TARZAN OF THE APES #145

Cover shows strong gloss and vibrant color with sharp corners overall, though there is a faint vertical stress line running through the central image and slight rounding at the top right corner. A light diagonal crease is visible near the upper right near the price box, and the spine appears tight with no major ticks visible through the protective sleeve. The book is housed in a plastic bag/sleeve, which limits full assessment of edge and spine wear; interior pages and back cover were not visible and were not assessed.

Tarzan of the Apes #145 arrived from Gold Key in April 1964, part of the publisher's long custodianship of Edgar Rice Burroughs' jungle lord following Dell's exit from the license. By this point in the run the strip was illustrated in the clean, adventure-serial style associated with the Gold Key Tarzan line, carrying forward the character's established visual identity for a readership that had followed him across multiple publishers since the 1930s. The issue is a standard entry in a long-running licensed title rather than a landmark number: no first appearances, deaths, or notable creative debuts are associated with it.

Market data for this issue is sparse, consistent with a common mid-run Silver Age Gold Key book that was not widely submitted for grading. The CGC census shows only a handful of certified copies across all grades, with recorded sales limited to a single CGC 9.0 transaction and a single CGC 9.8, and no copies certified at 9.9 or 10.0. The dramatic gap between the 9.0 result and the 9.8 result illustrates a pattern common to low-population Silver Age licensed comics: raw and mid-grade copies remain inexpensive and largely overlooked, while the rare top-census slab commands outsized premiums purely on scarcity rather than broad collector demand for the title itself.

This issue suits Tarzan and Burroughs completists, Gold Key run-builders, and census-chasers pursuing top-population slots rather than character-key collectors. Raw copies in low and mid grades trade cheaply and infrequently, generally bought to fill gaps in a full run rather than as standalone purchases. The 9.8 tier, by contrast, draws targeted competition from registry-focused buyers precisely because so few copies exist at that grade, making the top of the market disproportionately active compared to the rest of the curve.