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First appearance of the Smurfs.
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When first attempting to locate this issue I contacted Chromium to get his advice and possibly assistance. I was floored to learn from him that there simply is no demand for this issue as a Smurf collectible, even in the country of their origin. I purchased this copy from a fellow from France who had it as just another piece in a lot of older Spirou comics.

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When first attempting to locate this issue I contacted Chromium to get his advice and possibly assistance. I was floored to learn from him that there simply is no demand for this issue as a Smurf collectible, even in the country of their origin. I purchased this copy from a fellow from France who had it as just another piece in a lot of older Spirou comics.

 

Maybe they view this as a cameo and Spirou 1072 to be their true first appearance.

 

 

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I picked up this issue a couple of years ago, for much the same reason, and I observed the same thing you did. It's a pretty easy pickup for the first appearance of such well-known comics characters.

 

Part of the problem, from the American perspective, is that the European comics are something like Sunday comics, with a one or two page installment in each issue. In this case, the Smurfs appear in the middle of a much longer story. The two pages in 1071 are out of context, but they do make a very clear appearance of Smurfs, Papa Smurf and even the Smurf village.

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When first attempting to locate this issue I contacted Chromium to get his advice and possibly assistance. I was floored to learn from him that there simply is no demand for this issue as a Smurf collectible, even in the country of their origin. I purchased this copy from a fellow from France who had it as just another piece in a lot of older Spirou comics.

 

Maybe they view this as a cameo and Spirou 1072 to be their true first appearance.

 

 

lol - love it.

 

Great book RR. Nice find.

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When first attempting to locate this issue I contacted Chromium to get his advice and possibly assistance. I was floored to learn from him that there simply is no demand for this issue as a Smurf collectible, even in the country of their origin. I purchased this copy from a fellow from France who had it as just another piece in a lot of older Spirou comics.

 

Yep, not even a little bump in value when the movie came out... Pretty incredible really, the world's second most profitable cartoon franchise (after Disney) and the comic is selling for barely more than it did when it was published over 50 years ago,

And there can't be that many still left...I was pretty popular at the time, but it was only published in the French speaking part of Belgium (the Flemish speaking part had a different version of "Spirou", so the Smurfs debuted later). And generally they weren't collected as most kids would later buy the complete stories in albums.

 

One of the differences with US comics is that Belgian comics have always been in print and readily available, so there was never any need to hunt down back issues.

Having said that, once a story had completely been published (in weekly instalments) it was released in album format (often a hardback) and those first editions do have collector value.

 

The first "album" the Smurfs appeared in was "La flûte à six schtroumpfs" which reprints the above pages. It was released in 1960 about 1 1/12 years after the story ran in Spirou magazine and nice copies go for around a grand.

 

http://www.bedetheque.com/album-45104-BD-La-flute-a-six-schtroumpfs.html

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