On Sunday, August 24th, comic book lovers across the world held their breath to watch how much crazy collectors would pay for a rare Superman comic book. Though bids   above the initial asking price of 1 million dollars had been coming in gradually since the copy was placed on the auction site   eBay on July 14th, things really started to heat up during the final minutes when the price jumped from $2.5 to $2.6 and then $2.7 million, before shooting up to unbelievable 3,207,852 dollars! This of course was no ordinary Superman comic book, but an edition of the extremely sought-after   No. 1 of Action Comics series -- the first publication of the superhero that was born from the creative minds of teenagers Joe Shuster and Jerry Siegel. Though Action Comics No. 1, which depicted a diaper-clad baby Superman lifting furniture, had a print run of 200,000 copies, only about 100 are known to exist today. While the rarity is certainly a reason for the high price, Stephen Fisher, CEO of ComicConnect.com, thinks it also has a lot to do with the fact that Superman was the world's first superhero! Even so, none of the copies have been able to fetch   as much as the most recent one, simply because they have not been as well-preserved. Graded a rare 9 out of 10 by CGC, a third party grading service for comic books, the book is the highest rated copy of Action Comics No. 1 so far. According to CGC officials, the 76-year-old comic book looks and feels as though it has just come off the newsstand  . That is not surprising given that the original owner, a Virginian man who bought the book for only 10 cents in 1938, had carefully tucked it away   in a wooden box for four decades. Fortunately, when he passed away, the book was bought by a string of collectors who all realized it was a rare treasure that needed to be looked after. Before this, the highest price paid for an Action Comics No. 1 had been $2 million for a copy sold by Hollywood actor Nicholas Cage in 2011. Ironically, the two teenagers responsible for creating Superman received just 130 dollars when they sold the rights to the superhero to comic book publisher Detective Comics in 1938. What do we know about the creators of Superman?
They didn't want to sell the rights to a comic book publisher. They knew all along Superman would be the most successful comic book. They were professional comic book writers when they created Superman. They didn't make much money from creating Superman.