Showcase #22 Value: A Ladder That Stops at 9.0

I can tell you the highest grade of this comic that has ever come up for public sale, and it is lower than most people expect. Showcase 22 value is shaped by that one fact more than anything else.

It is the debut of Hal Jordan as Green Lantern, from the autumn of 1959, and it is genuinely hard to find in the condition collectors chase.

Nothing above 9.0 has ever sold in public

Across 187 documented sales going back to 2002, the top of the record is CGC 9.0, and it has come up three times. There is no 9.2, no 9.4, nothing higher, anywhere in the public auction record I can see.

That is not true of most Silver Age keys. Books from 1962 and later routinely produce 9.6 and 9.8 copies. A 1959 DC that children read is a different proposition, and this one simply did not survive that way in any number that reaches auction.

The consequence for an owner is unusual and it is good news: because the top of the ladder is so low, the grades in the middle carry far more of this book’s money than they would on almost anything else on my list.

Identification is straightforward. Ten cents, a September-October 1959 cover date, DC’s Showcase logo. The story has been reprinted in Secret Origins and in modern collections, all of which say what they are inside.

The top of a short ladder

Two of these were reported by CGC. The 9.0 line is the ceiling of the entire public record on this comic.

The two 8.0 sales are the sharpest pair on this page. $56,433 in February 2024 and $36,000 in May 2024, same grade, same auction house, three months apart, and a third of the money gone between them.

Read them alongside the 7.5 at $50,727 and the picture gets stranger: a 7.5 has sold for more than an 8.0 did. On a book this scarce that is not an anomaly to explain away, it is simply what happens when three copies come up in three different rooms.

The 9.0 line does have a direction. $15,535 in May 2006, $59,750 in November 2009, $66,000 in November 2019. That is the whole documented history of the top grade, and the most recent of the three is now seven years old.

The $9,150 at 6.5 from April 2026 is the most recent reported sale of any grade, and it is the row I would actually build a quote from, because it is current and because it is in the part of the ladder copies are found in.

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 Showcase #22 independently, and if their numbers disagree with mine it is worth finding out which of us is wrong.

Showcase #22 value, grade by grade

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

Every row above is a documented sale, verifiable in Heritage’s public Showcase issue index and in CGC’s published auction reporting. The ladder stops at 9.0 because the record does; nothing higher has ever been sold in public.

Why the middle of this one is expensive

Thirty-seven copies in the readable grades have changed hands since January 2025, and they cost a great deal more than the same grade of almost anything else on this list.

A 7.0 brought $10,370 at Heritage in July 2026 and a 6.5 brought $9,150 in April. A 6.0 brought $7,930 in May, a 5.5 brought $6,100 in July, and two 4.5 copies brought $3,660 and $3,416 in May.

Down at the bottom a 4.0 brought $3,500 in July and a 3.5 brought $2,300 in June. So even a hard-read copy of this comic is a several-thousand-dollar item, which is not something I can say about most of the Silver Age.

The two 4.5 sales landing within about $250 of each other in the same month are the most quotable thing here, and they are the number I would work from if a copy in that range turned up.

Selling a Showcase #22

1. Confirm it is #22, not another Showcase. The title ran for years and most issues are ordinary comics; this is the Green Lantern one, from late 1959.
2. Ten cents, September-October 1959. Reprints of the story appear in Secret Origins and modern collections and all identify themselves.
3. Grading is worth it here. Unlike most of the books on this site, the mid-grades on this one carry four and five figures, so the fee is a small fraction of the outcome.
4. Do not assume a high grade. Nothing above 9.0 has ever sold in public, so a hopeful guess at 9.4 is a guess about a copy that may not exist.

Photographs will place your copy on a ladder that is short at the top and unusually valuable in the middle, which is a better position for most owners than it sounds.

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

• Showcase #4. The issue that started DC’s Silver Age, three years before this one.
• Brave and the Bold #28. DC’s other great tryout key of the era, and a very different market.
• 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.