A "Fantastic Four No. 1" comic book sold for $2.04 million Thursday afternoon, setting a record for the highest price ever paid for the issue and becoming the fifth comic book to sell for more than $1 million in 2024.
The 1961 comic, which introduced the Fantastic Four, Marvel's first superhero team, created the blueprint that ushered in Marvel’s era of dominance.
Graded CGC 9.6, the 1961 comic is the highest-graded copy to ever sell publicly, with just one other copy found at a 9.6 grade in CGC’s census and none higher.
Prior to this sale, the record for "Fantastic Four No. 1" belonged to a CGC 9.2 example, which sold for $1.5 million in 2022.
Earlier this year, the record for the most expensive comic book ever sold was set when Heritage notched $6 million for a copy of "Action Comics No. 1."
Around 3,000 examples of the inaugural "Fantastic Four" issue has been graded by CGC and collectors have long considered the comic as one of the most coveted in the hobby.
GoCollect’s Comics CPI, a collection of indices meant to measure the performance of various sub-categories in the comic market, shows that high-value books (measured by the Big Spenders Club index) have risen 53.7% over the past five years, though they have remained essentially flat over the past year.
A CGC 9.0 copy of "Amazing Fantasy #15", known for the first appearance of Spider-Man, sold for $540,000, a record price for the grade. Just 11 examples have been graded CGC 9.0, with the most recent comparable sale (and previous high) coming in 2017, when a copy fetched $395,000.
The Heritage example also carries the “Curator Pedigree,” meaning it originally came from that CGC calls “one of the best Silver Age collections ever discovered.” The pedigree was collected by a museum employee from the late 1950s into the 1980s, storing the issues on the museum premises.
Will Stern is a reporter and editor for cllct.