Collectibles

The most valuable comic in the world has always been Action Comics #1 … until a few hours ago when a copy of Amazing Fantasy No. 15 sold for US$3,600,000 at Heritage Auctions, representing tectonic movement within the massive comic collecting industry.

We've been harping on for two decades about how undervalued scientific and computer memorabilia is. Hence, we figure that we should alert our esteemed readership to an RR Auction heading for conclusion later this month, which includes some gems.

A Steve Jobs’ job application from 1973 has sold for the fourth time in as many years, fetching $343,000 last week. The remarkable aspect of this sale is that both the physical A4 application and a NFT of the printed page were offered separately.

Last week was a big week in space exploration, with the 52nd anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing, and some significant sales of space memorabilia, including US$746,000 for an Apollo Guidance Computer (the brain behind the Lunar landing).

One of the most valuable scientific documents in history changed hands this week, when an autographed Isaac Newton manuscript of revisions to the first edition of the Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica sold at Christie's for £1,702,500.

The immense magnitude of the video games industry is beginning to be felt on the auction block, with the record price for a video game broken twice over the weekend, jumping from $660,000 to $875,000 on Friday, and then to $1,560,000 on Sunday night.

An important copy of one of the most significant American publications of all-time sold earlier this week when a 20-volume quarto set of The North American Indian by Edward S. Curtis (1868-1952) fetched $895,000 at Santa Fe Art Auction.

The world-record price for a camping chair more than doubled this week when Christie's Hong Kong sold a 17th Century Chinese Folding Horseshoe-Back Jiaoyi for $8.5 million, far exceeding the highest price previously fetched by a Chinese Jiaoyi.

A previously unknown first edition copy of Nicolas Copernicus’ landmark scientific text, De revolutionibus orbium coelestium (On the Revolutions of the Celestial Spheres), has sold at auction for £277,200 ($391,767).

Albert Einstein is the world’s most recognizable and universally loved scientist. So when a handwritten letter appeared at auction in which Einstein wrote his most famous equation in his own hand, it was logical that it should sell for a grand amount.

Video game revenues surpassed the music and movie industries a decade ago. Now there is growing indication that video game memorabilia will be equally as valuable as music and movie memorabilia.

A digital artist called "Beeple" is now one of the top three most valuable artists alive – in any medium – after he sold a JPG file of his work for US$69,346,250. Welcome to the crazy world of NFTs, and the internet's latest wild gold rush.