25K-Run

Here are my "little uns." They are UNpopular-not on a lot of want lists, so I gladly took them in and gave them a good home. They are also UNcommon. A number of these could technically be listed in the "less than 10 copies in the census" thread.

I believe this was the first time the October Marvel 1 you are referring to was advertised. It was listed in 1977 or 1978 in the Buyer's Guide along with Marvel Mystery's 2-12. They were listed as file copies (no specific name stated) which had been bound together with long staples. Conditions varied but the introduction paragraph mentions ALL the books had small holes near the spine, were moderately brittle and discolored, and some minor restorative work had been done. Each individual book is then listed with various defects (stamp marks, pieces missing, etc) Most of the issues did not sell at the listed prices and were relisted in a later issue. The Marvel 1 price was lowered from $5555 to $4700. Never heard what became of the issues 2-12.

Last week there was a very nice unrestored Tec 31 Metro was accepting bids on. They must have received a great bid. It's gone!

Those of you old enough to remember might recall how the controversy over this book began almost as soon as it was discovered. In the mid 1970's a well known east coast dealer acted as an agent for someone who had one for sale. The dealer, wanting to make a sale, looked at this as the actual first appearance of the Sub-mariner, and attempted to sell it as such. At the same time there was a young east coast collector who had managed to to collect the entire run of 92 Marvel Mystery Comics. As the owner of a Marvel Comics 1, but not the MPFW, he contended the first appearance was the Marvel. His feeling was MPFW never really came out and were merely file copies. (This collector received a lot of attention because of his appearance, along with some of his collection, on the nationally televised "Tomorrow" show with Tom Snyder.) This story really became interesting when the dealer and the collector went public with their argument in the Buyer's Guide. In a paid advertisement where the book was listed for sale ($5000), the dealer mentioned the collector in an unflattering manner by saying the person he was selling the book for did not wish to be "hounded by all the (collector's name)'s of the world." The collector retaliated in a letter to TBG claiming the dealer operated under the principle that HIS best comic book was automatically the most valuable, and the dealer's ad was a misrepresented rip-off. It would appear a lot of the questions being asked now about this book are the same questions that were asked then. I don't know if this collector ever got his hands on one of the MFPW's, but it would have been interesting to see if he would have changed his mind if this happened.