It was mentioned in a few national UK papers last week here in the UK, but spotted this post over at the Bat-Blog.

On February 25, 2010 Heritage Auction Galleries will be auctioning off Detective Comics #27, featuring the first ever Batman story back in 1939. This probably one of the most sought after superhero comics in the industry today, even more so than Action Comics #1, which went for $300,000.

Since a Detective #27 in any grade is the crown jewel of any comic collection, nobody ever seems to want to part with one, and when one is on the market it tends to be a restored copy. This is easily the highest-graded unrestored copy Heritage has auctioned, the next highest being VG 4.0!

While of course not every existing comic has been CGC-certified, many of the notable pedigree comic collections of high-grade Golden Age have lacked this key issue. It was notably absent among the Lamont Larson collection and the Davis Crippen "D" Copies, two of the few pedigree collections which began early enough to encompass this book's May 1939 cover date. That early date is a major obstacle. For example, the two best original-owner Golden Age collections Heritage has brought to auction (other than the aforementioned Crippen copies) are the Harold Curtis and Ralph Chicorel collections. These two outstanding Golden Age hoards, put together by boys who avidly collected Batman, did not begin until 1940 and late 1939 respectively. As a comparison, take Marvel Comics #1, cover-dated just five months later -- Heritage alone has sold four copies of that book from CGC-recognized pedigrees, and a couple of other attractive copies from other sources. Since so few nice Detective #27s have surfaced to date, it is fair to assume that few others will follow.

It's worth noting that the other copy to receive the 8.0 certification had "off-white" pages (one notch lower on the scale than the copy offered here). That copy sold for $278,189 on 10/26/2001 in an auction held by Mastronet Inc. Given that result and the jump in price that top Golden Age keys have made since then (consider the FR/GD 1.5 Detective #27 that Heritage auctioned for $83,650), the stated Overstreet VF value noted below seems conservative indeed.

For more details check out Heritage Auction Galleries.

(Source - Bat-Blog)