X-Men #120 Value: What a Four-to-One Fall Looks Like

A CGC 9.8 of this comic sold for $9,200 in June 2022. In March of this year the same grade brought $2,285. That is a four-to-one fall in under four years, and it happened while a CGC 9.2 of the same book went from about two hundred dollars to about a hundred and twenty. X-Men 120 value is a story about which grades were holding air.

Alpha Flight appear for the first time in April 1979, in cameo, at the end of an issue that is mostly about a plane landing in Canada.

A cameo, and what it was worth being famous for

Alpha Flight are introduced here as a Canadian government team sent to retrieve Wolverine. They appear at the end, they are not the story, and their full appearance is the following issue.

That distinction matters and is often blurred in listings. Issue 120 is the cameo, issue 121 is the full appearance, and the market treats them as two different comics with two different prices.

The rise and fall above is mostly about the character rather than the comic. A cameo key on a team with periodic screen rumors attracts buyers who are pricing the rumor, and they leave in the same order they arrived.

To identify it: 35 cents, April 1979, Alpha Flight bursting through the cover under Chaos in Canada, with a banner reading still only 35 cents. Issue 121 has a different cover and is the full appearance.

The fall, and what did not fall

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 9.8 lane peaked at $9,200 in June 2022 and has two sales this year, at $2,196 and $2,285. Twenty-four sales sit behind the lane in total, so the fall is well documented rather than inferred from a couple of results.

The 9.6 came down too but nothing like as far, from $700 at Heritage in December 2024 to a range of $288 to $660 across eight sales this year.

Below that the book has been close to flat for years. The 9.4 ran $145 to $280 this year, the 9.2 $120 to $590, and the 9.0 $108 to $175.

That 9.2 range needs a word, because $590 sits a long way above everything else in the lane. It is a real sale from March and it is the exception; the other five results this year are between $120 and $228.

Those figures are Heritage results and completed eBay sales. GoCollect and PriceCharting track X-Men #120 independently, and if their numbers disagree with mine it is worth finding out which of us is wrong.

X-Men #120 value, grade by grade

229 sales tracked back to 2011; here are the three freshest in every grade.

Heritage rows are verifiable in Heritage’s public X-Men issue index; the rest are completed eBay listings. Two hundred and twenty-nine sales going back to 2011, with the deepest lanes between 9.0 and 9.6.

The part that never moved

The steadiest thing about this comic is everything below 9.4, and for most owners that is the relevant half.

Across 2026: 8.5 copies brought $81 to $112, 8.0 copies $63 to $105, and raw copies $30 to $451 across twenty-three sales.

Those numbers are almost identical to what the same grades brought three and four years ago, while the top of the book was quadrupling and then giving it all back.

It is worth understanding why. Speculative money buys the top grade because that is where a percentage move is worth the most in dollars. A reader buying an eight-dollar comic to read is unaffected by any of it, and that demand does not switch off.

So if you are holding a readable copy of this book, none of the drama above is yours. If you are holding a 9.8, you are holding the part that moved.

Cameo, full appearance, and which one you have

The single most useful thing on this page for a seller is knowing which issue is in your hands, because the two get confused constantly in listings.

Issue 120 is the cameo and this cover. Issue 121 is the full appearance and a different cover. Both are collected and they do not fetch the same money.

On grading: at these numbers a submission only makes sense on a copy with a real chance at 9.8, and on a 35-cent Marvel with a dark cover that is a high bar. The white banner across the top shows every handling mark, which is where most of these lose the grade.

If both issues came out of the same box, say so and send both. Sold together they reach the buyer who wants the whole Alpha Flight introduction rather than half of it.

Selling a X-Men #120

1. Thirty-five cents, April 1979. Issue 121 is the full appearance and a different comic.
2. The 9.8 fell four to one since 2022. Price from this year or not at all.
3. Everything below 9.4 barely moved. A readable copy is worth what it always was.
4. Send #120 and #121 together if you have both. They sell better as a pair.

Send the covers of both issues if you have them, along with the spine. On this book the first thing to settle is which appearance you are holding.

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

• Incredible Hulk #181. The other Wolverine-adjacent key collectors chase hardest.
• How comic price guides work. Useful on a book whose old figures still circulate.
• 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.