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Amazing Spider-Man #184 All Detergent Has Anyone Seen This Version?
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125 posts in this topic

On 3/13/2022 at 11:22 AM, Warlord said:

Time for the group shot of my All promo comics collection.  Side by side, the sticker on the Marvel Tales comic looks totally legit.  Makes me wonder if some young comics fan back in the day carefully peeled the sticker off of his free ASM 184 and put it on a different Spidey comic?    Makes for a nice set, I think!

 

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Did anyone ever find anecdotal evidence of when or where this all giveaway happened? At first glance, these issues seem too far apart to be contemporary, but perhaps the 184 is actually a reprint the following year and they really did just sticker some normal issue comic when the regular giveaway comics were gone but the stickers were not..

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What we do know about the  Amazing Spider-Man 184 All Detergent Variant (or I consolidated all the information from this thread and my personal knowledge):

1)       The Amazing Spider-Man 184 All Detergent Variant was most likely distributed between Sept 1978 and May-Dec. 1979 (cover dates).

Why those dates?  Well, the book is an exact duplicate of Amazing Spider-Man 184 (Cover date Sept 1978) except for the missing price and the little code below the date.  So, it’s unlikely the book was produced before the newsstand issue.  This sets the early date.  In 1979 (no month on the cover, I don't own it, so I don't know what the indicia reads), Marvel published a yellow-covered All Detergent giveaway, which strangely also had a 40 cent price.  The first Marvel 40 cent issues in 1979 was dated May and the last in 1979 would be Dec.  Of course, that assumes that Marvel priced it in line with their current issues and then made it a giveaway.  Personally, I could see a one year difference between the two books, meaning the Amazing Spider-Man 184 All Detergent Variant was closely published to the time of the newsstand issue.  

 

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Image 1 - Amazing Spider-Man - ALL Detergent Giveaway (6.5) 1979

2)      The Amazing Spider-Man 184 All Detergent Variant is not rare.

How do I know?  At one time when I was collecting this book, I owned five copies all of which had the sticker removed from the cover.   So, not rare.

3)      The Amazing Spider-Man 184 All Detergent Variant with the sticker still affixed to the cover is very rare.

I religiously searched ebay back in the day for this book,  No sightings in the raw with the sticker still attached.   I found my copy in a comic shop in CT and have never personally held another copy with the sticker still attached.   I considered myself a semi-completist Amazing Spider-Man collector, having to get every issue, variants included, that I could afford.   When I posted my copy with the sticker online, a true ASM completist contacted me, wanting to buy my copy.   I eventually traded it for some decent coin.   So, not necessarily proof of rarity, but another checkmark on the side of rarity.

The number of copies I have seen in auctions, etc. would be in a range of 20-30 copies.  Hard to obviously put a good number on that.

4)      This book appears to have been distributed only in certain regions.

How do I know?  I tracked the sales of this book for several years on ebay and then put together the map below.  I believe at least two of the areas were the Northeast (Boston, CT, VT area) and the Midwest (OH, IN area).  I did see some in TX.  But with the issue getting famous, more have been slabbed and movement of the book from its local area is more likely, meaning tracking raw local copies got harder.  I eventually stopped tracking it.

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5)      The sticker on the book is YELLOW.

When I first found out about this book several years ago, the article I read referenced a GREEN sticker.  But I saw a few YELLOW ones and then my copy had a YELLOW sticker.  I had to know if there were different colored stickers, so I contacted the guy (who lived in IN, BTW) and he said, his copy actually had a Yellow sticker too.

I have also seen photos that made the sticker appear white.  One copy was very faded, such that it looked white.  Others have confirmed that some scanners make the sticker look white as well.

184.thumb.jpg.f1c3e8fce7fb1201639f620850114d66.jpg

 

6)      This book is also called the “No Price” Variant.

Simply owing to the fact that it had no price on it, it has been referred to as the Amazing Spider-Man 184 No Price Variant.  Older CGC labels had the No Price Variant on there, but the newer ones have it as an All Detergent Promotional.  I think the latter sounds more correct.

Image 11 - AMAZING SPIDER-MAN #184 (1978) 💥 CGC 6.5 💥 No Price Variant ONLY 25 IN CENSUS!

7)      There have been discovered a couple of oddities for this odd book.

A newsstand copy of ASM 184 was found with a sticker and a Marvel Tales 102 was also found with a sticker. Both stickers match the ones on the known stickered copies, but on the ASM 184, the placement does not block the UPC.  On the Marvel Tales 102, it does.  Not a lot more is known about these books.

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On 3/17/2022 at 2:34 PM, Spider-Variant said:

At one time when I was collecting this book, I owned five copies all of which had the sticker removed from the cover.   So, not rare.

Yea I can attest that back in the early 80's I asked my LCS about the one I have and they were like meh not hard to find. My cousin had one that he successfully  removed the sticker from. Back then it was considered  as valuable as regular version without the ugly sticker. I probably would have attempted to remove mine but I already had a regular 184 in better shape so just threw it in a bag and forgot about it. 

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On 3/17/2022 at 5:48 PM, Morganmi said:

Yea I can attest that back in the early 80's I asked my LCS about the one I have and they were like meh not hard to find. My cousin had one that he successfully  removed the sticker from. Back then it was considered  as valuable as regular version without the ugly sticker. I probably would have attempted to remove mine but I already had a regular 184 in better shape so just threw it in a bag and forgot about it. 

You chose correctly, lol.

Many dealers in the mid-2000s always thought I was talking about the yellow-covered issue when I asked about the ASM 184 All Detergent variant.

 

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