Amazing Spider-Man #238 Value: Check for the Tattooz

What most people get wrong about this comic is not the character, it is the paperwork. Amazing Spider-Man #238 shipped with a sheet of temporary tattoos inside, most copies lost them almost immediately, and whether yours still has that insert changes how the book is graded before any price is discussed.

The Hobgoblin makes his first appearance in March 1983, in a run that Marvel was then selling on newsstands and in the new direct-market comic shops at once.

The insert, and what it changes

The Tattooz sheet was a promotional insert designed to be used. Children used it, and copies that still hold the sheet are the harder ones to find.

What happens at grading is where this gets expensive. For years a copy without the sheet came back from CGC on a green Qualified label reading INCOMPLETE. CGC dropped that word in May 2022 and its treatment has been uneven since, with some no-Tattooz copies now returning blue Universal and others still returning green. In the sales I track the difference is real money: a Qualified 9.4 at $285 against blue 9.4 copies at $425 to $483.

There is a second complication. Fantastic Four #252, Captain America #279 and Star Wars #69 shipped that month with the same interchangeable Tattooz sheets, and loose ones get moved into copies of this issue. A raw listing that says with Tattooz proves less than it sounds until somebody has looked at the book.

To identify it: 60 cents, March 1983, with a Spider-Man head in the corner box on the direct-market copies and a bar code on the newsstand ones. That box is worth a longer look than most people give it, because four printings of this issue trade at four different prices and it is where three of them declare themselves.

One lookalike before the table: Marvel published a facsimile edition in 2022. It reprints the original cover but drops the Tattooz wording from the artwork, ships without any insert, and names itself in the indicia.

Four printings, four prices

Every figure below comes from sales tracked for that specific printing, counted separately. Watch the sales column: two of these are deep markets and two are a handful of copies, where a single result is a data point rather than a price.

The newsstand premium at the top is the one most owners can act on: twenty-four documented 9.8 newsstand sales against twenty-nine direct ones, running several hundred dollars higher all year. Newsstand copies went through spinner racks rather than comic shops, so proportionally fewer survived sharp.

Below 9.4 that premium disappears and occasionally reverses, so nobody should pay extra for the word newsstand on a mid-grade listing. The 75-cent Canadian copies are genuinely scarce, but scarce is not the same as documented: twenty-two sales is a thin record and it holds no 9.8 result at all.

The Mark Jewelers copies are the ones worth stopping for. That bound-in advert went into comics sold at military exchanges and the surviving population is tiny. But be straight about what those figures are: two sales. They tell you this printing is worth identifying before you sell, not what the next one brings, and anybody quoting $15,400 as the price of a Mark Jewelers copy is quoting one auction.

An affordable first appearance

No sale of this comic appears in CGC’s auction reporting, so no price below carries a link. Every row is a Heritage Auctions result or a completed eBay listing.

The 9.8 lane is the whole market on this book. Twenty-nine documented sales, four of them in July 2026 alone at $1,400, $1,450, $1,500 and $1,830. That is a tight, current, quotable number.

The step down is steep and immediate. The 9.6 reached $777 in June then settled at $599 and $600 in August, roughly a third of the grade above it. On a comic printed in enormous numbers, the difference between very good and perfect is nearly everything.

Below that the lanes compress fast: 9.4 copies at $425 to $483, 9.2 copies at $260 to $500, and 9.0 copies at $275 to $385 across July and August.

By 8.0 the book is a two-to-three-hundred-dollar comic and stays roughly there down through 6.5. Eighties comics survive in quantity, so only the top of the scale is scarce and that is where the money concentrates.

Those figures are Heritage results and completed eBay sales. GoCollect and PriceCharting track Amazing Spider-Man #238 independently, and if their numbers disagree with mine it is worth finding out which of us is wrong.

Amazing Spider-Man #238 value, grade by grade

287 sales tracked back to 2021; here are the three freshest in every grade.

Heritage rows are verifiable in Heritage’s public Amazing Spider-Man issue index; the rest are completed eBay listings. The four highest lanes carry a hundred and sixteen of them, which is where this book actually trades.

Below 9.0 it flattens out

Below the top this is the flattest ladder in the batch, and knowing that saves owners a lot of hope.

Recent sales: 8.5 copies brought $270 to $350, 8.0 copies $250 to $320, 7.5 copies $200 to $300, and 7.0 copies $210 to $315.

The 6.5 lane ran $108 to $250, the first point where the numbers really drop away, and raw copies land in that same band: August sales at $150, $198, $200 and $250.

At 6.0 and below the record goes quiet and the few sales are erratic, so I will not quote a number I cannot stand behind.

So unless a copy is genuinely pristine, this is a two-to-three-hundred-dollar comic, and the honest advice is to sell it without spending anything further on it.

When grading this book pays, and it usually does not

A submission plus shipping both ways costs real money against a comic whose 9.0 through 8.0 lanes sit between $250 and $385. Grading a copy in that range converts a three-hundred-dollar comic into a three-hundred-dollar comic with a bill attached.

It only pays on a genuine 9.8 candidate, and eighties Marvel is unforgiving there. Newsstand copies especially took rack abuse before anyone bought them, so a copy that looks flawless on a table often is not.

The tell worth checking first is the spine. A single reading crease at the top staple is usually the difference between the lane that pays and the lane that does not.

And if the sheet is gone, you are also gambling on which label comes back. A green Qualified holder is a harder sell at any number, and on a copy that was never a 9.8 candidate that risk lands on top of a fee that was already most of the proceeds.

If the sheet is still with the comic, say so in the first message. It does not lift the grade, but it changes what a serious buyer will chase.

One last thing if the whole run is in the box: issues 239, 244 and 245 travel with this one in dealer listings and are far cheaper comics. Price them separately rather than describing the stack as first appearances.

Selling an Amazing Spider-Man #238

1. Sixty cents, March 1983. Newsstand and direct editions are both genuine; the box in the corner tells them apart.
2. Check the corner box and the top edge. Newsstand, Canadian and Mark Jewelers copies are all worth more than a plain direct copy.
3. Say whether the Tattooz insert is present. A missing sheet can still come back on a green Qualified label.
4. Only 9.8 pays properly. The step down to 9.6 is roughly two thirds of the money.
5. Do not grade a mid-grade copy. The fee is most of what the comic brings.

Send photographs, and tell me whether the tattoo sheet is still inside. That answer shapes the listing more than anything else on this book.

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

• Amazing Spider-Man #1. Where the title began, and what the 1963 book brings.
• Are 90s comic books worth anything?. The same print-run problem, one decade further on.
• The 100 most valuable Bronze Age comics. Where this issue lands on the list.

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.