A rare copy of the first comic book featuring Superman has sold for $317,200 in an Internet auction.

It's one of the highest prices ever paid for a comic book, a likely testament to the volume's rarity and its excellent condition.

Back in the early 1950s, a 9-year-old boy paid 35 cents at a secondhand store for this 1938 comic book - the first ever to feature Superman.

Only about 100 copies of Action Comics No. 1 are known to exist and they seldom come up for sale.