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Back in 1982, when an anonymous collector paid the Denver-based dealer Chuck Rozanski, of Mile High Comics, $25,000 for a copy of 1938’s Action Comics #1, which featured Superman’s debut, the sale seemed to mark the peak of an insane bubble. Since the mid-1960s, there had been a market for certain comic books from the 1930s and ’40s, and a few notable examples were worth hundreds or even thousands of dollars. But how much would even the most ardent fan be willing to spend on an old funny book?

A lot more, it turns out. Since the beginning of the present decade, the top end of the comic-book market has boomed, fueled in part by changes in the way these collectibles are sold along with greater pop-culture interest in the fictional characters the books depict. On Web sites such as eBay, through comic-book dealers such as Harley Yee, in Livonia, Michigan, and Mile High Comics in Denver and other Colorado cities, and at specialized online auction houses including ComicLink and the comics department of the Dallas-based Heritage Auction Galleries, buyers are spending enormous sums—but only under certain conditions.

Comics are part of a broader field of collectibles—toys, figurines, movie posters—whose prices have been rising in the past few years. The most sought-after issues generally feature the first appearances of the best-known characters, like Batman (Detective Comics #27, which went for $278,000 at Mastro Auctions a few years ago) and Spider-Man (1962’s Amazing Fantasy #15, a copy of which was sold by ComicLink in October 2007 for $227,000). “The character collectible market as a whole is incredibly strong right now,” says J. C. Vaughn, the executive editor of the Overstreet Comic Book Price Guide, the standard collectors’ reference. “And there’s a growing perception of liquidity in these items in terms of investment potential.” Stocks and real estate climb and crash; high-end comics have gone nowhere but up for 40 years. Collectors may be driven by a childhood fascination with a favorite character, the prestige of owning a powerful cultural totem or the pleasure of having access to a cartoonist’s oeuvre. Or they may just appreciate lucrative investments.

What is peculiar about comic books as collectibles is that they’re mass-produced, so to be really valuable, examples of the most desirable comics must be in pristine condition. Several hundred thousand copies of The Incredible Hulk #181 were sold in 1974 for the cover price of 25 cents; the Web site Pedigree Comics recently auctioned one for $25,000. Why? Not because it features the first full-length appearance of the X-Men’s Wolverine character, but because the book is a CGC 9.8—meaning that it’s one of the dozen or so best-preserved copies of that issue. In some cases, however, cultural significance and rarity alone can drive up prices: In 2006, the Web-based Esquire Comics got $195,000  for a copy of the 1938 Action #1 in less-impressive condition than the one that sold for $25,000 in 1982.

For decades, there was an informal and highly subjective scale for grading the condition of comics; one dealer’s “very good” might be another’s “very fine.” But in 2000 the high-end-collecting landscape changed with the launch of Comics Guaranty Company, or CGC. The firm, based in Sarasota, Florida, charges collectors a flat per-issue fee to evaluate the condition of their comics on a standardized 10-point scale, after which it “slabs” the comics, sealing them in tamper-evident plastic containers to prevent future damage—or reading. CGC also maintains online documentation of the grade of every comic book it has ever slabbed—more than a million to date—so collectors have readily available a reasonable estimation of exactly how common or scarce every sought-after comic is and of the condition of every extant copy. This system has made the high-end back-issue market much more active—since virtually all valuable comics sold at auction are now slabbed, buyers know exactly what they are getting.