Conan the Barbarian #1 Value: Twenty-Two Years of Sales

The sale record on this comic runs back to 2004, which is longer than almost anything else in this era can offer. Three hundred and sixty-seven documented sales across twenty-two years, and they show something a shorter record would hide: a top grade that doubled, halved and settled, over a middle that barely moved at all. Conan the Barbarian 1 value depends entirely on which of those two you own.

Robert E. Howard’s Conan reaches comics for the first time in October 1970, drawn by Barry Smith at the start of a run people still collect as a set.

A pulp character, and the run that followed

Conan had existed in pulp magazines since the 1930s. What happens here is the first time he appears in a comic book, in an adaptation Marvel bought cheaply and did not expect much from.

The art is the other half of it. Barry Smith drew the early issues in a style that got more ornate as the run went on, and collectors who chase this book usually want the first ten or twenty issues rather than the single comic.

That matters if you are selling. A #1 on its own competes with three hundred and sixty-seven recorded sales. A #1 at the front of a clean early run is a different proposition, and it reaches a buyer who is not shopping by issue number.

To identify it: 15 cents, October 1970, Conan swinging a spear over blue-skinned attackers with The Coming of Conan across the bottom. Marvel has reprinted the story many times and every reprint names itself inside.

What twenty-two years of sales look like

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.

The 9.8 lane peaked at $14,400 in April 2022 and has spent four years coming down. Five sales this year ran $7,930 to $10,065, which is a third off the peak and roughly level with itself across the year.

The 9.6 fell harder. It reached $4,800 in November 2023 and this year has run $1,001 to $2,600 across nine sales, which is a wider band than the grade above it and a much lower one.

That the 9.6 fell further than the 9.8 is worth pausing on. It usually means the buyers who left were the ones treating the book as an investment rather than as a comic, and they were concentrated one rung below the top.

The 9.4 held up better than either, running $1,045 to $1,774 this year against a $2,200 peak in December 2024. On this book the middle of the high grades has been the steadiest place to be.

Those figures are Heritage results and completed eBay sales. GoCollect and PriceCharting track Conan the Barbarian #1 independently, and if their numbers disagree with mine it is worth finding out which of us is wrong.

Conan the Barbarian #1 value in every grade

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

Heritage rows are verifiable in Heritage’s public Conan the Barbarian issue index; the rest are completed eBay listings. Three hundred and sixty-seven sales going back to 2004, and the 9.4 lane alone carries thirty of them.

The copies people actually own

Most copies of this comic were read. It was a fifteen-cent adaptation of a pulp character, not a first appearance anybody was saving.

This year the 8.5 lane brought $495 to $1,089 and the 8.0 lane $440 to $700, with the grades under those settling steadily rather than falling off a cliff.

Raw copies ran $15 to $800 this year across thirty sales, which is as wide a band as this program produces. The bottom of it is coverless and incomplete copies; the top is a sharp copy somebody photographed well.

For a seller that width is the problem and the opportunity together. A raw copy of this book is worth having looked at, because the difference between the two ends of that band is most of a thousand dollars and photographs alone will not settle it.

Selling the run rather than the issue

This is one of the few books in the program where I would usually rather see the run than the key.

The Barry Smith issues are collected as a stretch, and a clean early run reaches buyers who are not searching for a #1 at all. Issue 23, the first Red Sonja, sits inside that stretch and is a key in its own right.

Selling the #1 alone is straightforward and the record above tells you what to expect. Selling it out of a complete early run, on the other hand, usually costs you money twice: once on the issue, because it competes with every other #1 on the market, and once on what is left, because a run with its first issue missing is much harder to place.

If the whole early stretch is in the box, photograph the spines in order and send that. It takes one picture and it changes the conversation.

One caution on condition before any of that. Fifteen-cent Marvels from 1970 were printed on paper that browns from the edges inward, and Conan covers are dark enough that a spine roll is easy to miss in a straight-on photograph. Shoot the spine edge-on.

Selling a Conan the Barbarian #1

1. Fifteen cents, October 1970. Every reprint of this story names itself inside.
2. The 9.8 came off a 2022 peak. Price from this year, not from $14,400.
3. Raw copies run $15 to $800. That band is too wide to guess your way through.
4. Sell the early run together. A run missing its first issue is much harder to place.

Photograph the cover, the spine edge-on and the spines of whatever else came out of the same box. On this book the run is often worth more than the issue.

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

• How a comic book appraisal works. Useful when a whole run comes out of one box.
• Where to sell comics in SoCal. Every route, including the ones that are not me.
• The 100 most valuable Bronze Age comics. Where this issue ranks against the era.

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.