Jimmy Olsen #134 Value: A Cameo Priced Like a Debut

A raw copy of this comic sold for sixty dollars last month. A CGC 9.8 of the same comic brought $14,400. That is a gap of more than two hundred to one on the same comic, and it exists because of one panel that most readers in 1970 turned straight past. Jimmy Olsen 134 value is a lesson in what condition does to a cameo.

Darkseid appears here in December 1970, in a single panel, unnamed, at the start of the run Jack Kirby had just arrived at DC to make.

One panel, and what it is worth

Kirby left Marvel and took over Jimmy Olsen, of all titles, because DC handed him a book with no regular creative team. He used it to begin the Fourth World, and Darkseid turns up at the end of this issue as a figure on a screen.

He is not named, he does not speak at length, and the story is not about him. His first full appearance is generally credited to Forever People #1 the following year, with some guides citing Jimmy Olsen #148 instead, so this book gets priced on its own record rather than on a title it may not hold.

That matters for a seller because the cameo has the higher profile of the two and the lower supply of high-grade copies, so the market has settled on this issue as the one to own. It is worth knowing that the argument exists rather than being surprised by it in a listing.

To identify it: 15 cents, December 1970, a Kirby cover of Superman being carried off by a crowd of bearded riders, blurbed The Mountain of Judgment. There is one printing and no variant to check for.

Three sales at the top, and a long way down

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.

Three documented 9.8 sales in six years, all at Heritage: $10,800 in 2020, $14,400 in 2022, $10,370 this March. The lane peaked with the rest of the market and has come back to roughly where it started.

It is worth seeing how far that is from where the book began. The earliest sales on record are 9.4 copies at $253 in January 2006 and $240 in March 2007, when this was a Kirby curiosity rather than a first appearance anybody chased.

The drop to 9.6 is the steepest single step on this ladder. Its six sales span $598 back in 2011 to $2,520 in 2024; the three most recent run $1,920 to $2,520, between a seventh and a quarter of what the grade above brings.

From there it falls away quickly again: the 9.4 lane at $960 to $1,143 across twenty-two sales, the 9.2 at $780 to $1,000 across seventeen.

The 9.0 lane is the deepest on the page with twenty-nine sales and the most useful to an ordinary owner, running $330 to $712 this year. That is the realistic ceiling for a copy that was stored well but not perfectly.

Those figures are Heritage results and completed eBay sales. GoCollect and PriceCharting track Superman’s Pal Jimmy Olsen #134 independently, and if their numbers disagree with mine it is worth finding out which of us is wrong.

Jimmy Olsen #134 value in every grade

265 sales tracked back to 2006; here are the three freshest in every grade.

Heritage rows are verifiable in Heritage’s public Superman’s Pal Jimmy Olsen issue index; the rest are completed eBay listings. Two hundred and sixty-five sales going back to 2006, with the deepest lanes at 9.0 and below.

What a reading copy is really worth

Most copies of this comic were read by children in 1970 and stored by nobody, and the ladder shows it.

Across 2026: 8.5 copies brought $310 to $470, 8.0 copies $319 to $350, 7.5 copies $199 to $300, and 7.0 copies $164 to $229.

Raw copies are the striking part. Forty sales on record and August results at $60, $95 and $120. A complete, readable first Darkseid is a sixty-to-a-hundred-and-twenty-dollar comic.

Set that against $10,370 at the top and the ratio is roughly a hundred and fifty to one on the same book, and it is entirely a story about how few copies survived sharp.

The lower lanes are deeper than the top and worth reading properly, because this is where most copies actually sit. The 6.0 lane has fifteen sales and ran $60 to $160 this year, the 5.5 lane eighteen sales at $90 to $300, and the 4.5 lane twenty sales from $50 to $125.

Those bands overlap so heavily that the grade number stops carrying much information below about 6.5. What separates a $60 copy from a $160 copy in the same lane is usually page color and how the cover presents, not the digits on the label.

It also means a mid-grade slab is often worth less than the fee that produced it. Below about 6.5 the raw market is the right home for this comic; above that, the next section sets out when a submission earns its money back.

When a submission on this book earns its fee

On most books this common the arithmetic says do not bother. Here it can run the other way, and it is worth setting out where the line falls.

A raw copy sells for under $120. A graded 8.0 sells for over $300 and a 9.0 for $330 to $712. A submission fee is a fraction of that difference, so on a copy that looks genuinely clean the slab pays for itself several times over. On anything below 6.5 it does not, because graded copies down there sell for $50 to $160 as well.

That is unusual, and it exists because raw buyers on this issue are pricing in the risk that a fifty-six-year-old DC comic has problems they cannot see. Removing that doubt is worth more here than the fee costs.

What to look at before deciding: the spine, which rolls on these because the paper is thin and the book is thick, and the page edges, which brown from the outside in. A copy with a flat spine and cream pages is worth submitting. A copy with a rolled spine and tan edges is a reading copy, and the raw market is the right home for it.

And if the rest of the Kirby run came out of the same box, say so. Issues 133 to 148 are his apart from the reprint at #140, they sell as a stretch, and the Fourth World titles that started the following year usually turn up alongside them.

Selling a Superman’s Pal Jimmy Olsen #134

1. Fifteen cents, December 1970, Kirby cover. One printing, no variants to check.
2. This is the cameo. The full first Darkseid is Forever People #1, a different comic.
3. Raw copies are $60 to $120. A clean 8.0 clears $300, but a graded 6.0 sold for $60 as well.
4. Grading pays here on a clean copy. On a reading copy the fee is more than the slab adds.

Send photographs of the cover and the spine edge-on. On this book the spine decides whether a submission makes sense, and that decision is worth several hundred dollars.

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

• How grading actually works. The decision that matters most on this particular book.
• How a comic book appraisal works. If a whole Kirby run came out of the same box.
• The 100 most valuable Bronze Age comics. Where this issue ranks against the era.

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.