Giant-Size X-Men #1 Value: After the $170,000 Copy

The number people bring to me about this comic is $170,000, and it is real: the single finest copy on the census, a CGC 9.9, sold at ComicConnect in June 2024. What that number is not is a price for this comic. It is a price for being the best one in existence, and the 391 other documented sales below it tell the story a seller actually needs.

Len Wein and Dave Cockrum introduced Storm, Nightcrawler, Colossus and the new X-Men team in the summer of 1975, reviving a series Marvel had left in reprints for five years.

Why this book is everywhere and still expensive

Giant-Size X-Men #1 is not scarce. The census runs to five figures, the record here holds 392 documented sales, and on many summer days two or three copies change hands. What holds the price up is that demand has outrun even that supply for fifty years.

It is also the most liquid book on the entire Bronze hub: nearly every grade lane below 9.6 shows multiple sales inside the past ninety days. Almost nothing printed on this page is older than this season, which is rare and worth trusting.

The one number that behaves differently is the top. Above the daily market sit the census copies: the 9.8s, and the lone 9.9 that made headlines. Those trade like art, on scarcity and occasion.

To identify it: 50 cents, summer 1975, sixty-eight giant pages. Marvel’s facsimile editions of this issue name themselves in the indicia, and the 2019 one circulates heavily.

The census tier and the market tier

CGC’s reporting has followed the top of this book for years; the linked prices go to the articles.

The 9.8 lane documents its own descent almost month by month: $72,000 at the 2021 peak, $42,999 the next fall, $29,249, $23,065, $20,626 — and then a firming, with 2026 sales at $23,180, $26,000 and $26,840. Eight dated points make that a curve, not a guess.

The 9.9 sits apart from all of it. One copy, thirty-one bids, $170,000. Nothing about your comic — or anyone’s — is priced by that sale unless a grader someday hands it the same label.

One step down, the 9.6 traded four times in the past six weeks between $7,320 and $9,844. Two steps down, 9.4s at $5,220 to $7,000 in the same window. The tiers are close together and freshly documented.

The middle of the ladder moves like produce: 9.0s at $4,555 and $4,600 in August, 8.5s between $3,250 and $4,018 through July. Whatever the aggregators say, these are the receipts.

One row a reader may meet elsewhere: a raw copy at $40,000 sits in the record. Ungraded sales at graded-record prices deserve the eyebrow you are raising; it stays in the table because it is documented, and it changes no advice on this page.

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 Giant-Size X-Men #1 independently, and if their numbers disagree with mine it is worth finding out which of us is wrong.

Giant-Size X-Men #1 value, grade by grade

392 sales tracked back to 2021; here are the three freshest in every grade.

Heritage rows are verifiable in Heritage’s public Giant-Size X-Men issue index, linked figures in CGC’s auction reporting; the rest are completed eBay listings. No book on the Bronze list traded more often this quarter; the lanes below 9.6 refresh weekly.

The two-thousand-dollar copy is the common one

The center of gravity on this book is lower than its reputation: 5.0 through 7.0 is where most surviving copies actually grade.

This summer, 6.0s brought $1,733 to $2,100 across four sales, 6.5s ran $1,800 to $2,199, and 7.0s held $2,200 to $2,688. Below that, 4.5s traded seven times since May between $1,600 and $1,750.

Even genuinely rough copies hold four figures: 2.5s brought $900 to $1,149 in July, and 2.0s reached $1,140 in May. Fifty years of demand put a floor under this book that most Bronze comics never get.

The practical read: any complete copy is a four-figure comic on current sales, the grade steps are modest until 9.0, and timing matters less here than on almost anything else I track, because the next sale is always days away.

Facsimiles, and when the slab earns it

The 2019 facsimile edition is the modern hazard: same cover, crisp paper, and it names itself only in the fine print. Every week someone lists one in good faith as the real thing. The indicia check takes seconds and precedes every number on this page.

On grading: below 8.0 this book is so liquid raw that the fee mostly buys convenience. The lanes agree with themselves, buyers know the book, and clean photographs get honest prices.

From 9.0 up, slabs rule the record — nearly every documented sale up there is graded — so an ungraded copy that sharp is leaving money on the table by definition.

And the gap between 9.6 and 9.8 remains roughly a factor of three on this season’s sales, which makes pre-screening worthwhile: white pages and perfect corners are cheap to photograph and expensive to guess wrong.

If a copy came out of a late-seventies collection with its siblings — X-Men #94 and the run that follows — keep the family together for the first conversation. The set context changes offers on every book in it.

Selling a Giant-Size X-Men #1

1. Fifty cents, 68 pages, summer 1975. The facsimiles name themselves in the indicia.
2. Any complete copy is four figures on this summer’s sales; do not let a rough cover talk you lower.
3. Slab at 9.0 and above. The record up there is essentially all graded copies.
4. Ignore the $170,000 headline. It priced the single best copy in existence, once.

Send photographs and the answer comes back against sales from the past few weeks, because on this book there are always sales from the past few weeks.

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

• X-Men #1. Where the original five started, and what the 1963 book brings.
• Incredible Hulk #181. The other 1974-75 Marvel key with a census story on top.
• The 100 most valuable Bronze Age comics. Where this book ranks and why.

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.