Tales to Astonish #35 Value: Fourteen Years of Nothing

Every so often the record tells you something nobody in the hobby wants to hear, and it is worth printing anyway. Tales to Astonish 35 value is lower now than it was fourteen years ago.

This is the first appearance of Ant-Man in costume, from September 1962, eight issues after Henry Pym turns up in a lab coat.

Costume here, character eight issues earlier

Pym first appears in Tales to Astonish #27, in a one-off science-fiction story with no costume and no superhero. This issue is where the suit, the name and the ongoing series arrive.

Collectors split on which one they want, and both books have held real value, but they are not interchangeable and a listing that says “first Ant-Man” needs the issue number checked before anybody agrees a price.

The cover settles it in a moment. #35 puts a costumed figure and the word Ant-Man on the front; #27 shows a scientist and a giant insect.

The printing check is 12 cents and a September 1962 date. Collections reprinting the story exist and every one of them states its edition inside.

A grade going backwards

All Heritage results. No sale of this issue appears in CGC’s auction reporting, so none of these prices is a link.

The 9.2 line has six results and its most recent is its lowest. $29,875 in July 2012, $23,900 in 2016, $19,200 in November 2020, $26,400 in April 2021, then $16,470 in May 2026. That is the best-documented grade on the page, and it has lost about forty-five percent since 2012.

Then there is the strangest row here. A CGC 9.0 brought $15,600 in June 2021 and $15,600 again in April 2024, to the dollar, at the same auction house, nearly three years apart. Two identical results that far apart is a grade that has genuinely stopped moving.

The 9.4 above them sold once, at $20,400 in July 2023, and that is less than the 9.2 brought in 2012. When a higher grade in a later year prints a lower number than a lower grade did fourteen years earlier, the market has moved and not in the owner’s favour.

The 8.5 pair is the sharpest recent drop on the page: $5,760 in December 2024 to $4,206 three months later, both at Heritage.

One lane has held completely still through all of it. The 8.0 brought $3,107 in May 2017, $4,080 in March 2019, $4,080 again that November, $3,360 in July 2025 and $4,148 in May 2026. Nine years inside a thousand dollars, with one eBay sale at $7,800 in February 2022 that nothing before or since has repeated. If you own a copy in the eights, that flat line is your number, and the 2022 result is not.

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 Tales to Astonish #35 independently, and if their numbers disagree with mine it is worth finding out which of us is wrong.

Tales to Astonish #35 value, grade by grade

236 sales tracked back to 2002; here are the three freshest in every grade.

Every row above is a documented sale, verifiable in Heritage’s public Tales to Astonish issue index and in CGC’s published auction reporting. The 9.2 lane is the deepest one and it is also the one that has fallen furthest.

Where it stays affordable

Everything above has been sliding. The readable grades have not, across forty-six sales in the past eighteen months.

Across May to July 2026: three CGC 5.0 copies brought $800, $699 and $624 on eBay and a fourth brought $732 at Heritage. A 6.5 brought $699, three 4.0 copies brought $600, $538 and $335, and two 3.5 copies brought $445 and $320.

Four 5.0 sales inside three months from $624 to $800 is a genuinely usable cluster, and it is the number I would quote for a complete, well-read copy.

Notice that a 6.5 sold for $699, inside the 5.0 range. A grade and a half is worth almost nothing at this end of the book, which is worth knowing before anybody pays to have a readable copy graded.

Selling a Tales to Astonish #35

1. Check the cover, not the description. A costumed figure and the name Ant-Man means #35; a monster cover means #27.
2. Twelve cents, September 1962. The story has been collected repeatedly and every reprint names its edition inside.
3. Refresh your comps. This is one of very few books here whose high grades are worth less than they were a decade ago.
4. Sell #27 and #35 together if you have both. Collectors who want one usually want the pair, and the set clears better than the parts.

Send photographs and I will price it against the last two years rather than against 2012, which on this comic makes a large difference.

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

• Tales to Astonish #27. The first Henry Pym, eight issues earlier and no costume in sight.
• Journey into Mystery #83. Another 1962 Marvel debut, and one whose high grades went the other way.
• 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.