Brave and the Bold #34 Value: The 9.0 Lost Two Thirds

One grade on this comic has lost two thirds of its value in three years while the grade above it did nothing at all. Brave and the Bold 34 value depends heavily on which of those two you own.

It is the debut of the Silver Age Hawkman, from early 1961, in the tryout title DC used for most of its revivals.

A revival that took four tries

DC ran Hawkman through this issue and the five that followed, then waited, then tried again, and it took several years and two separate runs of tryouts before the character got an ongoing title in 1964.

That hesitancy is part of the story here. Unlike the Flash or Green Lantern, whose tryouts led straight to their own comics, Hawkman was a slow sell, and his debut has never carried the premium theirs do.

It is also not the character’s first appearance in any absolute sense. A Golden Age Hawkman debuted in Flash Comics #1 in 1940, and that is a considerably more valuable comic in a different market entirely.

To identify it: 10 cents, February-March 1961, the Brave and the Bold logo. Issues on either side feature unrelated characters.

One lane falling, one lane still

Nothing on this issue appears in CGC’s auction reporting. Heritage supplied nearly every row below, and none of them is a link.

The 9.0 line reads $9,600 in April 2022, $5,760 in March 2024, $4,440 that April, $2,640 in April 2025 and $3,360 that September. Two thirds of the value gone in three and a half years, across five sales at one auction house.

Directly above it the 9.4 did nothing. It brought $10,200 in February 2019 and $10,200 again in November 2020, and there is no sale since. Two identical results and then silence for six years.

That combination leaves a strange shape. In 2022 a 9.0 was worth almost what a 9.4 had been; by 2025 it was worth a third of it. The premium for four tenths of a grade tripled without the higher grade moving at all.

The 8.5 confirms the direction below: $3,840 in January 2023 and $2,640 in October 2024, about a third off. Everything under 9.4 on this book has been coming down together.

The 7.5 lane is the busiest with twelve sales, and it has been the most erratic: $1,260 in November 2020, $2,035 on eBay in December 2024, $760 in June 2025, $750 at Heritage that November, $1,500 in March 2026 and $1,069 that May. Nearly threefold between the highest and lowest inside eighteen months.

On a grade with that much scatter I would not quote a figure without seeing the copy. Two sales seven months apart at $750 and $1,500 are not describing the same comic in any practical sense, and the difference will be in the photographs.

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 Brave and the Bold #34 independently, and if their numbers disagree with mine it is worth finding out which of us is wrong.

Brave and the Bold #34 value, grade by grade

218 sales tracked back to 2002; here are the three freshest in every grade.

Every row above is a documented sale, verifiable in Heritage’s public Brave and the Bold issue index and in CGC’s published auction reporting. The 7.5 lane holds twelve of them and the 9.0 eleven, which is where the recent activity has been.

Under eight hundred dollars

None of the decline above has reached the readable grades, which have been steady across thirty-two sales since January 2025.

From December 2025 to July 2026: two 6.5 copies brought $799 and $734, a 6.0 brought $700 and another $530, a 5.5 brought $550, two 5.0 copies brought $495 and $326, a 4.0 brought $355, and two 3.5 copies brought $350 and $275.

The two 3.5 results seventy-five dollars apart and the two 6.5 results sixty-five dollars apart are both tight enough to quote from. There is no drama down here at all.

That is worth saying plainly to anybody who reads the top of this page and worries. If your copy is a readable one, the fall in the 9.0 lane has not touched what you own.

Selling a Brave and the Bold #34

1. Ten cents, February-March 1961. The tryout issues around it feature different characters entirely.
2. Do not confuse it with Flash Comics #1. The Golden Age Hawkman debuted there in 1940 and that comic is in another bracket.
3. Refresh any comp above 8.5. The 9.0 has lost two thirds of its value since 2022 and older figures are badly out of date.
4. Below 7.0 nothing has changed. The readable grades have held steady throughout.

Photographs will place your copy on one side or the other of a ladder whose top has fallen hard and whose bottom has not moved at all.

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

• Brave and the Bold #28. The Justice League debut in the same title, six issues earlier.
• Brave and the Bold #54. The first Teen Titans, and another steep fall at the top.
• 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.