pg.
I don't think it's that simple. It's my opinion that YC doesn't need much buzz, except within this very community. Since they own the venue, they get the benefit.
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 remember a painting was discovered, and there was speculation that it was a da Vinci. It was appraised at $30,000. If it could be proven to be a da Vinci, it would be worth a million.
For the same item.
Crazy.
Do you think a sculpture by a pre-civilization human is worth more than something banged out yesterday?
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.
This is all a great way of describing why art works as a money laundering or tax evasion scheme.
Can you elaborate further on the tax evasion part? The money laundering part I can see since the value of art is subjective and volatile, but how does what OP said explain how art can be used for tax evasion?
The artwork is then given to a museum as a charitable donation for a tax write-off, or so the story goes.
Even if this were true (and it's not), that is not tax evasion.
It's tax avoidance. The difference between the two is one is legal and the other is not.
I've seen a lot of ancient art in museums. I have simply no desire to spend $$$ acquiring them simply because they are old.
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.
Art as a tool for storing Mana: https://medium.com/luminasticity/art-as-a-tool-for-storing-m...
Is it crazy? Clearly the value is the proof itself, not the item, right? Certainly a genuine da Vinci is an investment you can very likely recoup and make a profit on. If I could buy one that’s proven, for a million, and I had a million sitting around, I would. That would be a smart move. The $30k non da Vinci, who knows, could be everything from love of art and total loss to perhaps a small profit. It depends on how good the remainder of the story is. Even for today’s working artists, the narrative is most often the important & valuable part, and the item is just a pretty artifact that backs up the story. For expensive collectible investment art, the importance of the narrative goes way up.
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.
> Certainly a genuine da Vinci is an investment you can very likely recoup and make a profit on.
I.e. it's worth money because it's worth money.
Hehe, I like it. Yeah that’s a valid, if funny and tautological way to summarize it. I am arguing that the monetary value comes from the story attached something that’s unique, historical, famous, etc. The artifact itself didn’t change value when it was proven to be a da Vinci, a new and very valuable story was attached to it. Without the story/proof it really is worth less.
Yes but there has to be some kind of self-reinforcing circularity to the value of that story, or the price of a da Vinci would be roughly inflationary or even under it and therefore not a good investment. Da Vinci's story isn't substantially changing (and doesn't even have a bunch of aging, rich, nostalgic people at exactly the right age-wealth point relative to the material in question to drive prices like Superman) and there are only more famous people over time, so the percentage of all famous pointings taken by da Vinci will decrease. There are no new practical uses for paintings being discovered. While the older the work gets the more it is worth, it's 500 years old already, so even an extra 50 years is only a small increase in its relative historicity (0.2% per year, so well under the region of inflation)
Sure the claim that an artifact like a painting is valuable because it’s rare & famous is somewhat self-reinforcing, I agree. I also think it’s fair to call it circular in the sense that people investing and making a profit when they re-sell will cause more people to want to invest, and will drive the prices of collectibles higher. The value of a collectible is a social construct rather than a reflection of, say, skill or materials or cost to make, and so normal economics doesn’t really apply.
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.
> there’s no reason I know of to suspect the ‘age-wealth point’ of the collector is particularly relevant.
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.
I'm not interested in speculating on art. It's far too risky for my taste. There's always a high risk of them being counterfeits. Verification by even top experts is pretty chancy.
Oh I agree with you there 100%. That’s a different issue than having no proof at all, or no claim or story, right?
The salvator mundi was bought at an auction for $1.2k, restored & appraised, then eventually sold for $450 million. The art/collection world is fascinate everything latches onto experts putting their reputation on the line, precious metals and gem stones make way more sense to me as their authenticity is undeniable for now
Weirdly enough, precious metals and gem stones are only valuable because we agree they are. It's exactly the same as art, but with a lot less debate.
Same thing with time ...
Supply of money in the hands of people needing a place to stash it: way up.
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.
Maybe not the one you're thinking, but this is notable recent case: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salvator_Mundi_(Leonardo)
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.
This isn't a great example because da Vinci was a famous historical figure and lived 500 years ago. Just the history of a real da Vinci is remarkable, regardless of the artistic merit.
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.
Isnt it just cause more people want to own a da Vinci than a non-da Vinci, so therefore the price goes higher cause more people are willing to outbid the other?
this is true a lot in the world of paintings. there are regularly auctions where you can buy items "attributed" to (meaning it's speculated but not confirmed) very famous Modern Art painters like Van Gogh, Monet, etc for under $5,000 which, if confirmed, would send the valuation many multiples higher
Imagine some rich asshat at a pretentious cocktail party going
"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.
Perhaps not the best example, da Vinci was prolific, and you can easily pick up something of his for under $3k.
Let's say that I gift you a suitcase with ten thousand $100 bills that seem legit, but you're not sure. How much would you be willing to pay for a proof that they are indeed legit?
It's a crime to pass counterfeit money. I'm not interested in that kind of trouble.
Besides, I don't need to pay to test for it being legit. Just go to a bank.
The legality does break the analogy, but my point was just that a suitcase with ten thousand $100 bills has a non-zero value on its own, but that proving its provenance would significantly increase its value, despite the suitcase staying the same. The argument then is that this is not unique to art - it's (financially) valuable for us to know who made an artifact and what its journey was until it got to us.
>> This is a testament to memory, family and the unexpected ways the past finds its way back to us
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.
It doesn't sound right away to me:
>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.
Yep, it's not right away. They hesitated a few months to get rid of the 80-year old family piece, which their mother didn't bother selling. Family possessions should be treated as reserves to help off-springs down the family hierarchy in the needy times. Not to cash out because they are in 50s and 60s. 50s and 60s are just middle age when some people do a fresh start of their lives.
It's more of an emotional reaction to the life-changing impact of $9 million, expressed that way, rather than a literal feeling to be taken word for word.
I agreed with the first sentence, but then the second one had me scratching my head. Could you clarify/expand on what you’re saying there?
>> expand on "men turning 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.
What’s wrong about that? Why shouldn’t a man be emotional, make facial expressions, or try to please someone? Why is that “fake”?
I’m asking in general, since your original comment looked to be a general complaint and not only specific about this case.
In this case, it is fake because they didn't value the very sentiment they were talking about. In general, those attributes in men make them drama queens.
That doesn't follow. I could be incredibly sentimental about something and still very happily part with it for millions of dollars. You are inventing a dichotomy that doesn't exist.
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.
Having irrational and excessive emotions and the associated negative feelings is the primary cause of extreme actions. You can do better at knowing things.
Having and expressing are two wildly different things. Your misunderstanding on this is the root of your ignorance.
What's out of place in your comment is probably "men" and then "drama queens". It makes it sound like you have some rigid idea of how men are supposed to be.
Perhaps you meant to imply that it is society that pigeonholes men this way.
Not sure why I find this surprising, but this comic is worth twice as much as Napoleon's diamond encrusted brooch recently sold for [1]
[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2025/11/14/world/europe/napoleon-dia...
It's not worth twice as much. There was a buyer willing to pay twice as much. For something like this, the fact that value is completely subjective really sticks out. Trying to sell it again tomorrow might go for half or double.
If the buyer paid 9M, doesnt this means that someone else wanted to pay 8M?
What I am trying yo say: at least two collectors (?) or speculators (?) with deep pockets.
Yeah, the point of sharing was to point out the subjectivity. The brooch sold at auction too.
To be fair that's true for everything including the jewels
With this kind of case it's impossible to read the comic book, and it doesn't protect it from UV light. I prefer using covers that block UV light. This both protects it and allows you to read it.
It really doesn't make sense to read a 9.0 condition key comic like this. If you really wanted to read it, you would be better off buying a second reading copy in terrible condition.
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.
Makes me think of this Simpsons episode:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ii4Msc9ESEw
I thought you were going to share the one where Bart Martin and Milhouse team up to buy a rare “radioactive man”. It goes badly
https://youtu.be/zw220bx88WA?si=vArVS22Oac02uNK5
I’d forgotten about prank monkey Homer.
I was thinking of the "perma-mint condition" issue of Radioactive Man. Spilled drinks fly off harmlessly onto lesser comics: https://youtube.com/watch?v=Mqe21Up4Vmo&t=14s
Funny that the fictitious comic is spilling into a “lesser” real comic by Matt Groening (creator of the Simpsons).
Why did he do that?
In that episode a bored Mr. Burns hires Homer as his „prank monkey”, paying him with loose cash to play cruel pranks on others and humiliate himself. Homer eventually regains his dignity after refusing to ruin the Thanksgiving day parade, even for a million dollars.
Ahh thank you.
What a wild concept in this case:
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.
A careless 15 year old would take off millions from the value.
You can read it (illegally) here:
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.
I can't understand why the inside covers were scanned by someone, but at crazy low res. Yes the comic is important, but even the ads are fun and a memory blast.
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.
I assume it's just an inflation robust store of value.
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
https://comicbookplus.com would have it legally as the Copyright expired long ago.
What makes you think the copyright has expired?
Probably confused 2024 with 2034, when it will actually expire.
Yeah
Until they pass away and somebody finds it then puts it for sale, and so on...
My impression was the comic was worth so much because the widely available digital version loses something.
Not everyone wants to break the law to read things from their collection. Also the physical experience of reading is much different than digital.
While you could store your collectable in a vault, many people enjoy displaying their collectables.
Sorry .. I didn’t realize that zipcomic.com was illegal .. I’d assumed the copyright had expired[0], and checking on DC Universe Infinite isn’t possible, since it’s geolocked and I’m not in a country deemed worthy of it. It’s probably available in Libby or Hoopla, legally.
[0] It’s still copyrighted, although it seems that will expire in a decade or so, though. I guess I’ll read it then.
back in my day, we had these buildings called 'libraries' which were filled wall-to-wall with many different types of copyright material. Mainly books, but also comics, newspapers and magazines, that you could legally read and also borrow and take home for a few days, for FREE!!
Now you’re just making stuff up.
Yeah, I still love to visit my local library, it is one of the most enlightening places in the city.
Stop! This is disgusting!
This might be genuinely the first time I can remember hearing someone say they don’t want to commit piracy. No offence, but who cares? Especially for something from 1939.
This comic is older than most (all?) HN users.
True, I guess if I'd spent 9 million buckaroonies on the original, I'd feel compelled to download the digital version .. from wherever .. and put the physical edition in an air-tight preservation vault, deep in some bank somewhere.
But .. I just didn't want to encourage piracy among our community, is all.
Yeah, if issue #1 it were still being sold, that would be piracy.
I mean, I care (though not for something whose creators are long since dead and whom you can't support any more). But in general, I certainly try to avoid piracy. I think it's immoral and while I don't think it makes one a bad person (I myself used to pirate a ton of stuff when I had no money to buy it), I do think it's a thing that a good person should strive to avoid.
At the time that it was published, it would've been public domain by 1995 (so its creators might reasonably be alive at expiration). Anyone would be able to legally reprint it. Was that immoral? Or was it immoral to monopolize culture for another 1-2 generations?
It was a bad policy (immoral? your words) to "grandfather" everything in when the new law was passed. But I understand that wad the entire point (Disney) of that law.
Back up here:
>"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.
I'm not sure the reader would be breaking the law. Copyright law is about distribution, so the site would be violating the copyright by making it available. However, reading it is not distribution so simply reading it would not be an issue.
When you click the link you co-distribute a copy to your own computer.
If you were just passing by when a friend did it and read their computer screen I think you'd have a stronger argument.
Not-for-profit copyright infringement on this scale is generally a tort and not a criminal act.
It’s a bit hyperbolic. It’s a webpage of a comic book.
You’re better off just getting UV protective film on your windows.
I wonder if that significantly changes your vitamin D production?
No.
It is interesting to me that something like this can have such a high value. It speaks meanly for the our shared cultural global connection when it comes to items like these. For what purpose other than saying: “I have a …” would you buy this? Or is it the believe the price only goes up and it gets bought as an investment? I mean specifically this item with this high price. I ask because I think the price is only as high if the item in question is still cultural relevant. So I assume you buy it and start shadow produce new Superman projects :)
I ask because I think the price is only as high if the item in question is still cultural relevant.
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.
Surely some of it is also the simple fact of... these people are very rich and want some art they enjoy.
The same way a regular person might buy an autographed photo of a celebrity they like or something like that.
Ah damn. I forgot to add in the whole world of art collection which of course this item belongs in as well. Still baffles me how we humans can put such high prices on some items
It’s mostly money laundering and loan collateral
I thought it was bragging rights for the terminally insecure billionaire class.
They get stored in warehouses. No one sees most of this art
I assumed they were stored in yachts or "chateaus" in Jackson Hole, Wyoming.
Don’t forget the tax savings.
Dunno why I can't reply to your other comment explaining what you mean but hot damn. False evaluation of a cheap painting to save on taxes? That's mental.
What tax savings? How does that work?
Different tax loopholes depending on region etc, but basically like this:
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
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.
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.
I’m pretty sure he’s right in how taxes work. There’s no moment where the value of the painting is realized but you are allowed to deduct the FMV if you make enough and if the donation goes to the charity’s exempt use (which it will if it’s a museum or whatever).
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.
There was a subtle mistake: the 30M would be deducted from taxable income (in Canada I was only able to deduct from capital gains)
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
Yes, there are lots of “loopholes” available if you are willing to commit tax fraud! But that’s something anyone can do, it’s not particularly harder to lie about the value of charitable donations if you’re not ultra-wealthy.
Loopholes are by definition legal.
Bribing an appraiser to get a larger deduction on a donation is cut-and-dried tax fraud. It’s not a “loophole”.
Correct. Fraud is fraud, loopholes are loopholes. One is legal, the other is not.
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.
Your scheme involves getting a fake appraisal for a value higher than the market price. But this does not explain high prices at an auction.
This item didn’t get sold yet or? It’s says it’s valued at 9million. So somebody gave it that number.
> Now it has become the highest-priced comic book ever sold, fetching $9.12m (£7m) at auction.
The price is determined by the depths of pockets of buyers. High price for such items means only that too many stupid people have too much money in our time.
It's valuable because we know with high certainty that it wasn't created using GenAI.
I would say something like this is an analog version of nowadays crypto currency.
It is, but only for thing people would legitimately like to have.
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
"only for thing people would legitimately like to have."
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...
In that respect I suspect it is much the same as bored apes. The price can go up while there are people with funds to put into things they don't care about. When the time comes that they have less money than the cost of things important to them, the 'value' can swiftly evaporate.
Analogue NFT
Really? After all the bogus valuations on HN, this one surprised you
The mother knew the potential value when she bought it, interestingly enough. Good for her!
The ha.com press release that this summarizes makes it clear that the mother and uncle bought the comics for their own enjoyment then decided to pass them down to the sons once they knew the comics were valuable. It doesn’t explicitly say they bought them on the news stand, but that’s the impression I get.
What's missing in the story is when did she buy it and how much she spent... Maybe it was an expensive purchase at that point already, like in 5 digits, and she invested a considerable portion of her savings?
> Their mother had held on to the comic books since she and her brother bought them between the Great Depression and the beginning of World War Two, Heritage said.
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.
It came out in 1939, which is in that time frame, so she probably bought it at a newsstand for the 10 cent cover price. I could be mistaken, but I don't think there was any real second-hand market for comic books at the time.
Growing up, I had a closet full of terrific toys in great condition, many of them unusual and fairly rare. When I got back from my first year of college, I found that my Mom, unlike the mother in the article, had given them all away. I was so disappointed.
I have a b&w photo of my (considerably) older brother, from the early 1960s, reading a pile of comic books a foot high. The only cover visible is Spiderman #4. When I was a kid I used to stare at that picture and dream.
Needless to say, I kept all my old comics.
I use to collect baseball cards as a kid in the 80s and I can remember I would see comics at card shows.
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?
I had a British edition of Star Wars #1 at my parent's house that an English friend gave me when we were kids back in the early 80's. I always wondered what it was worth, as I could only find price guides for the US edition. But when I finally got around to go get it a couple years ago, it was nowhere to be found. So the question became only academic.
I kept all my old comics too, and check the value occasionally on eBay. Most valuable one has yet to top $40.
Turns out a lot of 80s kids had the same idea!
Does anyone know why this particular issue is so valuable? I'm assuming it's some mix of investment, timing, sentimental value, and rarity. But which ones particularly?
An earlier submission of the auction house source had some details like it's one of only seven copies that have a grading score over 6.0 (it scored a record 9.0), and one of only 100 ever of any quality ever auctioned there.
the article explicitly states that this original Superman #1 is the highest graded copy of all-time
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.
Stable investment vehicle I am not so sure. I think an index fund or even gold will outperform it over 100 years. Superman comics rely on people giving a shit about superman which will fade over time. Superman isnt a big thing for gen z for example.
Who knows, but some comic books characters like Batman and Spider-man are bigger that ever, while others like Tarzan is losing relevance.
> 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.
I assume the content isn't as important as the fact the object itself is the original. Original paper, original ink, original release date. The object itself comes from the original factory, survived through time etc. I would expect some tests will verify it uses the correct paper, has the signs of age, etc.
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.
If you’re going to get into forgery of historical memorabilia there’s probably easier targets than Superman comic books, no?
Your question is why is issue #1 of a very old and popular thing valuable?
I get that it's more valuable than Superman #200, but why 9 million dollars valuable. There's a poorer quality one at 5 million, but that also means that there's other copies in existence.
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?
It's a combination of importance and condition.
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.
A shame to hear that heritage auctions were the ones to handle this
Why do you say that? I'm unfamiliar with Heritage Auctions.
Allegations they operated a pump and dump in conjunction with Wata games, a "grading" company.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heritage_Auctions#Controversie...
What are the odds it's a forgery? Couldn't find any details on their grading method and how it was "positively identified to originate from the first print run of the issue" [0].
[0] https://www.ha.com/heritage-auctions-press-releases-and-news...
For how they could tell it was from the first run, it says in the article you referenced:
> 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.”
Definitely not. It's CGC graded, and you can bet only their top graders would be involved. https://www.cgccomics.com/news/article/14678/superman-herita...
My first thought reading the headline was that I would have no idea - could so easily throw away something apparently very valuable in such a scenario just because it's not something I know about.
> 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.)
This is the epitome of why people go to yard sales
I can hear Nic Cage get out his credit card from 1000 miles away to buy it.
There's this new sentiment in the society of finding something rare with high value to flip it and make a bank. But the way it's being pursued... It just doesn't feel right.
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 understand what you mean, and I agree.
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.
its insane that quality is still that good, I have a comic book that already "rotten" despite have newer age
The photo (scan?) of it looks like it could've been printed yesterday. Quite amazing that it's survived in such good quality.
Sounds like some sort of scam to me. The item is probably correct but the price seems way too high.
Why? Similar comics have been sold for upwards of 6 mill, and this one is better graded.
Maybe I am too cynical but the story sounds fake. And I would not be surprised if this is some way of manipulating the market.
[flagged]
Why would you say something like that?
Superman depicts a common racist and misogynist view that white men are more important, virtuous, and stronger than everyone else. The early comic books in particular make this obvious.
That this obscenity is apparently worth millions of dollars is a sad reflection of the bigotries in society we continue to endure today.
I know nothing of this world of comics, I guess because it is essentially part of the US culture and did not penetrate much of Europe.
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 ?
As usual, generalising all of Europe based on your individual country is a mistake as there are some Euro counties where comics are quite popular. France, Belgium, Italy and the UK all have thriving native comic book industries, and I have Swedish friends who tell me Donald Duck comics are very popular there.
I imagine a pristine 1st edition Tintin or Asterix would be quite valuable.
I wouldn't say comics are really popular in France. But we may have different interpretations of what comics are, as I don't consider "bandes dessinées" (e.g. Tintin) as comics.
As an avid reader of BDs, I would agree with you, but for the purpose of this discussion, and for the general public, these two are indistinguishable. Even to the actual translation, which is (pardon my rusty French) somewhere in the ballpark of "cartoon strips".
I remember as a kid that Superman #1 was going for thousands of dollars and we just oohed and aahed.
For this, it is pretty legit since it is old. What is thought to be driven by money laundering is people paying crazy amounts of money for graded VHS movies or NES games.