Creepy #1 Value: One Step Holds All of It

This magazine is inexpensive at every grade anybody is likely to own, and then it is suddenly not. Creepy 1 value has a single step in it and almost nothing else.

Warren published the first issue in 1964, a black-and-white horror magazine hosted by Uncle Creepy and drawn by most of the best artists then working.

A magazine that got round the Comics Code

The Comics Code had made horror comics effectively impossible since 1954. Warren’s answer was to publish in magazine format, which the Code did not cover, and to print in black and white on larger paper.

That decision brought Frazetta, Ditko, Williamson, Wood and Crandall to the title, and it is their work rather than the character that collectors chase. It also created the format Vampirella used five years later.

The magazine format has the same consequences here as it does there: larger, glossier, never bagged, stored flat under other magazines. High grades are scarcer than the print run suggests and ordinary copies show more wear than an owner expects.

To identify it: 35 cents, 1964, Warren Publishing. There have been later Creepy #1 issues from the 2009 Dark Horse revival, which are ordinary comics.

One step, near the very top

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 single CGC 9.6 at $2,520 in January 2024 is more than three times the best 9.4 result, and no other sale at that grade exists anywhere I can see. That one step is where almost all of this magazine’s value sits.

Below it the ladder is remarkably flat. The 9.2 has seven sales ranging $166 to $512, the 9.0 has twelve ranging $192 to $350, the 8.5 has twelve ranging $154 to $300 and the 8.0 has seventeen ranging $114 to $310.

Those four lanes overlap almost entirely. An 8.0 has sold for more than a 9.0 and a 9.2 has sold for less than an 8.5, repeatedly, across nearly fifty sales. A full grade point and a half is worth essentially nothing between 8.0 and 9.2.

The 9.4 at $793 in July 2026 is the first rung where the number moves, and even that is under a thousand dollars. Everything interesting on this magazine happens in the last two tenths of a grade.

For an owner that means the practical question is narrow: is this copy near perfect or not? If not, the specific grade barely matters and the number is a few hundred dollars.

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 Creepy #1 independently, and if their numbers disagree with mine it is worth finding out which of us is wrong.

Creepy #1 value, grade by grade

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

Every row above is a documented sale, verifiable in Heritage’s public Creepy issue index and in CGC’s published auction reporting. Seventeen sit at 8.0 and fourteen at 7.5, and both bands overlap the grades above them almost completely.

Under two hundred dollars

Seventeen readable copies traded over the past eighteen months, and they are the cheapest thing in this batch.

Across the past ten months: four 7.0 copies brought $160, $150, $124 and $79, a 6.0 brought $85, two 5.5 copies brought $166 and $37, two 5.0 copies brought $89 and $59, and a 4.0 brought $100.

The 5.5 at $166 and the 5.5 at $37 are the widest pair on the page, and the 7.0 lane spanning $79 to $160 is not much better. At these prices a single quiet listing moves a grade’s apparent value by half.

A readable copy of the first Warren horror magazine costs less than a modern hardcover. That is a genuinely good thing to be able to tell somebody, and it is what a hundred and thirty-eight sales support.

What to do with the copy you probably have

Most people who contact me about this magazine have a copy that was read and kept, which puts them somewhere between 5.0 and 8.0, and the honest advice there is short.

Do not grade it. The entire band from 8.0 down to 5.0 trades between about eighty and three hundred dollars, and a submission plus postage both ways would cost more than most of those figures.

Sell it raw, photograph the cover at an angle so the scuffing is visible, and describe the condition plainly. Warren stock shows wear that a flat photograph hides completely, and a buyer who finds it later will ask for money back.

The one case worth the fee is a copy that has genuinely never been opened, because the step to 9.6 is worth more than three times what a 9.4 brings and everything below that is noise. Those copies exist but they are rare, and they do not look like a magazine that has been on a shelf for sixty years.

If you have a run of early Warren magazines, that changes things. Complete runs of Creepy and Eerie from the sixties attract collectors who will pay a premium for the set that no individual issue commands, and that is a better route than selling them one at a time.

For completeness: the 9.4 at $793 in July 2026 is a single sale, so even the step I have just described rests on one result at the bottom of it and one at the top. That is enough to say the step exists and not enough to say precisely how big it is.

Selling a Creepy #1

1. Thirty-five cents, 1964, Warren Publishing. The 2009 Dark Horse Creepy #1 is an ordinary comic.
2. Rake a light across the front before you photograph it. Warren stock hides its scuffs when you shoot square-on.
3. Do not grade below 9.4. Everything from 8.0 to 9.2 trades in the same band.
4. Sell early Warren runs as a set. Complete runs command a premium single issues do not.

Send photographs with one raked across the cover, and you will get a straight answer about whether your copy sits in the part of this ladder that matters.

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

• Vampirella #1. Warren’s other great magazine key, five years later.
• The 100 most valuable Silver Age comics. And what each one really sold for.
• Are damaged comic books worth anything?. Relevant on a format that takes damage comics do not.

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.