Detective Comics #400 Value: A First You Can Afford

Almost every page here has to talk somebody down from a number. This is the one where I get to do the opposite. Detective Comics 400 value is low enough that a real first appearance is within reach.

Man-Bat arrives in June 1970, at the very end of what anybody would call the Silver Age, and the book has never carried the premium its scarcer contemporaries do.

Where the era line falls, and why it matters here

Nobody agrees precisely where the Silver Age stops and the Bronze Age starts, but most people put it around 1970. This comic sits directly on that line, and which side you place it on changes which list it competes against and which collectors are bidding.

That ambiguity is part of why it stays cheap. It is too late to ride the Silver Age key market and too early to be a Bronze Age headline, so it sits between two audiences instead of being fought over by both.

Print run is the other half. By 1970 DC was printing in quantity and distribution had improved, so a great many copies survive in grades that would be scarce on a 1962 book.

The cover carries 15 cents and a June 1970 date. No bar code. It is a thick anniversary issue, which is worth noting because the extra pages make the spine more vulnerable than a standard issue of the period.

What a whole ladder under $5,000 looks like

CGC’s auction reporting does not cover this comic at all, which means no price below carries a link. Heritage results and closed eBay listings are the whole record.

The entire top of this comic sits under five thousand dollars, and the highest figure on the page is a 9.8 from 2012. That is unusual on a first appearance and it is the point of this page.

The 9.4 line has softened through 2025: $2,640 in October 2024, $2,800 that December, then $1,920 in July 2025 and $2,000 that August. Down about a quarter, and now sitting a little above the 9.2.

The 9.0 lane is where the depth is, thirty documented sales, and the recent ones land at $1,000, $1,082 and $1,200. Three results inside two hundred dollars is about as reliable as this hobby gets, and it means a near-mint copy of a genuine first appearance is a thousand-dollar comic.

The one row that does not fit is the 9.2 at $1,899 in October 2025, which sold above every recent 9.4. On a book this affordable a single motivated bidder moves the number more than the grade does.

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 Detective Comics #400 independently, and if their numbers disagree with mine it is worth finding out which of us is wrong.

Detective Comics #400 value, grade by grade

269 sales tracked back to 2005; here are the three freshest in every grade.

Every row above is a documented sale, verifiable in Heritage’s public Detective Comics issue index and in CGC’s published auction reporting. Thirty of them sit at CGC 9.0 alone, which is why the number for that grade is unusually firm.

Under five hundred dollars, most of the time

Sixty-three sales below 7.0 have gone through since the start of last year, and the whole band fits inside a few hundred dollars.

From May to August 2026: a 7.0 brought $500 and another $461, a 6.0 brought $350, a 4.5 brought $300, a 4.0 brought $300, and four separate 5.0 copies brought $275, $263, $255 and $239.

Four 5.0 sales inside four months from $239 to $275 is the tightest cluster in this batch. On this comic I can quote a mid-grade copy to within about twenty dollars, which is not something I would claim anywhere else.

It also means this is a good first slabbed key for somebody starting out, and a bad candidate for grading a raw copy, for the same reason: the whole readable ladder is worth less than two grading submissions.

Selling a Detective Comics #400

1. Fifteen cents, June 1970. The 100-page and anniversary reprints of this era are easy to confuse with the original; check the date.
2. Photograph the spine carefully. This is a thicker issue than the ones around it and the spine takes the damage first.
3. Do not grade a readable copy. The entire mid-grade band is worth less than two submission fees.
4. Sell it as a first appearance. Man-Bat is a real character with a real following, and the listing should say so plainly.

Send photographs and you will get a number rather than a range, because on this comic the recent sales are close enough together to support one.

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

• Detective Comics #359. The other affordable Detective first of the era, three years earlier.
• The 100 most valuable Bronze Age comics. The list this one nearly belongs to instead.
• The 100 most valuable Silver 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.