Did you ever watch American Pickers on cable? It was a show about two guys who would travel around in a cargo van looking for all kinds of collectibles that they could buy and then take back to their shop in Iowa.
I used to watch this show because I really found some of the stuff they came across pretty interesting. Sometimes they were going through barns full of items no one had looked at in 30 years. Sometimes they were climbing into attics. Sometimes it was people with a clear hoarding problem who just had endless junk everywhere.
There was a haggling aspect to the show which was sort of interesting but mostly I liked it for the treasure hunt. You literally never knew what might be behind that next door or pile of junk. It could be more junk that no one would ever want or it could be a rare item from 100 years ago that looked brand new.
Anyway, I came across this story today and it reminded me of American Pickers. Three brothers who’d grown up in Northern California were cleaning out their mother’s house after she passed and discovered a bunch of comic books in the attic.
“Three Northern California brothers taking stock of their late mother’s belongings in their family home during the holiday season last year discovered she had for decades held onto a cache of old comic books, tucked away in an attic beneath layers of brittle faded newspapers and cobwebs.
“Six treasured comics, kept since she and her brother bought them between the Great Depression and the looming World War II, will likely result in a life-changing windfall at Heritage’s Comic Books Signature Auction — and could include the world’s most valuable comic book.”…
“They’re in their 50s and 60s, and their mom had always told them she had an expensive comics collection but never showed them,” Allen says. “It’s a twist on the old ‘Mom threw away my comics’ story.”
Okay, I’ve held you in suspense long enough. It actually wasn’t the comic pictured above (Action Comics #1), but it was the first issue of Superman from 1939. Best of all, it was in near mint condition. The brothers contacted Heritage Auctions in Dallas and it was just auctioned off this week for $9.1 million dollars, a new record for a single comic book.
This Superman comic book found in an attic just sold for $9.12M… 🤯
🎥: @HeritageAuction, @cllctMedia https://t.co/AMa8QyTcKK pic.twitter.com/FV0XL9UYNz
— The Collectibles Guru (@gurucollects) November 20, 2025
The hammer price was $7.6 million as you can see in the clip above. The auction house then adds 22 percent (or thereabouts) as their cut, which is how you get to $9.1 million. So if the three brothers weren’t retired already they probably are after this week. At $2.5 million each, they have a lot to thank there mom for saving this all those years.
The copy of Superman No. 1 was issued in 1939 after National Allied changed its name to Detective Comics, Inc. — forever known to fans as DC.
Heritage Auctions says Superman has long been among the world’s most valuable comics.
A copy of Action Comics No. 1 sold for $6 million last year, while a Superman No. 1 went for $5.3 million in 2022.
I actually remember an episode of American Pickers where one of the leads (Mike Wolfe) said his dream was to one day find a copy of Action Comics #1 in an attic somewhere. It’s pretty crazy that things like this still happen. Somewhere in an attic near you there could be something extremely rare and valuable that people have forgotten about or never really knew was there. Something about the treasure hunt aspect of that really appeals to me.
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