Michael D Hamersky On Comics Presents His Take On:   So... Why Are So Many Marvel Comics From The Mid-1970's Cut Up?

TODAY'S FEATURE IS BLOG #3711 -   Just had an email from a potential customer who asked me to check my comic book before he clicked a 'Buy It Now' link on my comic book listing in my online comic book shop.   That's because he learned the hard way about why so many comics from the 1970s are cut up!

That's right!  If You own a Marvel comic book from the time period of 1974-1976, your comic book may be incomplete !

Why????

Well back in March of 1974, Marvel Comics ran a campaign that enticed readers to cut out a certain portion of each comic!

Every month pictures of its most popular characters, either heroes or villains, were printed onto the Letters Pages section of various comics.  The Letter Page would be where Stan Lee or others of the 'Bullpen' printed either editorials, coming attractions or fan mail.

The pictures appeared in the format of a numbered 'stamp'.  To the chagrin of today's collectors the readers of the comics were encouraged to both "clip 'em and collect 'em".  Yikes !!

Ultimately there were 100 different stamps in the set and those first 100 are referred to as the 'Series A'  group.

Later on that year, in-house ads were printed to entice the reader to send away for a Mighty Marvel Value Stamp Book to place their 'Value Stamps' in.  The cost of the book was just 50 cents.

Unfortunately for collectors, the campaign was so successful that in December of 1975 Marvel produced a second set, referred to as 'Series B'.  This group consisted of 100 value stamps too, but these were really different from the first set.  Each of the stamps was not of an individual character but a single piece that formed one full image, similar to a puzzle.

Once again, in-house printed ads in the comics offered another Mighty Marvel Value Stamp Book to paste them into for the same price of only 50 cents!

So coming to today, a Marvel Comic from this 1974 - 76 era with its Marvel Value Stamp clipped out loses most of its  value.  It is so necessary to stress when listing a comic with the stamp out, that when grading such a comic, there is a term specifically created to identify it, the 'Marvel Value Stamp Flaw'.

I check each of the comics that I list in my online comic shop at ComicBooksCircus.com.  For those of you interested in Marvel comic books we have several of their comics listed in our shop right now!

~ Michael

NOTE FROM Michael D Hamersky On Comics:  My thanks again to all of YOU reading this blog and our archived blog posts, now at 3,711 total posts in number!   I do appreciate your continued reading and support of this Blog!

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Note:  My online 'Loca8' Comic Book Shop (LCBS), carries many different genres of comics, magazines, graphic novels, and comic con promotional items. Possibly even copies of the item(s) that was mentioned here today...!  If I have it, you'll find under the BIG TOP of Comics, at Comic Books Circus.com, including the book 'Gotham City 14 Miles' that I am shown holding to the left. I'm 1 of 14 essayists in that book! !     

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