House of Secrets #92 Value: A Horror Anthology Hiding a First

The object itself explains this market: a 1971 DC horror anthology, one of dozens on the spinner rack, with an eight-page backup story by Len Wein and Bernie Wrightson that nobody knew was a first appearance until Swamp Thing had his own series a year later. Anthologies got read and stacked, not saved. Fifty years later, the busiest lane in this book’s entire sales record is CGC 2.5.

House of Secrets #92 hit stands in the spring of 1971; Swamp Thing #1 followed in 1972, and the guessing about which book mattered ended quickly.

Why nice copies are the whole game

Because the book is an anthology, survival skews low and the census thins out fast at the top: the record-tier sales all sit at 9.6 and 9.8, and there are few enough of those copies that each sale is its own event.

The Wrightson cover is also famously unforgiving — heavy black ink that shows every stress line, on early-seventies DC paper. Copies that merely sat sometimes grade lower than owners expect, and copies that present well command premiums beyond their number.

Wrightson’s cover is among the most reproduced images in Bronze Age horror, and his original art for the issue has a serious collector market of its own. That keeps this book’s profile, and its buyer pool, far larger than a horror anthology has any right to hold.

To identify it: 15 cents, cover-dated June-July 1971. The 2024 facsimile edition reprints the whole issue and says so in the indicia — it is currently all over search results and listings for this book, so the check is not optional.

The record tier, dated and venued

CGC’s reporting caught the most recent census-top sale; the linked price goes to the article.

Start with the oldest row, because it frames everything: a 9.8 of this book sold for $6,201 in 2011. The same grade brought $90,000 a decade later. Whatever else moves, the long arc on this first appearance has been one direction.

The recent top is less tidy: $84,000 in January 2024, $58,800 three months later — census-top copies disagreeing by thirty percent inside a season, which is what happens when each sale is an event with its own room.

The 9.6 lane is the more readable trend line: $33,600 in late 2021, $45,600 in December 2025, then $24,400 and $23,180 this spring. Up through the cooldown, then sharply back — worth knowing before anyone quotes you a 2025 number.

The 9.4 pair — $14,400 in October 2024 and $14,030 in March 2026 — is the steadiest fact in the book’s upper tier: seventeen months apart, within three percent.

Everything above assumes the original. The 2024 facsimile has already muddied this book’s raw listings, and no figure on this page applies to it.

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 House of Secrets #92 independently, and if their numbers disagree with mine it is worth finding out which of us is wrong.

House of Secrets #92 value, grade by grade

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

Heritage rows are verifiable in Heritage’s public House of Secrets issue index, linked figures in CGC’s auction reporting; the rest are completed eBay listings. The 2.5 lane alone holds twenty-four of them, the single busiest low lane on the whole Bronze list.

The busiest lane is 2.5, and that is the point

Most copies of this book are honest wrecks, and the market for honest wrecks is deep, current and specific.

The 2.5 lane’s recent run: $528, $515, $710, $850 across the past year. The 3.0 lane brought $630 to $950 this summer; 4.0s ran $761 to $1,150; and 5.0s reached $889 to $1,500 since May.

So the readable-copy answer is four figures starting around 4.0 and high three figures below that — for an anthology backup story, an extraordinary floor, and it is set by dozens of fresh sales rather than a guide’s guess.

Wrightson’s ink does one favor at this end: wear photographs honestly. A straight-on shot and a raking-light shot tell a buyer everything, and copies described plainly here sell fast.

Reading the middle grades against the show years

This book’s middle tier carries a visible television scar, and pricing against the wrong era of it is the common mistake.

The 9.0 lane tells it: sales near $6,222 at the 2021-22 peak, $2,426 by March 2026, and $4,750 in July — down, then partway back, inside eighteen months. The 8.0 and 8.5 lanes moved the same way and now sit at $2,700 to $4,600 on this summer’s receipts.

Two conserved copies also sit in the record — the only qualified labels the book carries — and they trade at the usual steep discount to straight labels. On a horror anthology, tape and glue were period-typical first aid; if your copy had any, the label will say so and the price will follow.

The practical middle-grade advice: quote from the past two quarters only, expect swings of a third between similar copies, and let the slab carry the argument at 8.0 and above, where nearly every documented sale is graded.

And check the back of the book physically: the Swamp Thing story is the last eight pages, and incomplete copies missing exactly those pages exist and surface raw. Completeness at the back is worth more here than anywhere else in the issue.

Selling a House of Secrets #92

1. Fifteen cents, June-July 1971. The 2024 facsimile names itself in the indicia — check before pricing.
2. Confirm the last eight pages are present. The first appearance lives at the back.
3. Beaten copies are $515-to-$950 comics right now. The 2.5 lane is the market’s busiest.
4. Quote the middle grades from the past two quarters, not from the show-era peak.

Send photographs, including one of the last story’s splash page, and the answer comes back against this year’s sales at your copy’s real tier.

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 Spotlight #5. The era’s other horror-book first appearance, one year later.
• Are damaged comic books worth anything?. Directly relevant to a book whose busiest lane is 2.5.
• The 100 most valuable Bronze Age comics. The full list this book sits high on.

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.