This is one of the hardest covers to look at in Golden Age comics. It was published in 1945, and it puts imagery of Nazi atrocity on the front of a ten-cent magazine for children, at a moment when what had happened in Europe was still being uncovered and reported.
I am not going to describe this cover in detail and I am not going to be cute about it. But I do have to tell you what it is worth, because people inherit these and deserve a straight answer.
Why it is collected
Collectors buy this issue as a document, which is a different motive from the one that drives most of my list. Not for a first appearance, not for an artist signature, but because it is a primary-source object: evidence of what American popular culture was showing its children in the last year of the war.
That places it in a small category of comics that get bought by people who are not otherwise comic collectors — historians, institutions, and readers interested in the period rather than the character. It gives the book a floor that does not depend on Captain America being popular in any given decade.
It also means the cover condition matters disproportionately, as it does on any book bought for its image.
The record, and why it is not your number
The documented high is $162,000, for a CGC 9.2, at Heritage in June 2021.
That copy carried the Promise Collection pedigree and sold in the same session that produced inflated results across a whole run of Timely books. I have made this point on other pages in this program and I will keep making it: a pedigreed, census-topping copy sold in a heated fresh-to-market auction is the least useful comparison available for an ordinary comic.
The reported floor, undated, is around $1,900. Between the floor and the record, the public record holds one documented sale: a CGC 7.5 with no pedigree brought $55,200 at Heritage in December 2022. That is real money, and it is barely a third of what the Promise copy made — the difference belongs to the census-topping grade, the pedigree, and the heat of that 2021 session. The rest of the gap I am not going to fill with estimates.
What I can tell you honestly is the shape: a 9.2 of a 1945 Timely is close to unobtainable, ordinary copies are attainable, and the distance between them on this book is enormous. I will give you a straight answer about where an ordinary copy sits, which is a long way below the headline.
Where an ordinary copy actually sits
The record below the pedigree copy is thin, but it is no longer blank. The December 2022 sale gives it one fixed point: an unpedigreed 7.5 at $55,200. Everything below that point still has to be described by shape rather than by comps, and I would rather admit that than invent the numbers.
What I can say from the structure of the market: a 1945 Timely in the grades most family copies occupy — somewhere from a 2.0 to a 5.0, worn, tanned, complete — is a comic with a real market and a value in the hundreds to low thousands rather than the tens of thousands. The reported floor near $1,900 is consistent with that, even though it carries no date.
The jump happens high up, and the 7.5 sale shows the climb already steep by then: five figures at 7.5, six figures only in the census-topping grades above it, where the surviving population thins to almost nothing. There is no smooth ramp between a worn family copy and those results, because there are very few comics in between.
So the practical question on this book is binary rather than gradual: is your copy an ordinary survivor, or is it one of the handful that came through in exceptional shape? That is answerable from photographs in most cases, and it is the first thing I would tell you.
Selling a Captain America Comics #46
- Expect tanning. 1945 paper was poor and browning is normal on this issue. It is priced in and it is not a reason to think your copy is worthless.
- Treat the $162,000 as belonging to that one copy. The question that matters for you is what a comic without a pedigree label has done, and the one documented answer is the 7.5 that brought $55,200 in December 2022. A worn copy sits far below both numbers.
- Photograph the cover flat and complete. On a document-value book, buyers want to see the whole front without glare or crop.
- Bring the run. Wartime Timely values vary sharply between issues and the variation does not follow the numbering.
If a run of these turns up in a family collection, the sensible step is to have all of it looked at before anything is sorted or sold.
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 #36, the Hitler, Goebbels and Goering cover.
- Captain America Comics #1, where the run starts.
- 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.
