Three faces on one cover: Hitler, Goebbels and Goering. Captain America and Bucky against all of them, drawn in 1944 while the war was still being fought and the outcome was not yet obvious.
Nothing especially consequential happens inside this comic. No first appearance, no death, no origin. The cover is the entire reason this issue prices above its neighbors, and it is the book collectors point at when they want to explain the war-cover premium.
Why war covers carry a premium
A large part of Timely’s Golden Age output was competent adventure comics that nobody prices highly today. Then there are the covers where the war is the subject — Axis leaders, tanks, bond drives, invasion scenes — and those trade in a different bracket entirely.
The reason is that they are historical documents as much as comics. A drawing of Hitler produced for American children in 1944, sold on a newsstand for a dime, is an artifact of the home front in a way a generic slugfest cover is not. Buyers for those come from outside comic collecting as well as inside it.
This one is the most concentrated example on the list. Not one Axis leader but the three most recognizable, arranged as a group portrait. There is no ambiguity about what the cover is for.
Now the caveat, and it is a large one
The documented high is $204,000, for a CGC 9.4, at Heritage in June 2021.
That copy came from the Promise Collection, and it sold during that collection’s first appearance at auction, which was one of the most heated Golden Age events of the last decade. Both facts inflated it.
A pedigree label means documented original-owner provenance, which on wartime newsprint explains the grade and gives bidders confidence. The frenzy meant an assembled audience competing across a run of fresh-to-market books in a single session. A pedigree copy sold in a feeding frenzy is the least transferable number in the hobby, and I would not want anybody pricing an ordinary 9.4 off it, let alone an ordinary copy.
The reported floor for this issue, undated, is around $2,350. Between $2,350 and $204,000 there is a great deal of room and very little public evidence, which is an honest thing to say and an uncomfortable one.
Which wartime Timelys are actually worth something
If this issue turned up, it almost certainly did not turn up alone, and the rest of the stack is where people lose money by guessing.
Timely published a great deal during the war and the values are wildly uneven. What lifts an issue out of the ordinary is usually one of a small number of things:
- An Axis leader on the cover. Hitler especially, and the more prominent the better. This issue is the extreme case.
- An Alex Schomburg cover. His wartime covers are collected as art and carry their own premium regardless of the issue number.
- A first appearance. Rarer in the middle of a run than people expect, but they exist.
- A very early or very late issue. The start of a run and its dying months both survive badly, for opposite reasons.
Everything else is a nice old comic worth having looked at but not worth building expectations around. The mistake I see most often is somebody assuming a wartime Timely is valuable because it is a wartime Timely. The cover is doing the work, not the date.
Selling a Captain America Comics #36
- Photograph the cover flat and straight on. On a book valued for its cover, a buyer wants to see the image without glare or angle before anything else.
- Expect brown paper and do not panic about it. Wartime stock was poor because the good paper went to the war effort. Tanning is normal here and is priced in.
- Do not price off the Promise result. Ask instead what unpedigreed copies in your grade have done, and be skeptical of anyone who answers confidently.
- Bring the whole run. Timely wartime issues vary enormously in value and the variation does not follow issue numbers in any obvious way.
If a run of wartime Timelys turns up, I will tell you which issues in it are the ones that matter, and it is usually not the ones people expect.
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, the Hitler punch, and the book that started the run.
- Captain America Comics #74, from the other end of the run, where Timely turned the character into horror.
- 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.
