Nedor was a second-tier publisher. Startling Comics ran for years without producing a character anybody remembers, and issue 49 is from 1948, late in a run that was going nowhere.
It sits on my list of the hundred most valuable Golden Age comics because of one image: an Alex Schomburg robot cover that is among the defining science-fiction illustrations of the era.
Nobody is buying this comic for the stories and I am not going to pretend otherwise.
Two sales, both at the top
| Copy | Result | Where and when |
|---|---|---|
| CGC 9.6, Promise Collection | $132,000 | Heritage Auctions, June 2021 |
| CGC 9.6 | $90,000 | ComicLink, September 2025 |
Both documented sales are at 9.6, which tells you what part of the market is actually active. There is no published ladder underneath them, and that absence is informative rather than a gap in my research.
The pair is genuinely useful, though, because it isolates the pedigree premium. Two copies at the identical grade: one with a Promise Collection label sold in that collection’s landmark debut, at $132,000, and one without, at $90,000. Roughly a 47% difference attributable to provenance and the room it sold in.
That is one of the cleaner pedigree comparisons in this whole program, and it is worth carrying to other books. A pedigree is worth real money. It is not worth a multiple.
Why minor publishers produce scarce comics
The thing that makes this book hard to find has nothing to do with it being good.
Nedor printed modest runs, distributed unevenly, and had no back catalog anybody maintained. When the company wound down its comics there was no reprint program, no collected editions, and no fan base keeping runs together. Compare that to DC or Timely, where at least some readers were completists and some material stayed in circulation.
So the surviving population is small and almost entirely accidental. And because the value is concentrated in high grade — a cover book needs to look good — the number of copies that matter commercially is smaller still.
There is a practical warning in that. Late issues of forgotten titles from minor publishers are exactly what gets discarded when somebody sorts a collection by whether they recognize the name on the cover. This is one of the books that costs people money that way.
Schomburg, and why his covers outlived his publishers
Alex Schomburg produced covers by the hundreds through the Golden Age, largely for Timely and for the smaller houses, and his reputation has outlasted almost every company he worked for.
What makes his work distinctive is density. A Schomburg cover typically has a dozen things happening at once — figures, machinery, hazards, motion — arranged so it still reads clearly at newsstand distance. He was doing genuinely difficult compositional work on deadline for very little money.
The consequence for collectors is that his covers are chased across publishers rather than within one title. Somebody assembling a Schomburg collection needs this issue, and needs it in high grade, and does not much care that Nedor is forgotten.
That is worth knowing when you go through a box. Artist-driven demand does not follow the names on the covers, so the way to find these is to look at the pictures rather than the titles.
Selling a Startling Comics #49
- Judge it on cover appearance first. Gloss, color, and whether the image is clean. That is what the buyers for this book are looking at.
- Be realistic about grade. Both known sales are 9.6. An ordinary copy is a different market and a much smaller number.
- Do not discard the rest of the Nedor run. Other Schomburg covers in the same title carry value, and the titles are unfamiliar enough to get thrown out.
- Get it graded if it looks exceptional. On a book where the entire documented market is at 9.6, the grade is the whole question.
If yours is an ordinary worn copy, I will say so plainly rather than let the record do the talking. And if it genuinely looks like it came out of a time capsule, that is a very different conversation and worth having quickly.
Have a copy?
Send three photos: front, back, and the small print. That is all I need to tell you where your copy really sits.
Related
- Suspense Comics #3, the other Schomburg cover on this list.
- The 100 most valuable Golden 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.
