Avengers #57 Value: Everything Is in the Top Grade

On most comics the difference between a very good copy and a perfect one is a multiple of two or three. On this one it is eight. Avengers 57 value is concentrated almost entirely at the top.

It is the first appearance of the Vision, from October 1968, and it is a common comic in every grade except the one that matters.

A late-sixties Marvel with a modern problem

By 1968 Marvel was printing in quantity and the paper had improved, so copies of this issue survive in numbers. Three hundred and sixteen documented sales is a lot for one book, and most of them sit in the middle of the ladder.

What did not survive in numbers is the near-perfect copy. The cover is a dark, heavily inked design that shows every handling mark, and the spine on a 1968 Marvel still splits the way earlier ones do.

The result is a book that is easy to buy and very hard to buy well, which is exactly the shape that produces an eight-to-one premium at the top.

Printing check: 12 cents, October 1968, no bar code. The Vision has had several later first-appearance-adjacent issues attached to him by sellers; this is the one that counts.

Eight times the money for four tenths

One of these appears in CGC’s auction reporting. The rest are Heritage results and closed eBay listings.

Set the two most recent results side by side. A CGC 9.8 brought $21,530 in June 2026. A CGC 9.4 brought $2,500 the following month. Same comic, four tenths of a grade, eight times the money.

The 9.6 sits between them and has been falling: $9,000 in November 2023, $6,300 in April 2024, $5,520 that December. So the gap from 9.6 to 9.8 has actually widened while the gap from 9.6 to 9.4 has narrowed.

The 9.8 line itself is volatile rather than trending. $26,400 in November 2020, $35,000 on eBay in April 2022, $18,600 that June, $15,600 in September 2025, $21,530 in June 2026. Call it fifteen to thirty-five thousand and be honest that the range is wide.

What this shape means practically: if you have a copy you believe is near perfect, it is worth having graded, and if you have a very good one it almost certainly is not. There is no book on this site where that call is more clear-cut.

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 Avengers #57 independently, and if their numbers disagree with mine it is worth finding out which of us is wrong.

Avengers #57 value across the grades

316 sales tracked back to 2005; here are the three freshest in every grade.

Every row above is a documented sale, verifiable in Heritage’s public Avengers issue index and in CGC’s published auction reporting. The 9.2 and 9.0 lanes hold thirty and twenty-nine sales respectively, and both sit around a thousand dollars.

Under six hundred dollars, all of it

Ninety-eight readable copies have found buyers since January 2025, and the whole band is inexpensive.

Across July and August 2026: three 7.0 copies brought $550, $530 and $449, three 6.0 copies brought $368, $350 and $350, a 6.5 brought $321, a 5.5 brought $350, a 4.5 brought $190 and a 4.0 brought $201.

Three 6.0 sales inside two months from $350 to $368 is unusually tight, and a 7.0 at four to five hundred dollars is the number I would give without hesitating.

Put that against the $21,530 at the top of the page and the ratio is roughly forty to one. On this comic more than any other in this batch, what your copy is worth depends almost entirely on whether it is one of the very few perfect ones.

Selling an Avengers #57

1. Twelve cents, October 1968, no bar code. Later Vision appearances get sold as firsts; this is the one.
2. Grade it only if it is exceptional. The premium lives at 9.8 and nowhere else, and a 9.4 will not repay the fee.
3. Photograph the spine and the corners. A dark cover hides handling in a flat photograph and hides nothing under a light.
4. Keep the run around it. The late fifties of this title carry several keys and clear better as a group.

Send photographs and the first thing I will tell you is whether this is a copy worth grading, because on this comic that single question decides most of the value.

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

• Avengers #1. The start of the title, and a market that behaves nothing like this one.
• How grading actually works. And when the fee is worth paying, which on this book is a narrow case.
• 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.