TMNT #1 Value: The Printing Is the Price

Three comics share this cover, this story and this 1984-85 cover date, and the gap between them at the same grade runs to a factor of a hundred. Before tmnt 1 value means anything, the printing question has to be answered, and it is answered in the small print, not on the cover.

Kevin Eastman and Peter Laird printed about three thousand copies of their black-and-white first issue in May 1984 and launched it at a small convention in Portsmouth, New Hampshire.

Telling the three printings apart

The first printing carries no printing notice at all. The second and third printings each say so plainly in the indicia block inside the front cover, and the third also swaps the back-cover ad. That is the whole test, and it takes under a minute with the book open.

Two frauds work against sellers and buyers here. Counterfeits of the first printing exist on bright white paper, where a real 1984 copy is off-white newsprint. And second or third printings sometimes surface with the printing notice bleached out to impersonate a first. A raw copy with a pale rectangle where text should be is answering your question.

Before any of it there was Gobbledygook, the Eastman and Laird zine that predates this book and carried the advertising that launched it. Its public record is seven documented sales, which is why it gets an entry on the hub and a paragraph here rather than a page of its own: the book is real, and the market for it is nearly invisible.

The print-run arithmetic drives everything below: roughly 3,000 first printings, about 15,000 second, more again of the third, against demand from everyone who grew up on the franchise.

What the record actually looks like, printing by printing

CGC’s auction reporting has tracked the first printing’s big sales for years; each linked price goes to the article that reported it.

That is one grade of one printing, sold seven times in twenty-seven months, and it fell from $186,000 to $60,555 while doing it. Few comics anywhere have documented their own cooldown this thoroughly.

Set the printings side by side at the top and the ratio is the story: first-print 9.8s in six figures, the second printing’s best documented 9.8 at $14,400, a third-print 9.0 at $780. Same cover, same year, one hundred to one.

The 9.2 at $55,200 in November 2024 outsold the December 9.8 — an inversion worth understanding rather than dismissing: pedigree, page quality and venue crowd all move six-figure comics, and single sales at the census top are events, not curves.

Below nine-point-anything the first printing stays a five-figure book: 8.0 copies brought $9,000 to $11,995 across the past year, and even a 5.5 brought $7,500 at Heritage in December 2025.

For the second printing the working range is four figures almost everywhere: $2,040 to $3,720 covers most recent graded sales. The third printing’s few receipts sit in the hundreds. The printing test above is worth exactly these gaps.

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 Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles #1 independently, and if their numbers disagree with mine it is worth finding out which of us is wrong.

Every printing, every grade

First printing, 1984

The book everything above refers to. About 3,000 copies existed on day one.

130 sales tracked back to 2006; here are the three freshest in every grade.

Second printing, 1984

Six times the print run, a fraction of the price, and the printing most often misrepresented upward.

70 sales tracked back to 2014; here are the three freshest in every grade.

Third printing, 1985

The record here is thin and recent, which is itself the honest signal: these are hundreds-of-dollars books.

6 sales tracked back to 2025; here are the three freshest in every grade.

Heritage rows are verifiable in Heritage’s public Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles issue index, linked figures in CGC’s auction reporting; the rest are completed eBay listings. The first printing carries 126 of them; the second 70; the third is thin and recent, and the thinness is the fact.

What a readable first printing brings

A worn genuine first printing is still a serious comic, and the record here is unusually deep for an independent book.

The 6.0 lane ran $4,600 to $10,000 across four sales in 2025; the 6.5 lane brought $10,200 at Heritage as recently as November 2024; the 7.0 lane held $7,500 to $10,700 through 2025.

That scatter is wide, and the reason is condition storytelling: these were hand-sold zines on newsprint, so two 6.5s can look very different in hand. Photographs move thousands of dollars on this book.

Raw copies are where sellers get hurt — the record runs from $300 to $16,499 because the raw market prices printing doubt into every listing. Settling the printing before selling is worth more than any cleaning or pressing ever could be.

The second printing is the one to double-check

The second printing deserves its own respect and its own suspicion. Respect, because $2,000-plus for a 1984 reprint is real money; suspicion, because it is the printing most often dressed up as a first.

Its own lanes have been steady: 9.4s brought $2,925 to $3,720 over the past year, 9.0s ran $2,040 to $3,050, and raw copies $1,500 to $1,850 this spring.

The identification stakes run in both directions: a seller who assumes “first” and gets corrected at grading loses face and fees; a seller who assumes “reprint, worthless” on a genuine first printing loses five figures. Both mistakes walk into my inbox.

If the indicia has been altered, torn out, or looks bleached, stop and say so up front. An altered-notice copy is not a first printing to any grader on earth, and describing it honestly is the difference between a sale and a dispute.

And if you have Gobbledygook #1 or #2 in the same box — the zine that came before all of this — photograph it with everything else. Its market is too thin to quote from a page, which is precisely why it is a phone call.

Selling a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles #1

1. Open the front cover and read the indicia first. No printing notice, off-white paper: first printing. Notice present: second or third.
2. Bright white paper is a counterfeit tell. Real 1984 Mirage stock is off-white newsprint.
3. A bleached or missing notice is a red flag, not a bonus. Say so up front.
4. Grade genuine first printings at almost any grade. Even a 5.5 documented at $7,500; the slab settles the printing forever.

Text photographs of the cover and the indicia together. The printing question is answered in one exchange, and every dollar figure above depends on it.

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

• The most valuable modern comics. Where the 1984 indie boom this book started eventually led.
• How grading actually works. Page quality and paper color do real work on newsprint zines.
• The 100 most valuable Bronze Age comics. All three printings hold ranks there.

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.