Buried in this issue is a two-page prose filler called “Captain America Foils the Traitor’s Revenge.” It is text, not comics, and it exists because postal regulations required a certain amount of prose in a magazine to qualify for cheaper mailing rates.
It is signed Stan Lee. He was eighteen years old, working as an office assistant at Timely, and it is the first thing he ever published.
A two-page text story nobody would otherwise read is a meaningful part of why this issue prices where it does.
Three documented sales, top to middle
| Grade | Result | Where and when |
|---|---|---|
| CGC 8.0 | $90,000 | Heritage Auctions, December 2022 |
| CGC 6.5 | $31,050 | ComicConnect, March 2026 |
| CGC 6.0 | $27,702 | ComicConnect, June 2026 |
| incomplete or coverless | reported around $1,000 (price guide, undated — no sale I can source) | — |
The two 2026 sales are mid-grade and recent, which is the most useful combination a seller can be handed. Three months apart, half a grade apart, about $3,300 apart. That is a coherent picture rather than two isolated events.
The 8.0 sits above them and further back in time. Ninety thousand dollars is roughly three times the 6.5 result, but a grade and a half and more than three years separate those two sales, so read the multiple as the shape of this market — money concentrates hard at the top — rather than as a precise ratio. What it settles is the ceiling: the top of this book is now a documented sale, not a rumor.
A 6.0 to 6.5 on a 1941 Timely is a decent, honest copy — worn but presentable, complete, the kind of book a family collection actually contains. Knowing that band sits around $28,000 to $31,000 is worth more to most sellers than the $90,000 is, because the copy in a family collection is almost never the 8.0. And no complete copy in the documented record has traded anywhere near the four-figure guide minimum.
Why a creator footnote moves money
Comic values usually follow characters. Occasionally they follow people, and Stan Lee is the clearest case in the medium.
He became the public face of Marvel, and after his death in 2018 the interest in his earliest work rose sharply. Collectors who want a Stan Lee first need this specific issue, and there is no substitute — you cannot buy a different comic that has his first published work in it.
That produces demand independent of Captain America. Somebody assembling a Lee collection is competing with somebody assembling a Timely run, and neither is going away.
It also means the value does not depend on the cover, which on this issue is a Schomburg but not one of his most famous. This is a book bought for what is inside, which makes it unusual among the Timely issues on my list.
Other creator firsts hiding in Timely books
Since this issue is valuable partly for a text filler, it is worth knowing the pattern, because it repeats.
Timely in the early forties was a small operation staffed by very young people who went on to become significant. Their earliest work is scattered through comics that look ordinary, often uncredited or credited under names nobody recognizes, and often in filler material rather than the lead feature.
Jack Kirby and Joe Simon’s Timely work, Bill Everett’s early Sub-Mariner, and Lee’s first years are all distributed across issues that give no external sign of what is inside. A collector chasing creator firsts is buying issue numbers from a list, not covers from a shelf.
Which is the practical warning: on early Timely, you cannot tell what matters by looking. If a run turns up, the numbers need checking against a reference before anything is priced or sorted.
Selling a Captain America Comics #3
- Confirm the issue number. Early Captain America Comics covers are similar at a glance and the values differ by an order of magnitude across the first few issues.
- Do not price off the $90,000. That was a CGC 8.0 in December 2022 — an exceptional copy. The two 2026 mid-grade results describe the market you are actually in.
- Check completeness carefully. The Lee text pages are inside the book, and a copy missing interior pages is a materially different object here.
- Leave the paper alone. Nothing available at home improves a 1941 comic and several common instincts damage it permanently.
If a Timely run turns up, I will tell you which issues carry a creator footnote, because they are not the obvious ones and they are easy to price as ordinary back issues.
Have a copy?
Send three photos: front, back, and the small print. That is all I need to tell you where your copy really sits.
Related
- Captain America Comics #1, where the run starts.
- Marvel Comics #1, the beginning of the company Lee would later run.
- The 100 most valuable Golden 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.
