The $2,000,000 Comic?

Indeed!

Will Nic Cage's copy of Superman's first appearance rake in the dough?

From a piece on Bleeding Cool...

The vintage comics scene has been buzzing for the past several days about word that a very high grade copy of Action Comic #1 — stolen from Nicolas Cage‘s home in 2000 and recovered by Los Angeles police this April from a San Fernando Valley storage locker — would soon come up for auction from well-known high-end vintage comics venue Comic Connect. [Update: See CGC scan and auction listing below]

Questions remained: Who now owns the book? And exactly what condition is it in after being missing for a decade and found in a storage locker?

As news broke of the recovery in April, Cage told ABC News that he would seek to have the comic returned to him. But there are likely insurance claim issues involved as well, and Comic Connect has thus far declined to comment on the identity of the current owner — though that is not unusual in these situations.

However, the question of condition may have just been resolved. An Action Comics #1 CGC 9.0 has just appeared on Certified Guaranty Company’s Comic Book census — which is a publicly-accessible database of every comic the company has graded. Given the circumstances, it is very likely that this CGC 9.0 copy is the Cage copy recovered by LA police (a comparison with the updated scan below appears to confirm that the 9.0 is the recovered Cage copy). And it is the best copy ever graded by CGC.

The $50,000 Flower Seed Catalog

Booktryst highlights Robert Furber's classic, Twelve Months of Flowers (1730).

From the post...

Furber's intent was "to make the Love of Gardening more general, and the understanding of it more easy, I have from time to time published Catalogues, containing large Variety of Trees, Plants, Fruits, and Flowers, both Foreign and Domestic, cultivated by me for Sale" (Short Introduction to Gardening). The flowers were grouped into bouquets according to the month they bloomed, and referenced with numbers and captions so that Furber's customers could order particular specimens. In this regard, the publication follows in the tradition of Emanuel Sweert's Florilegium (1612-1614), a similarly elaborate sale catalogue.

Furber spared no expense, commissioning the celebrated Antwerp-born painter Pieter Casteels and the skilled engraver Henry Fletcher. The illustrations transcended their original commercial purpose and were reprinted throughout the 18th century to capitalize on their decorative appeal.

The $72,000 Comic Book

News Antique discusses the sale of an old comic book.

The $175,000 Dust Jacket

Booktryst discusses F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby and what it goes for at auction.

From the piece...

The incredibly rare and desirable dust jacket to the first edition of F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby is coming to auction via Sotheby's-New York Library of an English Bibliophile Sale Part II on October 20, 2011. It is estimated to sell for $150,000-$180,000. An excellent copy of the first edition, first printing of The Great Gatsby, a book that in near-fine/fine condition sells for $7,000-$10,000, is included with the dust jacket.

The dust jacket is in the corrected first state, i.e. the "j" in Jay Gatsby on the rear panel was printed in lower case and carefully hand-corrected in ink to upper-case by the publisher. No uncorrected copies of the first state dust jacket are known to exist. In the second state of the dust jacket the "J" was corrected by the printer.

This copy of The Great Gatsby sold at Bonham's-New York, June 10, 2009, lot 3252, for $182,000.

How Much Money is One Sentence from J.D. Salinger?

$50,000?

The Confederate Flying Machine

One man's vision caught Jefferson Davis' attention, but never could get funded.

From a piece on NBC...

The papers of R. Finley Hunt, a dentist with a passion for flight, describe scenarios where flying machines bombed Federal troops across Civil War battlefields. Hunt's papers are set to go up for sale at the Space and Aviation Artifacts auction during the week of Sept. 15-22, giving one lucky collector a chance to own a piece of an alternate technological history that never came to pass.

"It's incredible for someone who loves early aviation, because it poses the great question of 'What if?'" said Bobby Livingston, vice president of sales and marketing with RR Auction. "What if planes had appeared above the wilderness when (Union Gen. Ulysses S.) Grant began his campaign in the Shenandoah Valley?"

The hardback collection includes pencil drawings of wings, propellers and a multicylinder steam engine. Hunt's designs drew inspiration from his love of studying any and all flying methods found in nature, despite his own lack of professional expertise.

Poe at Auction

Booktryst marvels in the coming Sotheby's auction.

From the piece...

A first edition, first printing, first issue of Poe's Tales (1845) in the original wrappers is the first star to shine. In miraculous condition, it is estimated to sell for $200,000 - $250,000. It's the pits when the pendulum swings so high but copies in this condition are beyond scarce. The Behrman copy, the last to come even close, exhibited loss at head of spine, an old repair along the front joint, the rear joint was partly split, it showed some soiling, possessed a chip to the upper blank margin of the Contents leaf, with pages 57-64 displaying a few chips from careless opening, sold at Christie's New York, June 12, 2008 for $110,000. Condition, the imp of the perverse in book collecting, remains everything. The serious and seriously monied Poe collector is sure to be bitten by the gold bug.

Tales was originally issued in a print run of at least 1500 copies but in three variants (bound in cloth, wrappers, and bound together with The Raven and Other Poems) so it is difficult to ascertain just how many copies in wrappers were originally released. What we do know is that there are perhaps only six copies in the full original wrappers extant. This, the Litchfield copy, appears to be the best surviving copy. The last time it came to auction was in 1990 when it sold at Sotheby's for a mere $45,000. What a difference twenty-one years makes.

Upon its original publication it sold for 50¢. What a difference 166 years makes. Poe's royalty was 8¢ per copy in whichever format. He earned at least $120 but probably not much more. Not much difference 166 years makes to the average writer today.

Frida Kahlo and Edgar Allan Poe

A book of Poe's work, annotated by none other than painter Frida Kahlo sold at auction recently.



From a piece on the Paul Fraser Collectibles site...



In a different sphere, celebrated Mexican artist Frida Kahlo is also highly coveted by collectors, and her works have attracted six and seven figure bids.



Obviously the two are not usually related. But at Leslie Hindman's auction earlier this week one lot will have interested collectors of both kinds:



The beaten-up copy of The Works of Edgar Allan Poe was covered the book with doodles, inscriptions, paint and collaged leaves by Kahlo.

Spider-Man Cover Art May Take In a Lot of Cash

To the tune of $100,000. More, here.

Vintage Posters at Auction

Beautiful, they are. Fine Books & Collections Magazine has more, here.

Rare Photos of the Beatles First Concert in the U.S. Sell Handsomely

Quite handsomely.

Austen Auction

Pages from Jane Austen's unfinished novel, The Watsons, is on the auction block.

From a piece in the Wall Street Journal...

"The Watsons" is the only major Austen manuscript still in private hands and one of very few manuscripts to survive, according to Gabriel Heaton, a senior specialist in the books and manuscripts department at Sotheby's. He adds, "It's very much a working draft. You can see how her mind was moving—how she's refining and sharpening her text as she revises."
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The novel tells the story of Emma Watson, a smart and idealistic English girl not unlike Elizabeth Bennet, the heroine of "Pride and Prejudice." Emma must return home to her middle-class family when the wealthy aunt who raised her blows what would have been her inheritance on a messy second marriage. There, she tends to her ill father and observes her sisters' hunt for rich husbands.

There are clues as to what Austen intended to happen in the subsequent chapters, thanks largely to the many letters she wrote to her sister Cassandra.

Update: It sold for A LOT OF MONEY.