Thanos first appears in Iron Man #55, a 1973 comic that most collectors did not think about for thirty years. Its CGC 9.8 has cleared $6,600 four times, and 371 documented sales sit underneath that showing exactly what the ordinary grades bring.
Four CGC 9.8 copies of Batman #251 sold in eight months for $26,400, $41,480, $32,330 and $26,840. That is a fifty-seven percent swing in one grade inside a single year, while every lane beneath it stayed calm. The Neal Adams Joker cover is two markets at once.
A CGC 3.0 of the Star Wars #1 price variant sold for $2,950. A CGC 9.8 of the ordinary edition sold for $3,000. One is a battered comic, the other is nearly perfect, and the only difference between the two books is a number in the price box.
A CGC 9.8 of the first Blade sold for $35,000 in March 2022 and $9,500 in August 2026. That is not a market correction, it is a whole screen cycle arriving and leaving, and the 374 documented sales behind this book let you watch it happen month by month.
Three separate CGC 6.5 copies of X-Men #94 sold for exactly $650 this summer, and a fourth brought $600. On a book whose 9.8 has swung by tens of thousands, that lane is the most reliable number in the whole record, and it is the grade most surviving copies actually are.
Swamp Thing debuts in eight pages at the back of a 1971 DC horror anthology, which is why House of Secrets #92 survives mostly in well-read shape. The busiest lane in its 304 documented sales is CGC 2.5, and the record runs from $500 beaters to a $90,000 census top.
The first Luke Cage is really two markets wearing one cover. Above 9.0 it is a five-figure census book whose record fell from $102,000 to $48,000 in two years. From 8.5 down it is a few-hundred-dollar comic whose prices barely moved at all. 315 documented sales split the difference.
The single highest-graded copy of Giant-Size X-Men #1, a CGC 9.9, sold for $170,000 in June 2024. That number is what people find first, and it describes exactly one comic. The other 391 documented sales describe the market, and the two have almost nothing to do with each other.
A first-printing CGC 9.8 of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles #1 has brought $186,000. A second printing at the same grade brought $14,400, and a third-printing 9.0 brought $780. Three books share one cover, and the small print divides them by a factor of a hundred.
Almost every Bronze Age key peaked in 2021 and has been giving money back since. The first Ghost Rider is the exception at the very top: a CGC 9.8 brought $264,000 in June 2021 and another brought $244,000 in May 2026, while every grade beneath the top two fell by half.
