Marvel Value Stamps 1-8
Welcome back to the chamber of horrors that is the Marvel Value Stamp book.
Today we crack open the book of doom to regard the first page of this book of woe. Screw your courage to the sticking place!
There you go. I managed to score exactly half of the stamps required to fill out this page. This will be a recurring theme.
And before we go any further, you know those “stamps” weren’t stamps, right? They just had a little stamp graphic around the outside. You cut them out of comics, and they were made of comics newsprint. Did this stop twelve-year-old me from licking the back of one? You know it did not.
Spitting out that taste of ink, I instead folded a little cylinder of Scotch Tape behind each stamp, and lovingly stuck them into my album, where they remain to this day.
A pretty standard selection of Marvel heroes here, but seeing Conan and those monsters lets you know you’re in the seventies. Conan featured on the cover of the album, too — he was big Marvel’s Bronze Age (and is making a comeback — Jason Aaron’s new Conan book is pretty good).
Hang on! That’s too chatty, too optimistic! I’m supposed to be angry and scared about what happened here!
So let’s take a look at where these diabolical “stamps” came from, and what their books of origin might cost today if I didn’t cut them up with a razor!
- #1 Spider-Man: Captain Marvel #35 – $8
- #2 Hulk: Iron Man #70 – $14
- #7 Werewolf: Daredevil #114 – $66 (Romita begins)
- #8 Captain America: Defenders #15 – $16
Looking for those books in VF/8.0 condition, those books together would cost me $104.00 today. Not too terrible a price to pay for a young man’s folly. I shouldn’t take it so hard, I know.
(I know.)
Marvel Value Stamp info sourced through the Marvel Value Stamps Index. Thanks to Billy King for Marvel Value Stamp horror scenes Photoshop wizardry and indexing back order prices!
TOMORROW: Reopening The Tomb of Dracula!
Posted on October 8, 2019, in Halloween Month and tagged Marvel Value Stamp. Bookmark the permalink. 4 Comments.
dangvozden
Paul O'Connor
Kris (not Chris)
markginocchio
miloapama
Dean Compton
Moya
ryanmcswain
Longbox Graveyard 
I wasn’t aware Marvel made money selling value stamps books.
Did you really paid Marvel to have a chance to destroy your own books?
Stealing kids allowance, what a stinky business…
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Yes … yes I did. Though I don’t recall the books costing all that much. I think this was just a scheme to lift circulation by driving readers to books the didn’t normally buy.
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Well, since I’ve never been anywhere close to understand the value of collecting (real or fake) stamps, I had to devise my own way to destroy books. Knowing what ,you brainwashed kids, did, I wonder whether I should be proud of ashamed of it?
Luckily, the main french publisher (LUG) didn’t rely on dirty tricks like this. Instead, from time to time, it added a bonus inside the book in the form of a pinup poster (an original french superhero pinup printed on an oversized glossy sheet of paper folded in 4. Easy to detach without destroying the book.
Hey, once I got a very cool Spider-man mask to iron and transfer on a T-shirt.
I still own it and since I only used once before, I may one day give it a try and iron it again?
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The only thing that matters is that we enjoy these things. I curse the aftermarket for making me second-guess the simple joy twelve-year-old me had in collecting those stamps. And here I am still dining out on the story, 45 years later. Value is where you decide to find it!
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