“It’s a question that has exercised generations of schoolboys: Superman or Batman – who would win?” asked The Times of London. “Now, finally, we have the answer.”

The answer comes in the form of a record-breaking price realized for a CGC-certified 8.0 copy of Detective Comics #27, the first appearance of Batman, which sold at Heritage Auction Galleries for $1,075,500 (including the 19.5% buyer’s premium).

“Well, that record didn’t last long,” said The Washington Post. “Just three days after a Superman book became the first comic to sell for $1 million, a Batman comic book sold Thursday at auction for about $75,000 more.”

Heritage reported that both the seller and the buyer wished to remain anonymous.

"It pretty much blew away all of our expectations," Heritage’s Barry Sandoval told the BBC. The pre-auction estimates for the auction had been in the $300,000+ range. “We can really say that Batman has nosed out Superman, at least for now.”

Sandoval said the seller had purchased the issue in the 1960s for $100. He told Scoop that this comic was tracked by more people than any item in Heritage history, “…more than twice as many as the 1913 liberty nickel that sold for $3.7 million.”

“Someday, in the not-too-distant future, it may be difficult for high end collectors and investors to remember what a watershed moment this week has been in the history of comic book collecting,” said Robert M. Overstreet, author and publisher of The Overstreet Comic Book Price Guide, “To break the $1 million threshold and to do so twice in a span of four days sends a definite signal. The strength and liquidity of rare, vintage, collectible comic books is clearly accepted even in otherwise bleak economic times.”