Amazing Spider-Man #252 Value: Which Printing Do You Have?

Four separate printings of this comic trade under the same cover, and they do not fetch the same money. At CGC 9.8 the ordinary direct-market copy has run from $1,126 to $2,425 this summer, while the Canadian price variant reached $3,250 back in 2024. Amazing Spider-Man 252 value depends on two small boxes on the cover that most owners never look at.

The black costume arrives here in May 1984, seven months before Marvel got around to publishing the story of where it came from.

The costume, and the month that confuses everyone

Spider-Man comes home in the black suit on this cover, and for a reader following the title in 1984 it was the first sight of it. That is what the issue is collected for.

It is not where the costume comes from. That story runs in Marvel Super Heroes Secret Wars #8, cover dated December 1984, seven months after this issue. Marvel printed the consequence before the cause, which is why the two books get argued about, and why a seller holding one should check whether the other is in the same box. Both are genuine keys and they are different comics.

To identify the issue itself: 60 cents, May 1984, the black-suited Spider-Man swinging over a red sky and a dark skyline, under the words The rumors are true. Marvel has since published facsimile editions and a 2019 reprint, all of which name themselves in the indicia.

That settles which comic you have. Two boxes on the cover settle which printing: the price sits in the upper-left masthead, and the direct or newsstand marking sits in the bar-code box at the lower left. On this book that is the bigger question.

Four printings, and the 9.8 lane tells them apart

Each of these is counted separately from its own sales. Watch the sales column as closely as the money: two of these markets are deep and two are thin, and a thin market prices on whoever showed up.

The Mark Jewelers row is the one to read twice. Those copies went to military exchanges, the surviving population is small, and at 9.4 they have been bringing roughly four times what an ordinary 9.4 brings.

The Canadian copies carry a premium too, but on eighty-four sales rather than three hundred, and the most recent of them landed inside the direct range rather than above it. The newsstand premium is real and modest, and it disappears below 9.4 where the two lanes overlap almost completely.

Below 9.8 there are too few Canadian and Mark Jewelers sales on record for me to quote you a band, and I would rather say that than make one up. If your corner box shows either, send a photograph and I will tell you what the recent ones actually did.

None of which changes what most people are holding. The direct edition is the common one, its record is the deepest here, and the numbers underneath are the numbers to work from unless the corner box says otherwise.

What the top of this book actually does

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 where every dollar of interest in this book sits, and it is not a settled number: $1,126, $1,500 and $2,425 inside three months, all direct copies, all on eBay. Eighteen sales this year and the spread has stayed that wide throughout.

One grade down the market changes character completely. The 9.6 has twenty-nine sales this year running $354 to $600, which is a fraction of the grade above it and far easier to quote.

That cliff is the whole shape of the book. From 9.6 downward the lanes are dense and overlapping rather than tidy: across 2026 the 9.4 ran $218 to $600, the 9.2 $140 to $400 and the 9.0 $149 to $302, on roughly thirty sales each.

By 8.5 it is a two-hundred-dollar comic, running $168 to $245 across twenty-two sales, and the 7.5 lane sits at $115 to $175. Nothing beneath the top grade is scarce, because 1984 Marvel was printed in enormous numbers and plenty of it was bought by people who already knew to keep it flat.

Below 7.5 it falls away properly, and an owner should hear that plainly. The few 2026 sales down there are a 5.0 at $140 and $164 and a 4.5 at $68. A well-read copy out of a longbox is a double-figure comic, not a four-figure one.

Those figures are Heritage results and completed eBay sales. GoCollect and PriceCharting track Amazing Spider-Man #252 independently, and if their numbers disagree with mine it is worth finding out which of us is wrong.

Amazing Spider-Man #252 value, grade by grade

283 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. Direct-market copies only in the ladder. Each of the other three printings keeps its own record, set out in the table nearer the top of this page.

Where the raw copies land

Ungraded copies of this issue are everywhere, thirty of them in the record, and they behave unusually.

Raw sales this year ran from $100 to $500 across thirty copies. The top of that band beats several graded 9.2 results, which happens when a raw copy photographs as a candidate for the grade that pays.

That is the practical tension on this book. A 9.8 is worth over a thousand dollars and a 9.6 is worth around five hundred, so a raw copy that might be either is worth guessing about, and buyers price the guess.

For an owner it means the grading decision is unusually clean. If the copy is genuinely sharp, the top lane pays for the fee several times over. If it is merely nice, it is a two-hundred-dollar comic either way and the fee is most of the difference.

What decides 9.8 on a 1984 Marvel

The gap between the grade that pays and the grade that does not is small enough to be worth naming precisely.

This cover is mostly heavy dark ink, and heavy ink on newsprint is unforgiving in a particular way: every crease breaks the color and shows as a pale line. Wear that would vanish into a pale cover is plainly visible here.

The other tell is the top staple. Copper-era Marvels were stapled tight and the paper is stiffer than seventies newsprint, so stress at the staple shows as a pale line rather than a soft dent. It is easy to see once you know to look at it edge-on.

And read both boxes before you photograph anything. A 75-cent price in the masthead, or a heavier card bound at the middle of the book, means the table nearer the top of this page is the one that applies to you rather than the ladder underneath it.

Selling an Amazing Spider-Man #252

1. Check the price box and the bar-code box. Direct, newsstand, 75-cent Canadian and Mark Jewelers are four different prices.
2. This is the debut, not the origin. The costume comes from Secret Wars #8, a different comic.
3. Everything rests on 9.8. One grade lower is under a third of the money.
4. Dark cover, so every crease shows white. Handle it once and photograph the spine edge-on.

Send photographs of both corners along with the usual angles. On this comic those two small boxes decide which set of numbers you are working from.

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

• Are 90s comic books worth anything?. The same print-run problem, one decade further on.
• Selling slabbed comics. Relevant on a book where only the top grade pays.
• 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.