Superman #123 Value: A Beaten Copy Costs Nearly the Same

The question I get about this comic is always some version of the same one: is this the first Supergirl? It is not, and what follows from that is stranger than the question. Superman 123 value barely changes between a beaten copy and a clean one.

In August 1958 DC ran a try-out story in which a magical wish creates a “Super-Girl” who exists for one adventure and then wishes herself away.

A prototype, not a first appearance

The character in this issue is a temporary creation. She is blonde, she wears a costume, and she is not Kara Zor-El, who arrives in Action Comics #252 nine months later.

Reader response to the try-out is what convinced DC to build the real character, which is why this comic is collected at all. It is a footnote with consequences rather than a key.

The market prices it exactly that way. Action #252 runs into five figures in strong grade. This comic has never publicly broken about two thousand dollars, and it has not managed that since 2012.

To identify it: 10 cents, August 1958, no bar code. Later Supergirl collections that reprint the story name their edition inside the front cover.

Fourteen years since the top of the ladder moved

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.

Only two sales above 8.0 exist in the whole record, and both are from 2012. A 9.0 brought $2,032 that July and an 8.5 brought $1,135 that December. Nothing at either grade has traded publicly since, so the top of this ladder is fourteen years stale.

The 8.0 carries the real ceiling, and it has climbed: $538 in 2009, then $1,255 and $1,792 in 2014, $2,400 in 2022 and $2,600 in June 2024. Five sales, a clean upward line, and the most recent of them is the highest figure this comic has publicly made in a decade.

Below that the 7.5 went the other way. $2,040 in March 2022, $1,440 in December 2023, then $1,291, $1,300 and $1,320 during 2024 and $1,038 that November. Down by half in under three years.

The 7.0 tells the same story with more noise: $448 in 2012, $1,560 in December 2021, $900 in 2023, $990 and $1,250 in 2025, $681 in April 2026.

Read together, those lanes say the comic peaked around 2021 and 2022 and has drifted since, with the single 8.0 result in 2024 as the outlier that does not fit the pattern.

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 Superman #123 independently, and if their numbers disagree with mine it is worth finding out which of us is wrong.

Superman #123 grade by grade

153 sales tracked back to 2009; here are the three freshest in every grade.

Every row above is a documented sale, verifiable in Heritage’s public Superman issue index and in CGC’s published auction reporting. The record starts in 2009, and the low grades carry most of it, with sixteen sales at 4.0 alone.

The part that surprises people

Here is what makes this comic unusual. A 2.5 sold for $270 in January 2026. A 4.0 sold for $307 in July 2026. A 6.0 sold for $310 in June 2026. Three and a half grade points, forty dollars apart.

That is not a fluke of three sales. Across 2025 and 2026 the 4.5 lane brought $330, $295, $554 and $299, the 4.0 lane brought $285, $225, $400, $435 and $325, and the 3.5 lane brought $315 and $349. The bands overlap almost completely.

The reason is that people buy this comic to complete the Supergirl story rather than to own a beautiful object. A collector who already owns Action #252 wants a readable copy of the try-out next to it, and a 3.0 does that job as well as a 6.0 does.

For an owner that is a genuinely good position to be in. A rough copy of this book is worth two hundred and fifty to three hundred and fifty dollars, where a rough copy of most other 1958 Superman issues is worth twenty.

Thirty-four ungraded sales sit underneath all of that and they behave differently again. During 2026 they have run from $26 to $531, with the bulk landing between one and two hundred and fifty dollars. An ungraded copy is worth broadly what a graded low-grade copy is, minus the certainty, which is another way of saying that on this comic a slab is buying confidence rather than value.

What that flatness means if you are selling

A flat ladder changes the advice completely, and almost everything I would normally say about condition stops applying.

Do not pay to have a low-grade copy graded. The whole band from 2.0 to 6.0 sits between roughly two hundred and four hundred dollars, and a slab does not lift a copy out of that band, it only costs you the fee.

Do not accept a low offer because the comic looks rough, either. That is the mistake this book invites. A ring-worn, tape-repaired Superman #123 is still a three-hundred-dollar comic, and anyone telling you it is worth thirty is either not looking it up or hoping you will not.

The one place grading earns its money here is 8.0 and above, which is where the only four-figure results of the past two years live. That is also where the record is thinnest, so a strong copy is worth pricing carefully rather than listing quickly.

And if Action #252 is in the same box, the pair is worth more presented together than sold separately, because the people who want this comic are the ones finishing that story.

The last thing worth saying about a flat ladder is that it makes the description do the work the grade normally does. Nobody buying a 3.0 is expecting a beautiful comic, but they do expect it to be complete, unstamped and free of anything that would keep it out of a slab later. Say plainly whether there is tape, whether a coupon has been cut and whether the pages are all there, and the copy will find its price without an argument.

Selling a Superman #123

1. Ten cents, August 1958. This is the try-out story, not the first Supergirl.
2. Do not write off a rough copy. The 2.5 to 6.0 band is close to flat on this book.
3. Grade only at 8.0 and above. That is where the four-figure results are.
4. Sell it alongside Action Comics #252 if you have both. Buyers here are completing a story.

Send photographs even if the copy is beaten. On this comic that sentence is not just politeness.

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

• Action Comics #252. The real first Supergirl, nine months after this try-out.
• Are damaged comic books worth anything?. Directly relevant on a book whose ladder is this flat.
• 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.