Hawkman #1 Value: Why Nobody Can Quote It

One grade on this comic has sold at $239 and at $1,700. Not two grades, not two decades apart, the same grade inside three years. Hawkman 1 value is the hardest thing on this site to quote.

DC finally gave Hawkman his own title in April 1964, after running him through four separate tryout issues across two titles.

Four tryouts before a title

Hawkman was revived in The Brave and the Bold #34 in 1961, then #35, #36, #42, #43 and #44, and DC still hesitated. It took three years and six tryout issues before he got a comic of his own.

That hesitancy shaped the market. Collectors who want the Silver Age Hawkman generally want the 1961 debut, and this first issue is a secondary target rather than the primary one.

It is a well-traded book despite that, at two hundred and twenty-one documented sales, but the trading is spread thin across a lot of grades and no lane has settled into a reliable number.

To identify it: 12 cents, April-May 1964, no bar code. Hawkman has had several later first issues from relaunches, all of them ordinary comics.

One grade, seven times apart

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.

Start with the 8.5, which has ten sales: $239 in August 2021, $900 in August 2022, $1,700 in February 2023, $660 that July, $900 in December 2024, $1,342 at Heritage in July 2026. The top result is seven times the bottom one.

The 9.2 is the only lane that behaves, with sixteen sales and a clear direction: $2,280 in March 2024, $1,920 that December, $1,440 in April 2025, $1,380 that October. Down about forty percent in nineteen months, steadily.

The 9.4 above it fell harder and faster. $5,995 on eBay in March 2022 and $1,708 at Heritage in May 2026, a fall of seventy-one percent, with a 2019 result of $2,640 sitting oddly between them.

The 9.6 line has three sales and all of them are from 2011 to 2014. Twelve years of silence at the top of a book whose lower grades have moved this much means those figures are archaeology rather than evidence.

What I would actually take from the page: the 9.2 is the one grade with enough recent, consistent data to quote, and it is worth about fourteen hundred dollars. Everything else needs a range and an explanation.

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

Hawkman #1 value in each grade

221 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 Hawkman issue index and in CGC’s published auction reporting. The 9.2 lane holds sixteen of them and the 8.0 fifteen; the grades between are where the scatter lives.

A hundred to three hundred dollars

The readable end is cheap, consistent and completely unlike the rest of this book. Thirty copies traded over the past eighteen months.

From November 2025 to June 2026: a 7.0 brought $255, a 6.0 brought $299, a 5.5 brought $250 and another $134, two 5.0 copies brought $200 and $119, two 4.5 copies brought $201 and $150, a 4.0 brought $160 and a 3.5 brought $120.

Everything from 3.5 to 7.0 sits between $119 and $299. That is a hundred and eighty dollars covering three and a half grade points, with the ordering inside the band close to random.

That is the honest answer for most owners: a couple of hundred dollars, and the specific grade is not worth arguing about. It is also why I would not spend anything having a readable copy of this comic graded.

How to sell a book nobody can price

A ladder this scattered is a genuine problem for a seller, and the usual advice does not apply. Being told the market value is somewhere between two hundred and seventeen hundred dollars is not useful.

The first thing I would do is ignore the grade and look at the copy. On a book where one grade has ranged seven to one, what is actually varying is not condition, it is who happened to be watching. Presentation and timing are doing the work the label normally does.

The second is to prefer an auction over a private listing for anything at 8.5 and above. On a comic with no settled number, a room full of bidders will find one and a single buyer will lowball it, because they know as well as you do that the record does not support a firm figure.

Below 8.0 the opposite holds. The readable grades are consistent and inexpensive, the fees on a two-hundred-dollar comic are prohibitive, and a straightforward sale with good photographs is the whole strategy.

And if you have the 1961 debut as well, sell them together. That book is the one collectors actually chase, and a first issue attached to it is worth more as part of the pair than it will ever be alone.

One last thing worth knowing if you are holding a 9.2. That lane has sixteen sales and a clear direction, which makes it the one grade on this comic where waiting has a measurable cost. Down forty percent in nineteen months is not a blip, and if the pattern holds another year of waiting is another few hundred dollars.

Selling a Hawkman #1

1. Twelve cents, April-May 1964. Later Hawkman #1 issues are relaunches from much later decades.
2. Check whether you also have Brave and the Bold #34. That is the Silver Age debut and the more valuable book.
3. Expect a range above 8.0. One grade on this comic has sold seven times apart.
4. Do not grade a readable copy. The whole band from 3.5 to 7.0 fits inside about a hundred and eighty dollars.

Send photographs. On a book this scattered they carry more information than the label does, and I would rather price from the copy than from the ladder.

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

• Brave and the Bold #34. The Silver Age debut, three years before this title started.
• Showcase #22. How DC’s other revivals went from tryout to title.
• 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.