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What is my comic album worth?
Why the same album fetches ten euros one time and hundreds the next — and what an amount on this site means exactly.
There is no amount that belongs to “a Tintin album”. There is an amount that belongs to your copy, and it depends on three things: which album it is, which printing, and what condition it is in.
The printing does the most
Take Tintin in the Congo. Of that album we know some thirty printings. In the same condition they run from about € 27 to € 134 — and with albums that have a rare first printing the gap is far larger. The same drawings, the same title, the same cover, and yet a factor of five or more.
That is because a first run was small and a reprint from the eighties came off the press in tens of thousands of copies. Scarcity makes the price, and scarcity is in the printing.
Then the condition
An album in mint condition fetches a multiple of the same album with a broken spine and rubbed corners. That difference is larger on expensive printings than on cheap ones: on a € 10 reprint a small tear hardly matters, on a € 900 first printing it matters entirely.
Look above all at the spine, the corners, the edges of the cover and the endpapers. Those are the places a collector looks first.
What an amount on this site means
Our amounts come from observations: prices at which copies were actually sold or offered, recorded one by one, by hand. Of some printings we have dozens, of others none. That is why there is always a range, and it is wider the less certain we are.
It is an estimate, not a valuation report. For insurance or an estate you need a certified valuer. For the question “is this something special or not”, this is exactly enough.
Have a look yourself
Of every album we know there is a page with all the printings side by side, what they are worth and how you recognise them. And if you do not know which printing you have: answer a few questions about what you see, and we will work it out.
Work out what your album is worth
Further reading
Published on 26 August 2026.