Last night saw the close of the online auction for the check that bought Superman from creators Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster, having attracted more than 50 bids for a unique piece of comic book history before finally selling for more than a thousand times the original value of the Man of Steel.ComicConnect's auction closed at 8:17 p.m. last night, with 56 bids that had pushed the price all the way to $160,000. The identity of the person behind the winning bid was not revealed, although the list of people who can afford to spent that much money on a historical document (even with ComicConnect's payment plan) limits the list of candidates.

When we last reported on the auction for the 1938 check from Detective Comics Inc. to Siegel and Shuster (which, amongst other items, pays the two $130 for the rights to Superman -- although both of their names are misspelled), bidding was at a mere $37,000. Obviously, things got more heated in the subsequent two weeks, but the final bid is still two million dollars less than the record price for Action Comics #1, the work that this check made possible; Nic Cage's copy of Action #1, the first appearance of Superman, reached a record $2.16 million when auctioned off (also by ComicConnect) last December.

The check is something of a symbol in the longstanding and increasingly complicated series of legal battles between DC Comics (and now parent company Time Warner), Siegel's heirs and their lawyers. This afternoon DC issued a press release celebrating a victory against Mark Toberoff, who formerly represented the Superman creator heirs.

You can take a look at ComicConnect's check images below:

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