1938 Superman Comic Sells For $1M 267
slasher999 writes in to note a new world record sale for a comic: an instance of Action Comics #1, 1938, sold for $1 million at auction. Both the buyer and the seller remain anonymous. This comic marked the first time a superhero went to work in a city, and the first time a man flew without mechanical aid.
Technically speaking ... (Score:4, Informative)
Superman is not a man. He is an alien from the planet Krypton. So this is NOT "the first time a man flew without mechanical aid."
Re:I thought Superman could just leap over things (Score:4, Informative)
Not totally convinced by the argument that flight was a cost reduction thing for the animated series though. This was pretty high quality work, and flying would mean they couldn't use the rotoscoping technique they used for most of the animation.
Re:Value, Price, and Worth (Score:4, Informative)
An example of this would be a hypothetical economy where the value of products and services is determined by the resources (labor, energy and and raw materials) required for providing said products and services.
I've heard that argument before, and it's never been convincing. The first major problem that comes to mind is that under such a system, an old 26" black-and-white CRT television set would be worth roughly the same as a modern 56" LCD. Likewise, a Chinese knockoff of an iPhone would be worth exactly the same as the genuine article, even though it's complete crap. Your system makes no allowance for depreciation, or differences in quality. The other problem is that your system encourages inefficiency and laziness. If you take 10 hours and $5 in raw materials to make a chair, and I take 50 hours and $20 in raw materials to make a shittier chair, I can sell my product for a much higher price even though yours is actually superior.
Of course, the biggest problem is that nobody has the right to tell me what I can charge for my product, or what I can pay for yours. Implementing your "hypothetical economy" would require a regime more oppressive than the old USSR. I, for one, have no interest in seeing Orwell's vision brought to life.
Re:Value, Price, and Worth (Score:5, Informative)
> dollar was useless, you'd quickly find gold to be equally useless
No, that doesn't follow.
There have been many situations in history (frequently involving the near-certain imminent collapse of a government) wherein currency rapidly lost all its value. In each and every case, gold was still valuable.
Gold is inherently rare. Nobody knows how to make counterfeit gold. Unless some brilliant physicist discovers an affordable way to do transmutation, that's always going to be the case.
Gold also has a distinctive appearance that makes it easy to tell apart from other metals, even at a glance. ("Fool's gold" may look sort of like it might possibly contain gold ore, but you can't refine it and get anything that looks even vaguely like refined gold.)
These features give gold a durable value that has outlasted innumerable currencies and governments.
Re:Value, Price, and Worth (Score:3, Informative)
Factors which make gold valuable are easily identified:
1: Gold has aesthetic value. It's pretty, and stays pretty by not tarnishing. Like silver but with colour. That makes it a tradable commodity, and then other values attach to it...
2: Because there's not a lot of it, the price goes up; this then gives it the additional quality of encapsulating high value in small objects that can be carried easily for trade purposes. It concentrates wealth for storage or transportation. This had obvious trade benefits in the past, but today allows a single facility (Fort Knox) to secure a whole system of currency.
3: People will always want to assert and demonstrate status over other people with bright and shiny things. Gold is not only rare and desirable but is also malleable into all manner of gaudy artifacts. Platinum might technically be more ostentatious, but it's too rare to become a trade standard, harder to work, and looks too much like silver to impress people generally.
So gold is uniquely valuable. I don't see an apocalypse changing these factors much, If anything a reversion to the bronze age would give them a shot in the arm.
Re:Technically speaking ... (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Is this comic available as a torrent ? (Score:3, Informative)
Just read it online: http://xroads.virginia.edu/~UG02/yeung/actioncomics/cover.html [virginia.edu]
Re:Anonymous, huh? (Score:2, Informative)
Nice, I'm going to print this out and sell it. I figure it'll only be worth a hundred grand or so since it's not an original.
And not to be picky about the short, but Superman could only "leap 1/8th of a mile; hurdle a twenty story building" in this comic, not fly.
Re:No discussion of Superman is complete without (Score:3, Informative)
That's actually something they paid credit to in Hancock (DVD only). Some of my friends thought it was a really tacky scene:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A-tcxZ5VOBM [youtube.com]
To me though, it really shows how he cannot be completely intimate with someone. He has to warn the girl before having sex with her, and for good reason. She doesn't listen, and he saves her life by tossing her aside before his ejaculation punches holes in the ceiling.
And of course she's now scared out of her mind and runs away through the bathroom window.
If that's how all your intimate encounters progress ... you'd probably shy away from it completely.
Re:Technically speaking ... (Score:4, Informative)
The Shoveler: Oh yeah, well, maybe if we had a billionaire benefactor like Lance Hunt, then we could afford some advertising.
Mr. Furious: I think that's because Lance Hunt is Captain Amazing.
Blue Raja: Oh, here we go.
Shoveler: Oh, don't start that again! Lance Hunt wears glasses. Captain Amazing doesn't wear glasses.
Mr. Furious: He takes them off when he transforms.
Shoveler: That doesn't make any sense. He wouldn't be able to see!
Re:Value, Price, and Worth (Score:3, Informative)
The only reason to think it has value is because it did historically.
It is a sad fact of contemporary Western culture that this is taken to mean "gold has no real value." All of the rights we enjoy in our society are here for the same reason--they were historically valued. It is woefully ignorant to ignore the thrust of history. You can make a case against the use of gold as a currency, but "it has historically held value" is a talking point for your opposition. After all, *every* currency has value only because we choose to agree that it does. Utility in a currency is a bad thing, because then your money supply will keep shrinking as people use the currency for other purposes.
Some kind of currency is necessary to avoid the extra problems that the barter system brings, such as the coincidence of wants. Gold has certain properties that make it a good currency, which is why it has been so often used throughout history. These properties are arguably not as important in times of societal stability, but they become increasingly important when things fall apart.
Try to understand what money is for and why a good currency must have the properties it does before making half-cocked statements about it. Your entire list of reasons for ruling out gold (can't eat it, can't hunt with it, etc.) are all things that make it good for a currency. The fact that you were modded +5 for such stupidity only shows that there are sadly many moderators as ignorant as you on the topic of money.
There are schools of thought that say commodity-backed currencies aren't good for our society, and some of their arguments have merit. But "in bad times," as this thread is about, the only alternative is the barter system which is rife with inefficiencies. If you can't see why gold makes a good hard currency then, then I will gladly trade you all of my comic books for all of your gold.