Start at the top, because the top is a wall: the most valuable Spider-Man comic ever sold went for $3.6 million. And here's the shape of the whole list — it isn't really a top 10. It's two books taking turns. Amazing Fantasy #15, the 1962 first appearance of Spider-Man, holds seven of the ten slots. The Amazing Spider-Man #1 from 1963 holds the other three. Every other Spider-Man comic ever printed is fighting for table scraps below them.
Same rules as our rundown of the 5 rarest comic books of all time: every price below is a verified, paid sale — a public auction result from the house that ran it. One copy per issue-and-grade combination, ranked at its best verified sale. Restored copies (CGC's purple label) are a different product and are excluded from the ranking entirely — that matters a lot with this book, and there's a whole section on it below. Where a price includes the buyer's premium, we say so; where it doesn't, we say that too. All ten together: $8,955,624.
The book that wasn't supposed to exist
Amazing Fantasy #15 (Marvel, cover-dated August 1962) is the first appearance of Spider-Man — created by Stan Lee and Steve Ditko, with Ditko on cover and art. It introduced Peter Parker, Aunt May, and Uncle Ben in a single issue. The context is the story: Amazing Fantasy was a dying anthology title, and #15 was its final issue. Publisher Martin Goodman let Lee put a teenage hero — one with money problems, self-doubt, and a soap-opera home life — into a book that was already cancelled. It became the title's best seller, and Spider-Man got his own series seven months later, in March 1963. There was no marketing machine behind this book. It was printed and survived like a throwaway last issue — which is part of why high-grade copies are so scarce.
Steve Ditko at his drawing board in 1959, three years before Amazing Fantasy #15. Photo: public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.
Countdown starts at 10.
10. Amazing Fantasy #15 (1962), CGC 7.5 — $170,844
The sale: Hake's Auctions, July 2023. From the John B. Goodrich collection.
The floor of this list is a mid-grade copy of the one book. And the cut is thinner than it looks: the next verified sale below the line is an Amazing Spider-Man #1 in CGC 9.2 at $168,000 — less than $3,000 behind. A $198,000 figure for a 7.5 copy circulates in price guides with no venue or date attached. We couldn't source it, so it doesn't rank. It's in the couldn't-check section below.
9. The Amazing Spider-Man #1 (1963), CGC 9.4 — $264,000
The sale: Heritage Auctions, September 9, 2021. Price includes buyer's premium. From The #1 Amazing Spider-Man Registry Set Collection.
Sold the same morning as the $3.6 million book at #1 on this list — Heritage ran both in one session. ASM #1 is the first issue of Spider-Man's own title: the origin retold, plus the first appearances of J. Jonah Jameson, John Jameson, and the Chameleon, with a Fantastic Four crossover built in.
8. Amazing Fantasy #15 (1962), CGC 8.0 — $290,000
The sale: ComicLink Winter Featured Auction, March 2023.
One line on the money itself, because comparing venues is part of the job: ComicLink does not charge a buyer's premium, so this $290,000 is effectively a hammer price. A $290,000 Heritage result and a $290,000 ComicLink result are not the same money — the Heritage figure has roughly 20% of premium baked in. The later check on this grade isn't kind, either: an 8.0 brought $237,900 at Heritage in July 2026, down about 18% from this sale.
7. The Amazing Spider-Man #1 (1963), CGC 9.6 — $520,380
The sale: Hake's Auctions, July 2023. John B. Goodrich collection, white pages.
Sold in the same Hake's sale as the #10 entry. The grade ladder on this issue is steep and it is earned: this 9.6 more than doubled the same combo's $336,000 Heritage result from November 2022, which had itself beaten a $262,900 sale from 2016. White pages and a named collection do real work inside a grade.
6. Amazing Fantasy #15 (1962), CGC 8.5 — $552,000
The sale: Heritage Auctions, November 2022. Price includes buyer's premium. A grade record at the time.
Hold this number carefully, because it's the correction section in miniature. This was the record for an 8.5 — set near the top of the market. In May 2026, an 8.5 sold at Heritage for $268,400. Same book, same grade, roughly half the money, three and a half years later. Nothing about the comic changed. The market did.
5. Amazing Fantasy #15 (1962), CGC 9.0 — $573,400
The sale: Landry Pop Auctions ("The Vault"), February 10, 2026. Price includes buyer's premium.
The newest sale on this list, and a record for the grade — CGC called it the fifth highest-earning copy of the book ever sold, which is exactly where it lands here. Note what it says about the top end: while the upper-mid grades were getting cut in half, the 9.0 record was being set in 2026. The trophy end of this book never really corrected. There are only 26 copies of AF15 graded 9.0 or better (CGC census, per the February 2026 Landry Pop lot notes), and thin supply gives sellers very few chances to mark the top down.
4. Amazing Fantasy #15 (1962), CGC 9.4 — $795,000
The sale: Heritage Auctions, March 2020. Price includes buyer's premium.
Now the grade-ladder oddity, stated plainly because it breaks the way most people read these lists: the 9.4's best sale is lower than the 9.2's best sale directly below it. That's not a typo and it's not about the books. The 9.4 sold in March 2020, before the spike. The 9.2 sold in January 2023, near the top. Records are sale-date snapshots, not a clean ladder — never quote a per-grade "value" for this book without the date attached.
3. Amazing Fantasy #15 (1962), CGC 9.2 — $810,000
The sale: Heritage Auctions, January 12, 2023. Price includes buyer's premium. Off-white pages.
The highest AF15 sale of early 2023, per CGC's market coverage at the time. Heritage's lot text put the census at four copies in 9.2 with 11 higher — single digits of supply above this rung, total. This is the copy that leapfrogged the 9.4 record purely on timing.
2. The Amazing Spider-Man #1 (1963), CGC 9.8 — $1,380,000
The sale: Heritage Auctions, January 11, 2024. Price includes buyer's premium. Curator Pedigree copy.
The only Spider-Man comic besides AF15 to break a million, and it needed everything to get there: one of only two copies graded 9.8 — the highest grade for the issue — a pedigree collection, and the first 9.8 ever offered at public auction. It sits at #10 on the all-comics most-expensive list in current roundups. Every other book on this page is chasing a different book. This one is chasing a different universe.
The issue, in a CGC 4.0 slab — not the 9.8 record copy, which is one of only two at that grade. The gap between this slab and that one is about $1.3 million of condition. Photo: Heritage Auctions, editorial use.
1. Amazing Fantasy #15 (1962), CGC 9.6 — $3,600,000
The sale: Heritage Auctions, September 9, 2021. Price includes buyer's premium.
One of only four copies graded 9.6. None is graded higher. When it sold, it was the most expensive comic book ever sold, passing Action Comics #1's $3.25 million private sale from April 2021. It is still — today — the most expensive Marvel comic ever sold and the most expensive Silver Age comic ever sold. The all-time crown has since gone back to DC: Superman #1 in CGC 9.0 brought $9.12 million in November 2025, and the ex-Nicolas Cage Action Comics #1 sold privately for $15 million in January 2026. But inside Marvel, and inside its era, this book has no rival.
The same grade tells the growth story by itself: the first 9.6 to sell brought $1,100,000 at ComicConnect in March 2011 — then only the third comic ever to break a million. A decade later the grade tripled. The 9.6 hasn't been offered since 2021, so the $3.6 million stands untested. That's not the same as saying it would clear it again. It's saying nobody has had to find out.
The $3.6 million copy: Amazing Fantasy #15, CGC 9.6, off-white pages. One of four at the grade, none higher. Photo: Heritage Auctions via Luxurylaunches, editorial use.
Below the cut: the best of the rest
This section is the real story of the Spider-Man market, so read the drop-off slowly. The #10 slot is $170,844. The best verified sale for any other Spider-Man key doesn't come within $100,000 of it.
Amazing Spider-Man #129 (1974) — first Punisher. The #3 character key in the Spider-Man universe, and its best verified sale in CGC 9.8 is about $38,400 (a 2022 market roundup of GPA-tracked sales; Heritage got $33,600 for one in May 2021). Roughly a quarter of the #10 slot. The reason is population: the May 2021 census counted 11,635 Universal copies graded, 143 of them at 9.8. A "rare" top grade that isn't rare can't hold a premium — PriceCharting put a 9.8 at about $16,600 in late October 2026.
ASM #129 in a CGC 9.0 slab. The book is iconic; the census is enormous. Both things are true, and the second one sets the price. Photo: Heritage Auctions, editorial use.
Amazing Spider-Man #14 (1964) — first Green Goblin — set an auction record for the issue at $38,615 (CGC 9.4, Hake's, July 2023) and still doesn't crack six figures. Amazing Spider-Man #2 (1963) — first Vulture — brought $57,500 in CGC 9.2: strong money for a non-#1 early issue, still about $113,000 short of the cut.
The modern champion: Ultimate Fallout #4 (2011) — first Miles Morales. The 1:25 Djurdjevic variant in CGC 9.8 sold for $10,980 at Heritage in October 2026 (and $10,200 in September 2024). That's the biggest verified number for any modern Spider-Man book. Regular-edition 9.8s were asking around $1,100–$1,750 in 2026 — pandemic-era sales were multiples of that.
Ultimate Fallout #4, CGC 9.8 — pictured here in its 2nd-printing variant slab, not the 1st-print direct edition, and not the 1:25 Djurdjevic variant that holds the $10,980 sale. Printings of this issue differ in price by 10x or more; check which one you're looking at. Photo: Heritage Auctions, editorial use.
Spider-Man #1 Platinum Edition (1990) — the McFarlane cardstock-cover version with no cover price and very limited distribution — has sold in CGC 9.8 at $3,450. Real money for a 1990 book; four orders of magnitude below the top of this page. (The regular silver, gold, and green-cover editions are near-worthless by comparison, and sellers blur them on purpose.)
Amazing Spider-Man #300 (1988) — first full Venom — trades around $3,100 in CGC 9.8 as of October 2026. One honest note on the edition fight: newsstand copies are scarcer and have commanded premiums, but no verified record sale separates the editions cleanly, and the guides themselves warn the premium is not guaranteed. Anyone quoting you a fixed newsstand multiplier is selling something.
ASM #300, newsstand edition, CGC 9.8. The most famous Spider-Man book of the modern era is a roughly $3,100 slab. Photo: Bleeding Fool, editorial use.
And the rest of the famous keys — ASM #194 (first Black Cat), ASM #252 (first black suit in the title), ASM #50 (first Kingpin) — are low-four-figure books at their 9.8 ceilings. Edge of Spider-Verse #2 (first Spider-Gwen) trades in the hundreds. Beloved, liquid, and nowhere near this list.
The number we couldn't check
The lead suspect: ASM #129 in CGC 9.8 at "$57,000." That figure gets repeated as the Punisher book's record, and it traces to a single secondary grading-guide site, which attributes it to a ComicConnect sale in March 2022. GPA-adjacent tracking shows a $38,400 sale and notes one sale exceeding $40K — no $57K anywhere. A CGC forum post citing the May 2021 Heritage record put it at $33,600. The $57K may conflate a Signature Series copy or a multi-book lot. Until a venue record shows up, the verified 9.8 peak is about $38–40K — and the repeated number is about $17,000 of fog.
Two smaller ones, same treatment. A $43,200 "record" for the Ultimate Fallout #4 Djurdjevic variant traces to a single aggregator; verified variant sales are $10,200 and $10,980, both at Heritage. And the AF15 7.5 "$198,000 record" sits in a per-grade record table with no venue and no date — the best venue-verified 7.5 sale is the $170,844 at #10 above.
Then there's the trap that manufactures bad numbers on an industrial scale: restoration. Search results and price aggregators routinely place CGC Restored copies — the purple "Apparent" label — next to blue-label Universal copies at the same numeric grade, as if they were the same product. They are not. Live example: an AF15 graded Apparent 9.0 (slight/moderate restoration) was offered at Heritage in November 2025 and failed to sell — with Heritage's own listing noting that an unrestored copy with that eye appeal would run half a million dollars. Any headline of the form "9.0 AF15 sold for $X" that doesn't specify the label is not a usable data point.
The honest Spider-Man math
The census (all figures date-stamped, because grading never stops and snapshots conflict by vintage). About 3,203 copies of AF15 have been graded across all CGC labels including Restored (GPAnalysis census study, 2020), with 2,315 Universal blue-label copies as of 2022. At the top: exactly 4 copies at 9.6, none higher, and 26 copies at 9.0 or better (February 2026 census, per Landry Pop's lot notes). That is the entire supply of trophy copies, for the most in-demand Marvel book in existence.
The restoration problem, quantified. Roughly 26% of the AF15 census carries the Restored label — versus about 1% of CGC-graded books overall. The book is valuable enough that restoring almost any copy pencils out, so the market did. A purple-label copy with grader notes reading "color touch, pieces added, spine reinforced, re-glossed, cleaned" is not the $810,000 book at the same number; restored copies trade at steep discounts, commonly half or less at high grades, and the discount widens at the top. Read the full label line, including the restoration extent grade, before you read the price.
The correction, in verified sales. AF15 CGC 8.5: $552,000 (November 2022) to $268,400 (Heritage, May 2026) — down about 51%. CGC 8.0: $290,000 (2023) to $237,900 (July 2026) — down about 18%. The 7.5's best verified sale actually came after the peak. Meanwhile the 9.0 set its record in February 2026. Read it as a ladder: the higher the grade, the thinner the supply, the less the correction could get its hands on it. For "normal human" money, a readable mid-grade AF15 is a $30,000–$45,000 purchase in 2026 (CGC 4.5 sales at $30,000–$39,600 through 2025, $31,726 in May 2026; CGC 5.0 at $42,700 in 2026) — not the six-figure fantasy of 2021, but never cheap either. Recent sales look like a floor forming, not a slide continuing.
The modern keys took the real beating. ASM #129's 9.8 went from the $33–38K range in 2021–22 to about $16,600 in October 2026. Ultimate Fallout #4's regular 9.8 fell to four-figure asking prices. Same collectibles-cycle story as the card market: the 2021–22 spike was the anomaly, and the books with five-figure populations paid for it.
Two more traps, quickly. Pressing: professional pressing is not classed as restoration by CGC and is undetectable after the fact, so it can legitimately move a book up a grade — which is why census counts at 9.8 keep inflating as pressed copies enter the population, diluting the premium early 9.8 buyers paid. ASM #129's 143 copies at 9.8 is the standing example. And editions: AF15 searches surface the 1992 Marvel Milestone reprint and a 2006 series issue with the same keywords and photos — neither is the 1962 book — and ASM #1 has a 1966 Golden Record reprint worth about $1,900 in high grade against the real issue's six and seven figures. Same cover family, different universe of money.
So what are you actually buying at the top of this list? Seven slots of one book and three of its sequel, in a market where the entire trophy supply is 26 copies and a quarter of everything graded has been restored. The scarcity is real. So is the fog around it. Price them that way.
Sidebar: the page that outsold almost every comic on this list (original art — not a comic)
This is original art, not a comic book sale, and it does not rank in the top 10. It earns a sidebar anyway: story page 25 of Marvel Super-Heroes Secret Wars #8 — the page that reveals the origin of Spider-Man's black costume, pencils by Mike Zeck — sold for $3,360,000 at Heritage on January 13, 2022. Guinness World Records certified it as the most expensive page of comic book art ever sold at auction. Page 24 from the same issue brought $288,000 in the same sale — $3,648,000 for two sheets of paperboard.
Why it belongs here: the black suit had first appeared in ASM #252 (cover-dated May 1984), seven months before Secret Wars #8 revealed where it came from. A single page of the explanation outsold every Spider-Man comic except the $3.6 million AF15.
ASM #252, CGC 9.8 — the black suit's first appearance in the title, drawn as a homage to the AF15 cover. The comic is a four-figure book; the original art page explaining the suit is a $3.36 million object. Photo: Heritage Auctions, editorial use.
Check it yourself: links and sources
- Luxurylaunches — the $3.6 million Amazing Fantasy #15 sale at Heritage (September 2021), with the Heritage lot photograph
- Heritage Auctions — ASM #129 lot archive (first Punisher)
- Heritage Auctions — ASM #252 lot archive, CGC 9.8 (first black costume in the title)
- CGC — "The Most Expensive Comic Books Ever Sold" (updated September 29, 2026): AF15 $3.6M / $810K / $795K / $573,400 / $552K; ASM #1 $1.38M / $520,380; Superman #1 $9.12M (2025); Action Comics #1 $15M private (2026)
- Heritage Auctions press releases: AF15 9.6 record (September 9, 2021, via GPAnalysis); ASM #1 9.8 Curator Pedigree (January 15, 2024); ASM #1 9.4, $264,000 (2021)
- Heritage lot archives: AF15 9.2, lot 91024 (January 12, 2023); Secret Wars #8 page 25 original art (January 13, 2022); Ultimate Fallout #4 variant, lot 91264 ($10,200, September 12, 2024)
- ICv2 — AF15 $3.6M including buyer's premium (September 2021)
- CGC news articles: Landry Pop AF15 9.0, $573,400 (February 2026); AF15 8.5 $552K record (November 2022); ComicLink AF15 8.0, $290,000 (March 2023)
- Fine Books & Collections — Hake's July 2023 results: ASM #1 9.6, $520,380; AF15 7.5, $170,844; ASM #14 9.4, $38,615
- GPAnalysis — AF15 census studies (3,203 total copies, ~26% restored, 2020; 2,315 Universal, 2022)
- Comic Buying Center value guides (updated October 22, 2026) — AF15 mid-grade 2025–26 sales; ComicBook.com (October 6, 2026) — Ultimate Fallout #4 variant, $10,980 at Heritage
- PriceCharting (October 2026) — ASM #129 9.8 ≈ $16,600; ASM #300 9.8 ≈ $3,100; MyComicShop sold records — Spider-Man #1 Platinum CGC 9.8, $3,450
- Guinness World Records — Secret Wars #8 page 25, most expensive comic-art page sold at auction
- All sales checked October 31, 2026, against the research dossier for this post.
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Not financial advice.
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