Revisiting the History of the Value Stamps with Roy Thomas …

Roy, were you and Stan surprised by the initial success of the program? ROY THOMAS: Well, they were about as successful as Stan wanted them to be, in that people cut them out, collected them, used them to gain a few perquisites at comic conventions, etc…. except that once it got started, I think Stan really had no great follow-up in mind, and I think he gradually lost interest in them. But he had been truly gung-ho enthusiastic about those stamps, which were his idea, at the start, as I detail in the book.

They were all his notion, and they were guided by him from start to last. For its second set in 1975, how did you determine which content to feature? ROY THOMAS: I really don’t recall.

For the first set, someone clearly made up a list of 100 characters to appear in the first round of stamps, but whether it was Stan, or myself, or John Romita Sr. and/or Marie Severin, or some other young staffer with Stan’s and my approval, I have no idea. For the second set, I suspect Stan came up with the idea, since it was a bit simpler… a big picture cut into the pieces of a puzzle. Again, it was entirely Stan’s baby.

I was interested in the content of the comics (which is not to say that Stan wasn’t, of course). What do you think was the main appeal for fans of the Marvel Value Stamps? CHARLES KOCHMAN: When Marvel Value Stamps came out in 1974, I was twelve years old.

At the time I was a die-hard DC fan, and my brother was the Marvel fan. But I was also a stamp collector, which was a hobby I picked up from my grandfather. Marvel Value Stamps were my gateway to Marvel Comics.

My brother showed me the ad and the first few stamps, and we sent away for the first Stamp Book. Along with our neighbors on the block, we tracked down the new comics at our local candy store and cut out and traded the stamps we needed. There was no Internet back then, nor a checklist, so we had to figure out which comics had which stamps and share information each week as new issues came out.

It became a scavenger hunt for us, and it also accomplished what Stan and Roy intended, which was to introduce us to titles we weren’t already reading and create new fans.

I was hooked as a Marvel reader from that point on, and it was 100% because of Marvel Value Stamps.