Justice League of America #21 Value: When Not to Grade It

Most pages on this site end up telling somebody their comic is worth less than they hoped. This one goes further and tells you not to spend money on it. Justice League of America 21 value makes that case by itself.

It is the first Silver Age appearance of the Justice Society, from August 1963, and the start of the annual crossover that ran for two decades.

An important comic that is not a scarce one

The Justice Society had been out of print since the early 1950s. This issue brought them back as the heroes of a parallel world and set up the team-up that DC repeated every summer afterwards, which is why it matters historically.

What it is not is rare. DC printed a great many and enough survive that a graded mid-grade copy comes up most months, which is the whole reason the numbers below look the way they do.

It is also frequently confused with the issues around it. The crossover concludes in #22, and the story is reprinted in later collections, so a listing that says “first JSA” needs the issue number checked rather than taken on trust.

To identify it: 12 cents, August 1963, no bar code, the DC bullet on the cover.

The top of a modest ladder

Not one sale of this comic has ever appeared in CGC’s auction reporting, which is why no price below is a link. What follows came from Heritage’s own results and from closed eBay listings, and I would rather tell you that than leave you assuming otherwise.

The two 9.4 sales are three years apart and going up: $3,600 in April 2022, $5,400 in July 2025. So is the 9.2 line, $2,040 in December 2023 to $2,750 in October 2025. The very top of this book has appreciated quietly.

The 9.0 line has not. $1,275 in October 2022, $1,920 in August 2023, $1,750 in June 2024, then $835 in June 2026. That last result is less than half what the grade brought two years earlier, and it is the most recent sale in the lane.

Below 9.0 the whole thing collapses fast. An 8.5 brought $576 in October 2025 and an 8.0 brought $456 in April 2025, both at Heritage, which is a very steep drop for one and a half grade points.

The practical reading is that only the top three or four grades of this comic carry real money, and everything under 9.0 belongs to the section below.

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 Justice League of America #21 independently, and if their numbers disagree with mine it is worth finding out which of us is wrong.

Justice League of America #21 value in each grade

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

Every row above is a documented sale, verifiable in Heritage’s public Justice League of America issue index and in CGC’s published auction reporting. CGC reported none of them. The evidence here is Heritage’s catalog and eBay’s completed listings, nothing else.

Where the grading fee stops making sense

Thirty-two copies graded below 7.0 have changed hands since the start of last year. Those figures are the reason this page is shaped the way it is.

Since February 2026: a 6.5 brought $300 and another $178, a 5.0 brought $145, four separate 4.5 copies brought $200, $200, $130 and $111, another brought $91 in June, and a 3.5 brought $99.

A CGC 4.5 of this comic sold for ninety-one dollars. Submitting a comic to CGC costs more than that before postage in either direction, before insurance and before the wait. Anyone who graded that copy lost money doing it, and they were never going to make it back.

That is not an argument against grading generally. On the books further up this site it pays for itself many times over. It is an argument against grading this book below about 9.0, and the thirty-two recent sales make it without any help from me.

Selling a Justice League of America #21

1. Check the issue number, not the description. The crossover runs into #22 and the story is reprinted in collections; “first JSA” on a listing is not enough.
2. Do not grade a readable copy. Mid-grade slabs of this comic have sold for as little as $91, well under what the submission costs.
3. Sell it raw and sell it honestly. At these prices a clear set of photographs does more for the result than a label would.
4. Keep #21 and #22 together. The two halves of the crossover sell better as a pair than either does alone.

Send photographs and I will tell you plainly whether your copy is in the part of this book worth grading, and on most copies of this one the answer is no.

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. And when the fee is worth paying, which on this book it usually is not.
• The 100 most valuable Silver Age comics. And what each one really sold for.
• Brave and the Bold #28. The first Justice League, and a completely different order of money.

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.