Fantastic Four #4 Value: A Return, Not a Debut

There is a claim attached to this comic that is nearly right and expensively wrong, and it comes up on almost every call. Fantastic Four 4 value depends on settling it first.

This is the issue where the Sub-Mariner comes back, from May 1962, after two decades out of print.

The Sub-Mariner first appeared in 1939

Namor debuted in Marvel Comics #1 in 1939, which is one of the most valuable comics in existence. This issue is his Silver Age return, twenty-three years later, and it is a genuinely important comic in its own right.

Listings routinely blur the two, sometimes carelessly and sometimes not. If a description says “first Sub-Mariner” and the comic is from 1962, the description is wrong, and the price attached to it usually is too.

What #4 actually carries is the moment Marvel connected its new line to its Golden Age one, which is why collectors want it. It is a five-figure comic in high grade and a four-figure one in the condition most copies survive in.

The original carries 12 cents and a May 1962 date, with no bar code anywhere on it. Later Milestone and Facsimile printings exist and each states its own edition inside the front cover.

Six years at one grade

Two of these were reported by CGC. The 9.4 line is the one with enough history to say anything.

Follow the 9.4 line in date order: $23,400 in March 2020, $40,800 that November, $38,400 in January 2021, $28,000 in March 2024, $28,800 in September 2025. Up seventy percent in eight months, then back down and flat for two years.

That is the 2020-21 spike and its unwinding, visible in one grade of one comic. The useful part is the tail — two sales eighteen months apart at $28,000 and $28,800 is a grade that has found a level.

The 9.2 line agrees. $24,000 in November 2020, $21,590 in April 2026. Five and a half years and roughly ten percent off, which on a comic this size is close to flat.

The 8.5 pair is the warning. $14,400 in October 2024 and $7,930 in May 2026, both at Heritage. Nearly half the money in nineteen months, at a grade where the high-grade lanes barely moved.

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 Fantastic Four #4 independently, and if their numbers disagree with mine it is worth finding out which of us is wrong.

Fantastic Four #4 value, grade by grade

263 sales tracked back to 2002; here are the three freshest in every grade.

Every row above is a documented sale, verifiable in Heritage’s public Fantastic Four issue index and in CGC’s published auction reporting. The 9.4 lane carries most of the reported evidence and the lanes below it carry most of the volume.

What most surviving copies bring

Since the start of last year, forty-nine copies below 7.0 have found buyers, and they occupy a narrower band than the ladder above would lead you to expect.

Four separate CGC 4.5 copies sold between May and July 2026 at $2,500, $1,900, $2,150 and $2,275, and a fifth brought $1,727 in July. Around them a 6.0 brought $3,500 in July and $2,196 at Heritage in May, a 6.5 brought $2,379 in May, a 4.0 brought $2,000 in June and a 3.5 brought $1,172.

Five sales of one grade inside three months, from $1,727 to $2,500, is a real cluster. Call a 4.5 of this comic a two-thousand-dollar book and you will be close nearly every time.

Note also how little separates a 4.5 from a 6.0. Roughly a grade and a half of difference is worth a few hundred dollars here, which makes the case against paying to have a mid-grade copy graded on this issue.

Selling a Fantastic Four #4

1. Do not call it the first Sub-Mariner. That is Marvel Comics #1 from 1939, and the mistake will be caught by any buyer who matters.
2. Twelve cents, May 1962, no bar code. Milestone and Facsimile reprints identify themselves in the indicia.
3. Watch the 8.5 band. It has fallen further and faster than the grades above it, so an older comp at that level will be too high.
4. Sell the first six issues as a group. They carry several firsts between them and a buyer wanting #4 usually wants the rest.

Send photographs and I will tell you what your grade has actually been bringing in the past year, which on this comic is a different number depending on where in the ladder you land.

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

• Marvel Comics #1. The actual first Sub-Mariner, from 1939, and the book this one gets confused with.
• Fantastic Four #1. Three issues earlier, and a different market entirely.
• 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.