A week before Batman #1 hits the auction block, Heritage Auctions has announced pre-auction bidding has already reached $1.53 million.
The comic in question is a CGC 9.4 graded issue – the only copy to ever receive this grading from the Certified Guaranty Company. With bidding already over $1.5 million this copy of Batman #1 surpasses the copy of Detective Comics #27 that sold for $1.5 million back in November 2020.
“I am certainly pleased but not surprised the Batman No. 1 has already broken our record for the most expensive comic sold in Heritage history – and with days to go before the auction,” said Heritage Auctions Senior Vice President Ed Jaster in a press release from Heritage Auctions..
“It’s beautiful,” he said. “The pages are all white – a no-excuses copy of one of the most desirable and important books in comic book lore.”
Here is how Heritage Auctions describes the issue:
First, there’s the iconic, oft-imitated cover image – Batman and Robin, smiling at each other as they swing across the Gotham City skyline against a bright yellow backdrop. Then there’s the back-page pin-up “autographed” by the Caped Crusader and his fledgling sidekick promising “bigger and better thrills.”
Inside, readers are presented with “The Legend of the Batman,” an origin story, which first appeared in Detective Comics No. 33, filled with grief and anger that will one day be retold, endlessly, in movies and television shows built upon that two-page narrative. After that comes the debut of a villain more popular now than ever before, star of his own blockbuster franchise: “a man with a changeless masklike face but for the eyes – burning, hate-filled eyes” called only the Joker.
Then, a few pages later, Batman squares off against the monsters of Hugo Strange, who made his first appearance only months earlier in Detective Comics No. 36 and quickly became one of the hero’s first recurring villains. A few pages after that follows another iconic debut: a burglar and “beautiful young woman” called The Cat, who, 80 years later, is married to Batman in an acclaimed new book penned by writer Tom King, who won an Eisner Award last year for his run on Batman.
The issue has been in the hands of a single owner for the last 38 years when Billy T. Giles purchased the issue in 1982 from Camelot Bookstore in Houston, Texas for the low price of $3,000.
