Incredible Hulk #180 Value: The Last Page Is the Whole Book

The thing most people believe about this comic is that it is the first Wolverine, and it is nearly true — which is the most expensive kind of nearly. Wolverine appears here in one panel on the last page, announcing himself for next issue. The full first appearance is Incredible Hulk #181, and the market prices that distinction precisely.

Issue 180, cover-dated October 1974, ends with a single panel of a costumed figure stepping out of the trees.

What a cameo is worth, exactly

The comics market has a settled convention: a cameo is worth a fraction of a first full appearance, and the fraction is usually somewhere between a fifth and a half depending on how substantial the cameo is.

This one is on the thin end — a final-page teaser panel — and the prices follow. A high-grade #180 is a serious comic; a high-grade #181 is a different conversation entirely.

What keeps #180 valuable anyway is that collectors who want the story want both. The two issues are bought together far more often than either is bought alone, which puts a floor under this one that a pure teaser would not otherwise have.

To identify it: 25 cents, October 1974, with the Hulk and the Wendigo on the cover. Wolverine is not on the cover of this issue, which is itself a useful check — if a costumed Wolverine is on the front, you are holding #181 or a reprint.

Priced against the issue after it

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 9.8 lane came off its 2021 peak hard and then stopped falling: $40,800 at the top, then a cluster at $13,200, $13,420, $14,400 and $15,035 across the past eighteen months. Four sales inside about $1,800 is a settled number.

That stability matters more than the decline. A lane that agrees with itself four times running is a lane you can sell into with confidence, whatever it did three years ago.

Below the top the pattern repeats a step lower. The 9.6 ran $3,001 to $3,975 across June, July and August of this year, with one outlier at $1,600 in July that nobody should price from.

The 9.4 and 9.2 lanes now overlap almost completely — $1,795 to $2,632 at 9.4 this year, $1,500 to $2,099 at 9.2 — which usually means the market has stopped paying much for the distinction between them.

Read against #181, all of these figures are the smaller half of a pair. That is the correct way to hold them: this is a valuable supporting comic, not a substitute for the one after it.

Those figures are Heritage results and completed eBay sales. GoCollect and PriceCharting track Incredible Hulk #180 independently, and if their numbers disagree with mine it is worth finding out which of us is wrong.

Incredible Hulk #180 value in every grade

367 sales tracked back to 2017; here are the three freshest in every grade.

Heritage rows are verifiable in Heritage’s public Incredible Hulk issue index; the rest are completed eBay listings. The lanes below 9.0 refreshed repeatedly this summer, several of them within the past month.

The five-hundred-dollar cameo

Most surviving copies are readable rather than sharp, and that band is priced clearly and currently.

This summer: 7.0 copies brought $750 to $800, 6.5 copies $464 to $650, 6.0 copies $525 to $650, and 5.0 copies $386 to $500.

Lower still, 3.5 copies clustered tightly at $380, $380, $387 in July and August — three sales within seven dollars — and 2.5 copies ran $317 to $400.

So a readable #180 is a $380-to-$800 comic on current sales. For a comic whose entire claim is one panel on the last page, that is a genuinely strong number, and it is almost entirely borrowed from the issue that follows it.

The 8.5 lane is the one to watch if your copy is better than readable: $1,800 in April, then $1,200, $1,250 and $1,049 across the summer. That is a drift worth knowing about before you decide whether to wait.

And the ungraded tier runs forty-nine sales deep, with August results at $184, $248, $400 and $425. Raw copies of this issue sell constantly, which means a fair price is easy to establish and a lowball is easy to catch.

Selling the pair

If #180 and #181 are both in the box, do not sell them separately, and this is the strongest version of that advice I give on any book in this program.

The buyer for a cameo issue is, with very few exceptions, a person who owns or is buying the first full appearance. Selling the pair together reaches that buyer directly; selling #180 alone asks a smaller pool to want half a story.

The same logic extends one issue further. Copies of #182 travel with the pair as the third chapter, and a matched 180-181-182 stretch in similar grade attracts attention that individual issues do not.

On grading: the pair is worth submitting together if either copy looks strong, partly for the fee efficiency and partly because matched grades present better than mismatched ones to the person buying the set.

A last identification note that costs people money: the 1970s and later reprints of #181 are common and name themselves in the indicia, and a reprint of #181 sitting beside a genuine #180 confuses more sales than any other pairing in Bronze Age Marvel.

Selling an Incredible Hulk #180

1. Twenty-five cents, October 1974, Wendigo on the cover. No Wolverine on the front means you have #180.
2. Check the top edge for a bound-in jewelry advert. Those went through military exchanges and bring more, on too few sales for me to quote a figure.
3. This is the cameo, not the first full appearance. That is #181, and it is a different price.
4. Sell the pair together. The buyer for this issue almost always wants both.
5. Readable copies are $380 to $800 on this summer’s sales.

Send photographs of both issues if you have both. The pair prices better together, and I would rather tell you that than buy them one at a time.

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

• Incredible Hulk #181. The full first appearance one issue later, and what it brings.
• Selling slabbed comics. If the pair is already in holders.
• The 100 most valuable Bronze Age comics. Both issues hold ranks on the list.

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.