A Rare First Edition of the ‘Fantastic Four’ Comic Could Set a New Auction Record

An ultra-rare comic book could make history at auction—and we gotta say, it’s fantastic.

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A new benchmark could be set when a well-preserved copy of 1961’s Fantastic Four No. 1 goes under the hammer during Heritage Auction’s Comics & Comic Art event next month. The Silver Age collectible is one of only two awarded a near-mint 9.6 grade by the Certified Guaranty Company (CGC). By comparison, a copy with a 9.2 CGC rating went for a whopping $1.5 million in April 2022—seven times its pre-sale estimate.

“Most copies of this Marvel landmark didn’t look this clean and crisp, this impressively immaculate, when they rolled off the printing press, fell off the distributors’ truck and landed on newsstands 63 years ago,” Heritage wrote in a press release . “In more than two decades as the world’s premier comic book auction house, Heritage has never offered so highly graded—and coveted—a copy of the first Fantastic Four as this one.”

The Fantastic Four series was the first superhero team comic created by artist Jack Kirby and writer Stan Lee in the ‘60s. Since then, the franchise has inspired several Marvel Studios movies including the forthcoming 2025 film The Fantastic Four: First Steps starring Pedro Pascal, Vanessa Kirby, Joseph Quinn, and Ebon Moss-Bachrach ( The Bear ).

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The sale, which will run from September 12 to September 15, includes additional top lots such as the August 1928 issue of Amazing Stories . According to the auction house, the relic is the highest-graded copy known in existence.

The original cover artwork that John Buscema penned for the first issue of 1998’s Wolverine will also be up for grabs. Another standout of the sale is the original cover of 1954’s Tomb of Terror No. 15 created by Lee Elias. And they’re not the only two comic book offerings to hit the block as of late. Rob Liefeld’s cover art for New Mutants No. 98, which introduces Deadpool, popped up for sale for an eye-watering $7.5 million. Back in June, meanwhile, Heritage offloaded Elias’s original art for 1954’s Black Cat Mystery No. 50 for $840,000, which could mean a large sum for Tomb of Terror .

“This catalog reads like a pie-in-the-sky wish list filled with all the important books and iconic moments you likely remember as though you just read them yesterday,” Heritage Auctions vice president Barry Sandoval said in a statement. “Who could have imagined a single auction during which you could find the best Fantastic Four No. 1, the page of art on which Iron Man takes his first steps or some of Steve Ditko’s most memorable pages from the 1960s?”

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