SUPERMAN’S PAL JIMMY OLSEN #131

This Giant-size Silver Age DC shows notable spine stress with multiple vertical creases and small tears/splits along the top and bottom spine edges, most visibly near the top-left corner where a crease line runs diagonally into the cover art. There is a distinct crease/tear at the bottom-left corner area near the Krypton cabinet panel, and general surface wear with some minor rubbing to the black background ink. Corners appear slightly blunted rather than sharp, and there's mild waviness to the cover suggesting handling/humidity exposure. The book is in a protective sleeve; interior pages and back cover were not assessed.

Superman's Pal Jimmy Olsen #131, cover-dated September 1970, arrived just ahead of the title's dramatic reinvention. Within a month or two, Jack Kirby would take over the book with issue #133, transforming it into a Fourth World vehicle featuring the Guardian, the Newsboy Legion, and the earliest hints of Darkseid. Issue #131 itself belongs to the pre-Kirby era, a standard Silver-to-Bronze Age transitional issue built around Jimmy Olsen's recurring supporting cast and light adventure-humor formula, without any first appearances, deaths, or landmark creative shifts of its own.

Market data reflects a book with minimal collector demand outside the high end of the census. The certified population is small (27 copies total, 26 tracked in the CGC Universal census), and sales are concentrated almost entirely in the top three grades, with a single sale recorded at 9.4 for $110, six at 9.6 for $400, and two at 9.8 for $950. Below 9.0, sales data is essentially absent, indicating that raw and lower-grade copies see little organized secondary-market activity and trade, when they do, for nominal sums typical of common back-issue stock.

This is not a title driven by key-issue demand; its collector base consists mainly of Kirby-run completists filling out adjacent numbers, Superman-family run collectors, and grade-chasers targeting the thin high-grade census. Raw copies in low and mid grade are readily available and inexpensive, while the market narrows sharply at the top: with only two 9.8s known and both sold, that grade commands a substantial premium disproportionate to the book's modest content, reflecting condition scarcity rather than story significance.