Batman #171 Value: The Riddler Came Back Here

This comic is described wrongly more often than almost anything else I am asked about, and the odd part is that the wrong description does not cost the seller much. Batman 171 value survives the mistake.

The Riddler returns here in May 1965, after seventeen years away, and the timing is everything.

Seventeen years between two appearances

The Riddler debuted in Detective Comics #140 in 1948, used twice, and then vanished for the better part of two decades. This issue brings him back in 1965.

What happened next is why the book matters. The television series arrived in January 1966 and put Frank Gorshin in the costume, and the character went from a forgotten one-off to a household name inside a season.

So the market has split the difference. The 1948 debut carries the first-appearance premium as it should, and this issue carries a premium of its own for being the appearance the television audience actually connected with. Both books are worth real money, for different reasons.

A listing calling this the first Riddler is wrong, but the price it asks is usually not, which is an unusual situation and worth understanding before you correct anybody.

Identification: 12 cents, May 1965, no bar code, DC’s logo top left.

A grade that stood still for four years

Nothing on this book has ever appeared in CGC’s auction reporting. What follows is Heritage’s catalog and eBay’s completed listings, and none of it is linked.

The 9.4 sold at Heritage for $11,400 in January 2021 and for $11,400 again in April 2025. Four years and three months, the same auction house, the same figure to the dollar.

Under it everything has come down. The 9.2 went from $7,800 in August 2023 to $4,920 in April 2024, and the 9.0 line has stepped down steadily: $5,300 in September 2023, $4,500 in June 2024, $3,099 in September 2025, $3,416 in March 2026.

That combination is worth naming. When the top grade holds and everything under it falls, what is usually happening is that the serious collectors are still paying up for the best copy available while ordinary buyers have quietly stepped back.

The 8.5 and 9.0 lanes now overlap almost exactly, at $3,416 apiece in two different months of 2026. Half a grade is currently worth nothing at all on this comic.

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 Batman #171 independently, and if their numbers disagree with mine it is worth finding out which of us is wrong.

Batman #171 value across the grades

224 sales tracked back to 2007; here are the three freshest in every grade.

Every row above is a documented sale, verifiable in Heritage’s public Batman issue index and in CGC’s published auction reporting. The lower half of the ladder holds a hundred sales of its own since the start of last year.

Where the television audience shows up

A hundred and one copies below 7.0 have sold since January 2025, which is heavy traffic for a book at this price, and I think the reason is the show rather than the comic.

Across July and August 2026: a 7.0 brought $1,220 at Heritage, a 6.5 brought $1,100 and another $999, a 6.0 brought $595, a 4.5 brought $750 and another $621, two 3.5 copies brought $425 and $359, and a 4.0 brought $303.

Note the two 4.5 results, $621 and $750, and then the 6.0 at $595 that sold for less than both of them. That inversion turns up repeatedly on this book and it is what a market driven by casual buyers looks like: they are buying the cover and the character, not the label.

Practically, that means presentation matters more here than on most books. A well-photographed 4.5 can beat an indifferent 6.0, and the recent sales say so twice over.

Selling a Batman #171

1. Do not call it the first Riddler. That is Detective Comics #140 from 1948. This is the 1965 return, and it is worth saying so accurately.
2. Twelve cents, May 1965. No bar code, DC logo top left.
3. Photograph it well. On this book a good listing has repeatedly beaten a better grade, which is not true of most comics here.
4. Do not assume half a grade matters. The 8.5 and 9.0 lanes are currently trading at the same money.

Send photographs and I will price it as what it is, which is the appearance that made the character rather than the one that invented him.

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

• Detective Comics #140. The actual first Riddler, from 1948, and a very different comic.
• Detective Comics #359. Another mid-sixties Batman key, and the one people underestimate.
• 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.