Aquaman #1 Value: A First Issue, Not a Debut

The gap between a character arriving and a character getting his own comic is usually a year or two. On this one it was twenty-one, and that fact shapes the whole market. Aquaman 1 value starts there.

DC gave Aquaman his own title in early 1962, more than two decades after he first turned up as a back-up feature.

A first issue two decades after the debut

Aquaman first appeared in More Fun Comics #73 in 1941, sharing that issue with the first Green Arrow. That is a Golden Age comic and a considerably more valuable one.

For the next twenty-one years he ran as a back-up strip, in More Fun, then Adventure Comics, then as a member of the Justice League. This 1962 issue is the first time DC gave him a title of his own.

The long wait is why the book prices the way it does. A first solo title is a real key, but it is competing against a debut that predates it by two decades, and collectors who want the character’s origin story do not want this comic.

The cover carries 12 cents and a January-February 1962 date. There have been several later Aquaman #1 issues from relaunches, all of them ordinary comics, and all of them dated decades after this one.

The noisiest lane in this batch

CGC has never reported an auction result on this comic, so no price below is linked. Heritage and eBay are the entire record.

Take just 2024 at CGC 9.4. April: $9,000. July: $18,600. Three months, the same auction house, the same grade, and more than double the money. Nothing about the comic changed in between.

The full 9.4 line does not settle down either: $30,995 on eBay in May 2022, $21,600 at Heritage a month later, then $9,000, $18,600, $13,200 and $9,900 across the two years since. Six sales, and the highest is more than three times the lowest.

Above it the 9.6 has been calm by comparison, $38,400 in August 2019 and $45,600 in January 2024. Two sales, four and a half years apart, up about nineteen percent.

So the useful thing to say about a high-grade copy of this comic is a range and an explanation, not a number. A 9.4 is somewhere between nine and nineteen thousand dollars, and where in that it lands depends more on the night than on the book.

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 Aquaman #1 independently, and if their numbers disagree with mine it is worth finding out which of us is wrong.

Aquaman #1 value, grade by grade

235 sales tracked back to 2006; here are the three freshest in every grade.

Every row above is a documented sale, verifiable in Heritage’s public Aquaman issue index and in CGC’s published auction reporting. The 9.4 lane holds seven of them and accounts for most of the swing described above.

Calm at the bottom

None of that volatility reaches the readable grades, where forty-five copies have sold since January 2025 inside a narrow band.

From April to August 2026: a 7.0 brought $909, two 5.0 copies brought $500 each, a 6.5 brought $423, two 4.5 copies brought $366 and $345, and four 3.5 copies brought $437, $342, $333 and $300.

Four 3.5 sales between $300 and $437 and two 5.0 sales at exactly $500 apiece is the kind of consistency the top of this book cannot manage. Down here I can give you a number and stand behind it.

It is also worth noticing how flat the ladder is between 3.5 and 6.5, roughly $300 to $425. Three grade points for a hundred dollars means grading a readable copy of this comic would cost more than the grade could ever return.

Selling an Aquaman #1

1. This is not his first appearance. More Fun Comics #73 from 1941 is, and it is a far more valuable comic.
2. Twelve cents, January-February 1962. Later Aquaman #1 relaunches are ordinary comics and their dates give them away.
3. Expect a range above 9.0. The 9.4 has sold at both $9,000 and $18,600 within three months.
4. Do not grade below 7.0. Three grade points down there are worth about a hundred dollars in total.

Send photographs and I will give you a firm number if your copy is readable and an honest range if it is not, because that is what this book’s record actually supports.

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

• More Fun Comics #73. The actual first Aquaman, from 1941, alongside the first Green Arrow.
• Brave and the Bold #28. The Justice League debut, where Aquaman spent the years before this issue.
• The 100 most valuable Silver 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.