The high-grade record on this comic is two sales. Not two a year, or two a decade. Two, in total, in everything I can see. Action Comics 242 value has to be built from the bottom up.
It is the first appearance of Brainiac and of the bottle city of Kandor, from July 1958, and both have been fixtures of Superman stories ever since.
Two firsts, one comic, very few survivors
Brainiac arrives here as a green alien collecting cities in bottles, and one of the cities he has already taken is Kandor, the last piece of Krypton. Both ideas stuck, and both have been rebuilt in comics, television and film for six decades.
What did not stick around is the comic. A 1958 DC sold to children at ten cents had no reason to be preserved, and a hundred and fifty-eight documented sales across twenty years is a thin record by the standards of this list.
The consequence is unusual. On most keys the top of the ladder is where the information is. Here the top of the ladder barely exists and the middle carries everything.
Identification is simple: 10 cents, July 1958, no bar code, and the DC logo at the top left. The Brainiac story has been reprinted in Superman collections that name themselves inside.
What little exists above 7.0
CGC has never covered this comic in its auction reporting, so nothing below is a link. All of it comes from Heritage results and closed eBay listings.
| Grade | Result | Where and when |
|---|---|---|
| CGC 8.5 | $22,800 | Heritage Auctions, April 2025 |
| CGC 7.5 | $19,120 | Heritage Auctions, November 2017 |
| CGC 7.5 | $9,900 | Heritage Auctions, September 2025 |
| CGC 7.5 | $3,734 | Heritage Auctions, November 2011 |
| CGC 6.5 | $9,760 | eBay, May 2026 |
| CGC 6.0 | $7,999 | eBay, May 2026 |
| CGC 4.5 | $2,592 | eBay, April 2026 |
| CGC 4.0 | $2,800 | eBay, April 2026 |
| CGC 3.5 | $1,889 | eBay, May 2026 |
One CGC 8.5 has sold, for $22,800 in April 2025, and nothing above that grade appears anywhere in the record. That single result is the entire high end of this comic.
The 7.5 line has three sales spread over fourteen years and they disagree sharply: $3,734 in November 2011, $19,120 in November 2017, $9,900 in September 2025. The middle result is more than five times the first and roughly double the last.
That pattern is what a thin market looks like from the inside. Three sales across fourteen years cannot describe a trend, and the honest summary of a 7.5 of this comic is somewhere around ten thousand dollars with a large question mark attached.
The rows beneath, from 6.5 down, are all from spring 2026 and they are the most current information on the page. A 6.5 at $9,760 and a 6.0 at $7,999 within the same month tell you more about today than any of the older results do.
As with everything on this site, those figures come through CGC’s reporting of other companies’ auctions and Heritage’s own published results. GoCollect and PriceCharting track Action Comics #242 independently, and if their numbers disagree with mine it is worth finding out which of us is wrong.
Action Comics #242 value in each grade
158 sales tracked back to 2006; here are the three freshest in every grade.
| Grade | Sold for | Where and when |
|---|---|---|
| CGC 8.5 | $22,800 | Heritage Auctions, April 30, 2025 |
| CGC 7.5 | $9,900 | Heritage Auctions, September 30, 2025 |
| CGC 7.5 | $19,120 | Heritage Auctions, November 16, 2017 |
| CGC 7.5 | $3,734 | Heritage Auctions, November 15, 2011 |
| CGC 7.0 | $10,800 | Heritage Auctions, December 2, 2025 |
| CGC 7.0 | $8,400 | Heritage Auctions, April 30, 2025 |
| CGC 6.5 | $9,760 | Heritage Auctions, May 14, 2026 |
| CGC 6.0 | $7,999 | eBay, May 12, 2026 |
| CGC 6.0 | $3,200 | eBay, January 18, 2026 |
| CGC 6.0 | $3,720 | Heritage Auctions, October 31, 2025 |
| CGC 5.5 | $1,780 | eBay, April 1, 2026 |
| CGC 5.5 | $4,000 | eBay, December 21, 2025 |
| CGC 5.5 | $3,795 | eBay, November 22, 2025 |
| CGC 5.0 | $2,800 | eBay, August 20, 2024 |
| CGC 5.0 | $2,720 | eBay, May 17, 2024 |
| CGC 5.0 | $2,445 | eBay, March 11, 2024 |
| CGC 4.5 | $2,592 | eBay, April 28, 2026 |
| CGC 4.5 | $1,500 | Heritage Auctions, November 13, 2025 |
| CGC 4.5 | $1,999 | eBay, August 24, 2025 |
| CGC 4.0 | $2,800 | eBay, April 8, 2026 |
| CGC 4.0 | $2,000 | eBay, March 25, 2026 |
| CGC 4.0 | $2,750 | eBay, January 3, 2026 |
| CGC 3.5 | $1,400 | eBay, August 9, 2026 |
| CGC 3.5 | $1,037 | Heritage Auctions, July 23, 2026 |
| CGC 3.5 | $1,330 | eBay, June 8, 2026 |
| CGC 3.0 | $1,700 | eBay, February 25, 2026 |
| CGC 3.0 | $1,026 | eBay, February 16, 2026 |
| CGC 3.0 | $1,500 | eBay, January 5, 2026 |
| CGC 2.5 | $915 | Heritage Auctions, July 23, 2026 |
| CGC 2.5 | $816 | eBay, March 23, 2026 |
| CGC 2.5 | $1,260 | eBay, December 21, 2025 |
| CGC 2.0 | $736 | eBay, September 14, 2025 |
| CGC 2.0 | $1,188 | eBay, January 31, 2025 |
| CGC 2.0 | $1,150 | eBay, December 5, 2024 |
| Raw | $1,036 | eBay, June 15, 2026 |
| Raw | $1,077 | eBay, May 18, 2026 |
| Raw | $1,500 | eBay, April 23, 2026 |
Every row above is a documented sale, verifiable in Heritage’s public Action Comics issue index and in CGC’s published auction reporting. Only two of them sit above CGC 7.0, so the ladder below is where this book is actually documented.
The 3.5 lane, and how far it spreads
Thirty-six copies below 7.0 have sold since January 2025, and one grade among them has enough sales to be interesting and enough scatter to be a warning.
Six CGC 3.5 copies sold between May 2026 and August 2026, at $537, $1,037, $1,330, $1,400, $1,586 and $1,889. The highest is three and a half times the lowest, at one grade, inside four months.
Around them a 4.5 brought $2,592 and a 4.0 brought $2,800 in April 2026, so the grade above is worth about double the middle of the 3.5 band. That part behaves normally.
A spread like that usually reflects condition detail a grade number cannot carry: whether the copy is complete, whether the cover is attached properly, whether tape is holding anything together. On a 1958 comic those vary enormously inside one grade, which is why the cover alone will not settle a price here.
Selling an Action Comics #242
- Ten cents, July 1958. The Brainiac story has been reprinted in Superman collections that state their edition inside.
- Photograph the interior. The 3.5 lane spreads three and a half to one, and the difference is inside the book rather than on the cover.
- Do not expect a precise number above 7.0. Two sales exist up there in twenty years of records.
- Say Kandor as well as Brainiac. The bottle city has its own following and the listing should name both.
Photographs of the cover and a few interior pages will let me place your copy in a record that is far better documented at the bottom than at the top.
First Brainiac?
Open it and photograph a few interior pages — brittle paper, tape and page color vary hugely inside one grade on a 1958 DC, and that is what spreads the price. Text them to me.
I read every request myself.
Send photographs and I will place your copy in its grade lane against the same recent sales you can read above. Where you take it next is your call, and the options for selling in Southern California are worth knowing either way.
Related
- Action Comics #252. The first Supergirl, ten issues later, and a much deeper record.
- The 100 most valuable Silver Age comics. And what each one really sold for.
- Comic book appraisal. What happens after the photographs arrive.
Cover images on this page are shown small, for identification, with the publisher credited in the caption. If you are a rights holder and want an image removed, contact me and it comes down.
