Three sales of All-American Comics #16 have hit the public record since August 2024. Look at what they were.
| Copy | Result | Where and when |
|---|---|---|
| CGC 1.8, Signature Series | $73,200 | Heritage Auctions, July 2026 |
| CGC 1.8, Signature Series | $61,069 | ComicLink, August 2024 |
| CGC 6.0, Restored | $44,000 | ComicLink, December 2024 |
| CGC 6.5 | $215,100 (reported) | reportedly Heritage, February 2018 |
| any condition | around $8,000 (reported, undated) | — |
A 1.8 is a wreck. Not a worn copy — a wreck. Rounded to nothing, probably chipped, quite possibly with pieces missing. It carried a signature on the label, which adds something, but no signature turns a 1.8 into a $61,069 comic on its own.
The other one is restored. A 6.0 that somebody worked on, and it still brought $44,000.
Not one of those is a plain, honest, unrestored comic. That is not a coincidence, and it is the most useful thing this page can tell you.
What that pattern actually means
When the three most recent public sales of a book are two signed wrecks and a restored copy, the market is telling you what exists. Clean examples of this issue are not coming to auction, because there are very few of them and the people holding them are not selling. And the two Signature Series results may well be the same Moldoff-signed copy changing hands twice — CGC’s coverage does not say. If it is, the same comic brought twenty percent more in under two years.
Alan Scott’s origin issue is genuinely scarcer in high grade than most keys of its era. The reported record belongs to a 6.5 — a mid-grade comic — which on a book of this rank is unusual. On most Golden Age keys the record is set by an 8.5 or a 9.something. Here the ceiling was set by a copy with visible wear, because that is close to as good as it gets.
So a wreck at $61,069 — and again at $73,200 in 2026 — is not an anomaly. It is what happens when demand meets a supply that has almost nothing in it. A wreck of this comic is a five-figure book, and I want that said plainly, because people with rough copies of famous comics usually assume the wear has priced them out and it has not.
The record is eight years old, and probably low
That $215,100 figure comes to me through secondary summaries rather than a page I could open, so it stays labeled. But even taking it at face value, it is from February 2018 and the Golden Age market has moved considerably since.
You will also see a rumor that a million dollars was offered for a CGC 9.4. An offer is not a sale, nobody has to accept one, and I am not going to put it in a table as though it were evidence. What it does suggest is that if a genuinely high-grade copy ever reached the open market, the published record would not survive the afternoon.
None of which helps you price a worn copy, which is why I would rather point you at the 2024 and 2026 results. They are recent, they are documented, and they describe the kind of copy that actually turns up.
What a Signature Series label is, and what it is not
The $61,069 copy carried a Signature Series label, and since that is unusual enough to confuse people it is worth explaining.
A signature only counts for CGC if a witness from the company watched it happen. You cannot send in a comic that already has an autograph on it and get a yellow label; an existing signature without that chain of custody is treated as a defect, not a feature, and it can pull the grade down.
So a Signature Series book is one that was signed under supervision, usually at a convention, then sealed. On a 1940 comic that means the signing happened decades after publication, by whoever was still alive to sign it.
The practical point for you: if your copy has a signature on it from some point in the past, do not assume it adds value. It may well subtract. That is a question for a grader, and it is one of the few cases where the answer genuinely surprises people in both directions.
Selling an All-American Comics #16
- Do not write off a rough copy. The $61,069 result was a 1.8. If yours is battered, that is the comparison to look at, not the 6.5.
- Have restoration settled properly. With a restored 6.0 at $44,000 and a wrecked 1.8 above it, the label is doing more work on this issue than the grade.
- Do not attempt repairs. Given how the restored copy priced, adding work to a clean copy would be actively destructive.
- Check the rest of the run. All-American Comics has other issues collectors want, and a stack of them rarely arrives with only #16 in it.
I have never been offered a clean, unrestored, mid-grade copy of this issue, which is a small sample but consistent with everything the auction record shows. Send photos and I will tell you which of those three categories yours falls into, at no cost.
Have a copy?
Send three photos: front, back, and the small print. That is all I need to tell you where your copy really sits.
Related
- Flash Comics #1, the other All-American key from the same year.
- What restoration costs, worked through on another 1939 DC book.
- The 100 most valuable Golden Age comics, and what each one really sold for.
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.
