Swamp Thing #1 Value: One Sale at the Top All Year

The top grade on this book traded exactly once all year, at $4,000 in April. Fourteen exist in the whole twenty-one-year record. Swamp Thing 1 value is a page where the famous grade is the one nobody can quote with confidence, and the honest numbers sit two rungs down.

Len Wein and Bernie Wrightson move Swamp Thing out of House of Secrets and into his own title in November 1972.

A horror comic that became an art book

The character had appeared once already, in a 1971 House of Secrets story that is the more expensive comic. What this issue starts is the run people collect for the drawing rather than the character.

Wrightson drew ten issues and they are the reason this title is remembered. Collectors who buy this book usually want the stretch, not the single issue, which is worth knowing before anybody sells the #1 out of a complete run.

That also explains the ladder shape. Demand concentrates on condition rather than on scarcity, because the print run was ordinary for 1972 and plenty survived; what did not survive is copies that stayed flat.

To identify it: 20 cents, November 1972, Swamp Thing rising over a man and a woman on the ground with First Startling Issue banded across the top.

Where a seller can actually stand

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.

Fourteen 9.8 sales exist across twenty-one years and one of them is from this year. The lane peaked at $6,000 in November 2021 and the April result was $4,000, which is a decline you can describe but not a level you can quote.

The 9.6 is where evidence starts. Six sales this year running $812 to $1,320, against a peak of $1,920 in January 2024. That is a real market with a readable direction.

Below that it gets busier still and the steps are even: the 9.4 ran $515 to $749 across five sales this year, the 9.2 $407 to $610 across eight, and the 9.0 $293 to $500 across ten.

So the useful summary is that a sharp copy of this book is a three-to-thirteen-hundred-dollar comic depending on exactly how sharp, and that band is built on twenty-nine sales this year rather than one.

Those figures are Heritage results and completed eBay sales. GoCollect and PriceCharting track Swamp Thing #1 independently, and if their numbers disagree with mine it is worth finding out which of us is wrong.

Swamp Thing #1 value in every grade

318 sales tracked back to 2005; here are the three freshest in every grade.

Heritage rows are verifiable in Heritage’s public Swamp Thing issue index; the rest are completed eBay listings. Three hundred and eighteen sales going back to 2005, with the 9.6 and 9.4 lanes carrying thirty and twenty-nine.

Readable copies, and the paper problem

Most surviving copies of this comic are readable, and they are priced modestly enough that an owner should hear the number early.

Across 2026: 8.5 copies brought $250 to $390 across thirteen sales, and 8.0 copies $162 to $365 across ten.

Raw copies ran $28 to $280 this year across thirty sales, which is a tight and honest band. A complete readable copy is a one-to-three-hundred-dollar comic.

The reason the middle is so well supplied is the paper. This is a 1972 DC on newsprint that yellows quickly, and a copy that reads fine will still grade in the eights because the pages have gone. That is not damage anybody caused; it is what the stock does.

One more thing the ladder shows, and it surprises people. Below 8.0 this comic almost stops getting cheaper. Across 2026 the 7.5 lane ran $200 to $275 across ten sales and the 7.0 lane $122 to $265 across seven, while copies down at 5.0 still brought $82 to $200. Three whole grades cost less here than the single step from 9.4 to 9.6 does.

For an owner that means a copy with a crease down the front or a rolled spine is still worth photographing properly rather than throwing in as filler. It also means there is nothing to gain by holding a worn copy back and hoping, because the market has already priced it and the price is stable.

Sell the Wrightson run, not the first issue

If #1 came out of a box, the odds are that #2 through #10 came with it, and that changes what the collection is worth.

Wrightson drew through issue 10 and collectors buy that stretch as a unit. A complete run reaches a buyer who is not comparing your #1 against every other #1 on the market, which is the position a single issue always ends up in.

Issue 8 is worth pulling out and looking at separately, because the run has its own internal keys and a seller who lots everything together tends to give those away.

On grading: the 9.4 to 9.6 step has been worth about five hundred dollars this year, which is enough to justify a submission on a copy that is genuinely flat and white. Below 9.4 the fee eats the difference, and on 1972 newsprint most copies are below 9.4 whatever the cover looks like.

Selling a Swamp Thing #1

1. Twenty cents, November 1972. The 1971 House of Secrets appearance is a different, dearer comic.
2. The 9.6 lane is the quotable one. Six sales this year against one at 9.8.
3. Readable copies are $100 to $400. The paper, not the cover, usually sets the grade.
4. Keep the Wrightson run together. Issues 1 to 10 sell as a unit.

Send the cover and one photograph of an open page. On this book the page color decides the grade more often than anything on the front does.

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

• House of Secrets #92. The first Swamp Thing appearance, one year earlier.
• How a comic book appraisal works. Useful when a whole run comes out of one box.
• The 100 most valuable Bronze Age comics. Where this issue ranks against the era.

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.