Superman #199 Value: The First Race

This comic is famous for one story and priced like an ordinary sixties Superman, which is a combination worth understanding before you sell one. Superman 199 value sits lower than its reputation.

It carries the first race between Superman and the Flash, from August 1967, an idea DC has gone back to at least four times since.

A famous story in a very common comic

The race itself has been restaged in comics, animation and film, and it is one of the handful of Silver Age Superman stories that people outside the hobby can name. That fame is real and it drives steady demand.

What it does not do is make the comic scarce. Superman was DC’s biggest seller in 1967 and this issue was printed in enormous numbers, so there is no shortage of copies at any grade below the very top.

It is also worth separating from The Flash #175, which restages the race a year later and is its own separate collectible. Sellers occasionally describe one while pricing the other.

To identify it: 12 cents, August 1967, no bar code. There is also a UK pence printing of this issue which is genuine and trades separately.

Where the money actually is

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.

The 9.4 has two sales fifteen years apart in effect: $2,800 in October 2019 and $5,000 on eBay in April 2026. Up about seventy-nine percent, which on a comic this common is a bigger move than it sounds.

The 9.2 is deeper with nine sales and it has been climbing too: $1,800 at Heritage in January 2025 and $3,100 on eBay that December. That is a seventy-two percent gain inside eleven months at one grade.

The 9.0 has not followed. It brought $1,680 in August 2023 and $1,800 in September 2025, essentially flat across two years, so the premium for two tenths of a grade has opened up considerably.

Below 9.0 the ladder falls apart quickly. An 8.5 brought $999 in July 2026 but also $321 in March of the same year, and an 8.0 has ranged from $356 to $950 across 2025 and 2026. Those are not markets you can quote.

The 7.5 lane, with sixteen sales, shows the same thing more calmly: $335 in October 2025, $575 that November, $400 and $500 in December, $470 in June 2026 and $355 that July. A band of roughly $335 to $575 with no direction in it.

Two grade points, from 7.5 to 9.0, are worth about four times the money on this book. Everything below that step is a few hundred dollars regardless of condition, and everything above it starts to matter. If you are deciding whether to pay for grading, that is where the line sits.

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

Superman #199 value in each grade

230 sales tracked back to 2004; 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. Ninety-one of them are below 7.0, which is where the great majority of copies sit.

Two hundred dollars, over and over

Ninety-one readable copies have changed hands over the past eighteen months, and the consistency is the useful part.

From June to August 2026: a 7.0 brought $313, a 6.5 brought $300, a 6.0 brought $300, two 5.0 copies brought $260 and $225, a 5.5 brought $255, three 4.0 copies brought $200, $175 and $165, and a 3.5 brought $160.

That whole run, from 3.5 to 7.0, fits between $160 and $313. Three and a half grade points are worth about a hundred and fifty dollars, which makes grade very nearly irrelevant down here.

For most owners of this comic that is the honest answer: a couple of hundred dollars, whatever the condition, unless the copy is genuinely near mint. The famous story does not change it.

Whether this one is worth grading

The grading decision on this comic is unusually clear-cut, and it comes down to one step. A CGC 9.0 has brought $1,680 and $1,800; an 8.5 has brought $999 at best and $321 at worst. Clearing 9.0 roughly doubles the money and failing to clear it can halve it again.

So the question is not whether your copy is nice. It is whether it is clean enough that a grader will not find the one crease or the one spine tick that drops it to 8.5. On a 1967 comic that survived in quantity, most copies will not.

My rule on this issue: if you can look at the spine under a raking light and genuinely see nothing, it is worth the fee. If you find yourself arguing that a mark is minor, it is not, and you will do better selling it raw with honest photographs.

The one exception is if you have several. Submitting four copies at once spreads the postage and the insurance, and the odds that one of them clears 9.0 are much better than the odds on any single book.

That is a real strategy on a comic this common rather than a consolation. Copies of this issue turn up in quantity in collections from the period, and an owner with four or five of them is holding a genuine lottery ticket where somebody with one is mostly holding a two-hundred-dollar comic.

Selling a Superman #199

1. Twelve cents, August 1967, no bar code. A pence-priced copy is a genuine UK printing and trades separately.
2. Do not confuse it with Flash #175. That restages the race a year later and is its own collectible.
3. Grade only above 9.0. Below that the whole ladder fits inside a couple of hundred dollars.
4. Sell the story. Buyers search for the Superman and Flash race, not for an issue number.

Photographs will place your copy in either the small part of this book that carries real money or the large part that does not, and I will say which plainly.

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

• Flash #123. The Flash of Two Worlds, and another sixties DC story that outgrew its comic.
• The 100 most valuable Silver Age comics. And what each one really sold for.
• How much are my comic books worth?. Why a famous story and a valuable comic are different things.

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.