Here is something that surprises almost everybody who is not already in the hobby: a funny-animal comic from 1940 outprices a great many superhero keys from the same year.
Walt Disney’s Comics and Stories #1 is the most valuable Disney comic there is and the anchor of every serious duck collection. People sorting a collection put the Disney books in the giveaway pile, and I have watched it happen more than once.
Why the ducks hold value
Two things drive it, and neither is nostalgia in the vague sense people usually mean.
The first is Carl Barks. He did not draw this issue, but the title he later worked on became the most respected body of work in American comics outside superheroes, and collectors who chase Barks anchor their runs with issue one of the title he defined. That gives the book demand from a completist audience rather than a speculative one. It is a market that trades through the major houses, too: when Heritage put up a dedicated Dell and Gold Key auction in April 2023, the books it led with were Barks ducks — his first Donald Duck story and the first appearance of Scrooge McDuck.
The second is that Disney comics were bought by younger children and read to destruction at an even higher rate than superhero books. Survival is poor, high grade is very poor, and the collector base has been stable for decades. Scarce supply plus steady demand is a durable combination, and it is why this material does not swing the way character-driven keys do.
The record, and its three asterisks
The documented high is $116,000, at Heritage Auction Galleries on November 15, 2008. Every part of that needs qualifying:
- It is eighteen years old. The market has moved substantially since, in both directions depending on the category.
- The copy was described by Heritage as the only true near-mint example known. Not one of a few. The only one.
- Nothing comparable has sold publicly since at a level I could document, which means there is no way to check the figure against anything current.
An eighteen-year-old sale on the only near-mint copy known is about as narrow a data point as this hobby produces. It tells you the ceiling was extraordinary once. It tells you very little about your comic.
At the other end, the reported floor is around $300, undated. I would treat that as a rough shape rather than a quote, but the direction is right: the gap between $300 and $116,000 on this book is real and most copies sit far nearer the bottom.
There is one recent number worth borrowing, and it is not for issue one. In November 2022 a Walt Disney’s Comics and Stories #2 graded CGC 9.6 sold at Heritage for $38,400 — the second-highest result in a whole auction of Dell and Gold Key material. That is the issue after this one, in a grade almost nothing from 1940 survives in, and it is the closest thing to a current read on what the top of this run does.
How to tell an early issue from a later one
This title ran for hundreds of issues across five decades, and the later ones are genuinely common. Since the difference in value is enormous, it is worth being able to sort them quickly.
- Check the cover date, not just the number. October 1940 is issue one. The date is printed on the cover on most issues of this title.
- Look at the price. Ten cents places a comic in the 1940s. Twelve cents moves you into the 1960s and a far cheaper book.
- Check the publisher line in the small print. Dell published the early run; later decades moved to Gold Key and then Whitman, and those are different eras and different values.
- Look at the paper. A 1940 Dell comic is visibly rougher and more absorbent than anything printed after the war.
If you have a stack of these, the early forties issues are the ones to separate out, and anything with Carl Barks art from the 1940s onward has its own following regardless of issue number.
Selling a Walt Disney’s Comics and Stories #1
- Check the cover date and the number carefully. The title ran for decades and later issues are common. October 1940 is the one this page is about.
- Expect low grade. These were read by small children. A complete copy with the cover attached is a good outcome and still worth having looked at.
- Do not sort Disney books out of a collection. The instinct to treat funny animals as filler is the single most expensive mistake made with 1940s Dell material.
- Keep the run together. Later issues with Barks art have their own market, and a run assembled by one reader usually contains several.
If a box of old Dell and Disney comics turns up, that is worth a look before anything is given away. It is one of the categories where what people assume is worthless most often is not.
Have a copy?
Send three photos: front, back, and the small print. That is all I need to tell you where your copy really sits.
Related
- What to do with an inherited collection, which is where most Disney runs surface.
- The 100 most valuable Golden 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.
