Flash #139 Value: The Villain Outgrew the Comic

A villain with three television seasons behind him, and a comic you can buy for less than a set of tires. Flash 139 value has never caught up with the character.

Eobard Thawne arrives here in September 1963, as a man from the future who copies the Flash in order to destroy him.

Screen fame that did not move the price much

The Reverse-Flash has been the central antagonist of a long-running television series and has appeared in film, which by the usual logic of this hobby should have repriced his first appearance sharply.

It did move, but from a low base and not by as much as owners expect. A 1963 Flash issue was printed in quantity and read by children who kept very few of them in good condition, but enough survive that the middle of the market stays supplied.

The two hundred and forty documented sales bear that out. The volume is in the eights and below, and the money at the top is modest by the standards of the keys around it on this list.

To identify it: 12 cents, September 1963, no bar code. Sellers sometimes attach the debut claim to later issues of this run; the September 1963 date settles it.

Modest at the top, deep in the middle

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 9.0 line is the best-documented high grade with six sales, and it has climbed steadily: $2,160 in November 2018, $2,400 in November 2019, $3,360 in January 2024, $3,120 in July 2025. Up about forty-four percent over seven years.

The 8.5 has done the same more slowly: $1,680 in October 2020, $2,640 in May 2022, $2,340 that October, $2,450 on eBay in July 2026. A rise, then four years of flatness in a narrow band.

The 8.0 is the deepest lane on the page with nineteen sales, running $1,080 in January 2025 up to $2,000 on eBay in July 2026. Nearly double inside eighteen months, which is the sharpest recent move on this book.

Above 9.0 there is very little. The 9.4 last sold in May 2015 and the 9.6 in November 2006, so those two rows are historical rather than useful, and I would not quote either.

The 7.5 lane, with eleven sales, sits just under the 8.0 and moves with it: $1,258 in March 2025, $821 that November, $1,101 in February 2026, $1,250 in April, $1,275 in June and $826 in July. A band of roughly $820 to $1,275, wobbling rather than trending.

What that says overall is that the useful part of this comic runs from about 7.5 to 9.0, it is worth one to three thousand dollars in that range, and it has been slowly appreciating. Everything above is undocumented and everything below 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 Flash #139 independently, and if their numbers disagree with mine it is worth finding out which of us is wrong.

Flash #139 value, grade by grade

240 sales tracked back to 2003; here are the three freshest in every grade.

Every row above is a documented sale, verifiable in Heritage’s public Flash issue index and in CGC’s published auction reporting. The 8.0 lane holds nineteen of them and the readable grades seventy-seven more.

Four hundred dollars for a television villain

Seventy-seven copies below 7.0 have traded over the past eighteen months, which makes this a well-mapped market at the level most owners are at.

From May to August 2026: two 5.5 copies brought $475 and $435, a third brought $386, a 5.0 brought $435, four 4.0 copies brought $400, $330, $300 and $265, a 4.5 brought $268 and a 3.5 brought $450.

The 4.0 lane with four sales between $265 and $400 is the most useful thing here, and the middle of it, around $330, is the number I would give for an average readable copy.

The 3.5 at $450 selling above every 4.0 is the sort of result that turns up when the buyer wants the character rather than the grade. On a book this famous and this cheap, that is most of the demand.

Why screen fame did not arrive in the price

Owners of this comic often expect more than the record supports, and the reason is worth setting out because it applies well beyond this issue.

An adaptation raises demand. It does nothing to supply. When a character reaches television, more people want the first appearance, but the number of surviving copies is exactly what it was, and the price moves by however much those two curves fail to meet.

On a scarce book that gap is enormous. On a 1963 issue of a title DC printed in quantity, a great many copies exist, and demand has to rise a very long way before it starts running out of them. That is what happened here.

The test is not how famous the character is. It is how many copies came up for sale last year. On this comic the answer is seventy-seven in the readable grades alone, and that is why a television villain with three seasons behind him has a first appearance you can buy for four hundred dollars.

The same arithmetic explains why the top of this book did move. There are very few CGC 9.0 copies, so the extra demand ran out of supply almost immediately and the grade climbed forty-four percent. Scarcity is what converts fame into price, and it only exists at the top of this particular ladder.

Selling a Flash #139

1. Twelve cents, September 1963, no bar code. Later issues get sold as Reverse-Flash firsts; this is the one.
2. Say Reverse-Flash and say Eobard Thawne. Television viewers search for the name, not the issue.
3. Do not use a comp above 9.0. The 9.4 last sold in 2015 and the 9.6 in 2006.
4. Grading is marginal below 8.0. The readable band tops out around four hundred and fifty dollars.

Send photographs and I will give you a number from the seventy-seven recent sales rather than from the two old ones at the top of the table.

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

• Flash #123. The Flash of Two Worlds, sixteen issues earlier.
• Showcase #4. Where the Silver Age Flash begins, and the book the whole run is measured against.
• 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.