THE FANTASTIC FOUR #1 CLUB 14 14

[Figment]

Purchased in '91 and conserved in '97 this one might someday find a slab. Conserved, restored, whatever, I'm just glad I'm not chasing one now.

[GAMBIT]

 My FF 1 

 

 

Edited September 26, 2021 by GAMBIT

[KCOComics]

On 9/26/2021 at 5:04 PM, Figment said:

Purchased in '91 and conserved in '97 this one might someday find a slab. Conserved, restored, whatever, I'm just glad I'm not chasing one now.

August 7th date stamp. That's kind of interesting! 1 day before the widely accepted release date of FF1!  

Awesome book! 

[drmanhattanite]

On 9/26/2021 at 8:52 PM, KCOComics said:

August 7th date stamp. That's kind of interesting! 1 day before the widely accepted release date of FF1!  

Awesome book! 

can you explain the release date? if it was august 8, why does the cover and cgc say november '61??

[Pantodude]

On 9/27/2021 at 7:40 PM, drmanhattanite said:

can you explain the release date? if it was august 8, why does the cover and cgc say november '61??

The official release date or on-sale date (typically 2-3 months before the printed cover date) is the date the book was supposed to hit the newsstands.  The cover date is often referred to as the "fresh through" date by which you hope to have sold the issue before the next sequential issues hit the newsstand.  So that spread between the two dates is how much time you had, practically speaking, to sell the issue before it became stale, i.e., needed to make room for the new stuff.  The date stamps (which presumably reflected when the newsstands received the books?) are often within a few days of the official release date, and in the example above, it was just one day before, so pretty cool.

Edited September 28, 2021 by Pantodude
typo

[KCOComics]

On 9/27/2021 at 7:40 PM, drmanhattanite said:

can you explain the release date? if it was august 8, why does the cover and cgc say november '61??

I'm glad @Pantodude stepped in because he delivered a much more thorough answer than I could have. 

So what happened to all those unsold copies in November? Half the cover was ripped off and sent back to the distributer? You think of all those fresh off rack NM copies being ripped and disregarded.  

[HighVoltage]

On 9/26/2021 at 7:52 PM, KCOComics said:

August 7th date stamp. That's kind of interesting! 1 day before the widely accepted release date of FF1!  

Awesome book! 

I was thinking the same thing. Aug 7th date stamp is very unusual. I'm not sure I've seen one with that date before.

Quick question for everyone: What is the earliest date stamp you've seen on an FF 1?

[KCOComics]

On 9/28/2021 at 10:52 AM, HighVoltage said:

I was thinking the same thing. Aug 7th date stamp is very unusual. I'm not sure I've seen one with that date before.

Quick question for everyone: What is the earliest date stamp you've seen on an FF 1?

This one with August 7th is the earliest I've seen. 

Mine has a hand written 8/8. 

So I wonder if this one hit the shelves 8/7? Or a drug store clerk forgot to change the date on the stamp? 

[Pantodude]

On 9/28/2021 at 10:52 AM, HighVoltage said:

What is the earliest date stamp you've seen on an FF 1?

 

On 9/28/2021 at 11:29 AM, KCOComics said:

This one with August 7th is the earliest I've seen. 

8/2/61(!), so far (not mine):

If the date stamp reflects when received by the newsstand/drug store, i wonder if sellers were required or tended to hold off displaying the books until their release date anyway, so as not to unduly interfere with their existing inventory.  In that case, the same issue having stamps with different dates is not surprising since it is unlikely that all sellers received their books on the same date.  BTW, I've seen an AF15 with a 5/28 date stamp despite official release date of June 5, so there you go. 

Edited September 28, 2021 by Pantodude

[bluechip]

On 9/28/2021 at 8:29 AM, KCOComics said:

This one with August 7th is the earliest I've seen. 

Mine has a hand written 8/8. 

So I wonder if this one hit the shelves 8/7? Or a drug store clerk forgot to change the date on the stamp? 

Saw one that had a date in late July

[peewee22]

On 9/28/2021 at 2:26 PM, bluechip said:

Saw one that had a date in late July

Yep, seen a 7/31 AD and on AF15 saw a 5/31 AD before.

[Primetime]

On 9/28/2021 at 8:29 AM, KCOComics said:

This one with August 7th is the earliest I've seen. 

Mine has a hand written 8/8. 

So I wonder if this one hit the shelves 8/7? Or a drug store clerk forgot to change the date on the stamp? 

Distribution would vary from region to region and based on the size of the retailer's order - this would affect the time of arrival for most newsstands. That said, I have seen an FF1 stamped as late as SEPT 15 1961. I don't think I have seen any copies stamped in JULY 1961. 

Edited September 29, 2021 by Primetime

[BLUECHIPCOLLECTIBLES]

[KCOComics]

On 10/7/2021 at 12:31 AM, BLUECHIPCOLLECTIBLES said:

@Primetime

There is a July date stamp. Officially the oldest I've seen.  

[VintageComics]

On 9/5/2021 at 2:48 PM, HighVoltage said:

The big books like an FF 1 do ebb and flow in cycles of availability.

When I got my copy back in about 2010/2011, there were not a ton of FF 1s  on the market - really in all grades. The book was somewhat ‘cold,’ as it wasn’t in the Marvel MCU. 

It seems like Hulk 1 was on fire at around that time.

I have definitely seen a lot more FF 1s pop up in the past 3-4 years.

It was around the late 2000s that AF #15 started to really pull away from FF #1 and the book has been cold for about a decade, I agree.

In the beginning of the movie hype era (around the late 2000's) I just didn't understand how people thought FF #1 was more valuable than AF #15. I still think FF #1 is the better book but the investor market is fickle. It doesn't run on stuff like history. It's fueled by popularity and popularity is a fleeting thing.

 

[VintageComics]

That summer date stamp on that book makes me wonder what it would have been like walking a hot, barren town in the late summer, walking up to a newsstand and seeing this book for the first time sitting there, waiting to introduce you to the Marvel universe.

You buy your comic, a soda and maybe a candy bar and then you went off to read it somewhere...maybe a tree fort or your basement where it was a bit cooler.

Then you'd put it aside and go play outside and tell your friends about it. And maybe that night after dinner, give it another read before bed.

 

[KCOComics]

On 10/10/2021 at 1:33 PM, VintageComics said:

That summer date stamp on that book makes me wonder what it would have been like walking a hot, barren town in the late summer, walking up to a newsstand and seeing this book for the first time sitting there, waiting to introduce you to the Marvel universe.

You buy your comic, a soda and maybe a candy bar and then you went off to read it somewhere...maybe a tree fort or your basement where it was a bit cooler.

Then you'd put it aside and go play outside and tell your friends about it. And maybe that night after dinner, give it another read before bed.

 

Wait wait wait, you mean you wouldn't squish the heck out of it, send it on vacation to Florida for 6 months, stick it in plastic and store it in a humidity controlled room? 

 

 

Edited October 10, 2021 by KCOComics

[VintageComics]

On 10/10/2021 at 1:56 PM, KCOComics said:

Wait wait wait, you mean you wouldn't squish the heck out of it, send it on vacation to Florida for 6 months, stick it in plastic and store it in a humidity controlled room?

I probably would have gotten peanut butter on it, wiped it off with some toilet paper, kept it in a box next to my bed and ironed it on my mom's ironing board a few years later before double boarding it and placing it in a safer place than the shoe box next to my bed.

Amirite?

[KCOComics]

On 10/10/2021 at 2:02 PM, VintageComics said:

I probably would have gotten peanut butter on it, wiped it off with some toilet paper, kept it in a box next to my bed and ironed it on my mom's ironing board a few years later before double boarding it and placing it in a safer place than the shoe box next to my bed.

Amirite?

My son's bedroom floor is covered in comics in Pokemon cards. He's 8... The collector in my kind of cringes and rushes over to pick them up... But as a kid, I beat the heck out of comics.  So I just need to remind myself to let him be a kid and enjoy reading comics. Because that's how they were meant to be treated. 

[HighVoltage]

On 10/10/2021 at 11:33 AM, VintageComics said:

That summer date stamp on that book makes me wonder what it would have been like walking a hot, barren town in the late summer, walking up to a newsstand and seeing this book for the first time sitting there, waiting to introduce you to the Marvel universe.

You buy your comic, a soda and maybe a candy bar and then you went off to read it somewhere...maybe a tree fort or your basement where it was a bit cooler.

Then you'd put it aside and go play outside and tell your friends about it. And maybe that night after dinner, give it another read before bed.

 

This very thing is one of the reason why I like date stamps (unless they're stamped right on a character's face or some other focal location).
I like to think about the time of year kids were buying the books & what they might have been doing... summer vacation, school days, Christmas time, etc.