Batman #232 Value: Off a 2022 Peak, and Firming Again

A CGC 9.8 of this comic brought $22,000 in March 2022. The same grade brought $7,100 in December 2025. Then $8,540 in March, $7,930 in May and $10,000 in June of this year. Batman 232 value is a book that fell two thirds from its peak and has spent 2026 finding out where the floor is.

Ra’s al Ghul appears for the first time in June 1971, in a story that gave Batman an adversary built on a completely different scale from the ones before him.

The villain got a cover bigger than he was

Denny O’Neil and Neal Adams introduced a character who was not a costumed criminal at all: an immortal with an organization, a daughter, and a plan that had nothing to do with robbing anything. Batman had never had an opponent like that.

The cover is the other half of the value. Adams put Ra’s al Ghul’s face across the whole thing in green, with Batman and Robin small beneath it and the words Daughter of the Demon along the bottom. It has been reproduced and homaged for fifty years, and a great many people who could not name the villain recognize the front of this comic instantly.

That double appeal is why the book behaves differently from its neighbors. First-appearance buyers want it and cover collectors want it, and those two pools do not run out of enthusiasm at the same moment.

To identify it: 15 cents, June 1971, Adams cover with Ra’s al Ghul’s green face over Batman and Robin. DC published a facsimile edition in 2019 that reproduces the cover and names itself in the indicia.

Two thirds off the peak, then three steady quarters

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.

Read the 9.8 lane in order and the whole cycle is there. It ran $8,400 in January 2021, spiked to $22,000 and $21,600 in the spring of 2022, then gave it back over three years to $7,100 last December. Twenty-four sales in total.

What matters for a seller is the last three prints: $8,540 in March, $7,930 in May and $10,000 in June. After three years of falling, a lane that stops falling and puts up its best number in four years is a floor rather than a recovery, and it is worth knowing which of those two you are being offered a price against.

The 9.6 tells the same story a step down. It peaked at $4,320 in July 2023 and $4,300 in March 2024, and this year has run $2,576, $3,600, $3,172 and $2,684. Softer than the peak, and roughly level with itself across 2026.

Below that the picture gets less orderly. The 9.4 lane ran from $1,065 to $3,500 this year and the 9.2 from $1,200 to $2,184, which are wide bands for adjacent grades on a book with this many sales.

That spread is the cover doing the work. A copy of a famous cover that presents beautifully attracts bidders who are not counting corners, and one that does not, does not. On this book the photograph matters more than usual.

Those figures are Heritage results and completed eBay sales. GoCollect and PriceCharting track Batman #232 independently, and if their numbers disagree with mine it is worth finding out which of us is wrong.

Batman #232 value in every grade

331 sales tracked back to 2004; here are the three freshest in every grade.

Heritage rows are verifiable in Heritage’s public Batman issue index; the rest are completed eBay listings. Three hundred and thirty-one sales going back to 2004, and the 9.0 lane alone carries thirty of them.

The mid-grade copies rose too

The useful thing about this book is that the middle of the ladder never took the ride the top did.

Across 2026: 9.0 copies brought $851 to $1,810, 8.5 copies $560 to $1,199, 8.0 copies $630 to $949, and 7.5 copies $495 to $700.

Lower down the market stays firm. The 7.0 lane ran $450 to $605 and even a beaten copy holds three figures comfortably.

Be careful reading any of those as a fixed number, though. The 8.0 lane has twelve sales this year spanning $630 to $949, so the three rows in the ladder below are the most recent, not the whole lane.

Beneath that the ladder keeps paying, which is not true of most books this common. The 6.5 lane is twenty sales deep and ran $405 to $625 this year, the 5.0 lane $359 to $390, and the 4.5 lane $327 to $449.

Even the rough end refuses to collapse. A 3.5 brought $280 in May, a 3.0 brought $260 in August, and the single 2.0 on record made $152. A genuinely beaten copy of this comic still sits somewhere between a hundred and fifty and three hundred dollars.

The reason that floor holds is simple. Somebody who wants this cover on a wall or in a run does not need it sharp, and the supply of cheap complete copies is not large enough to satisfy them.

The raw discount, and when to close it

Forty-five ungraded sales sit in the record and they run from $150 to $675 in August alone. That is a spread of more than four times inside one month, on the same comic.

The reason is the cover again. A raw listing is bought off the drawing, which is what people love about this book, while the wear that actually sets its grade sits at the edges and in the paper where no phone photograph reaches.

So a buyer looking at a raw listing discounts for everything they cannot see, and the seller absorbs it. On a book where the graded lanes are this well populated, there is no shortage of certain copies to buy instead.

The line worth knowing sits around a genuine 7.0. Underneath it the submission fee eats most of the gain and an honest raw listing with good photographs is the better route. Above it the certainty is worth well beyond what it costs, and on a rising book it also settles the grade before the next move.

One last check before anything goes anywhere. The 2019 facsimile reproduces this cover closely enough that a photograph of the front will not settle it, but a photograph of the indicia will. A real June 1971 copy says fifteen cents on the front and carries no facsimile line inside.

Selling a Batman #232

1. Fifteen cents, June 1971. The 2019 facsimile names itself in the indicia.
2. Price from 2026, not from 2022. The top fell two thirds and the peak figures are four years stale.
3. Photograph the cover square on. On this book presentation moves the number.
4. Grade above 7.0, sell raw below it. Raw results ran $150 to $675 in August because buyers discount what a photograph cannot show.

Send a straight-on photograph of the cover with the usual angles, and I will price it against this year’s sales rather than against a 2022 number that no longer exists.

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

• Batman #1. Where the run began, and what the 1940 book brings.
• Detective Comics #27. The first Batman, for collectors chasing the whole story.
• The 100 most valuable Bronze Age comics. Where this issue ranks and why.

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.