MARVEL TALES #87

Cover shows strong gloss and bright colors with sharp corners and a tight spine with no visible ticks or stress lines. There is minor surface handling wear and a couple of faint crease lines near the top center of the cover, along with a slight bend near the upper right edge. The book is in a protective sleeve, which limits full assessment, and interior pages and back cover were not examined.

Marvel Tales #87 (cover-dated January 1978) is part of Marvel's long-running reprint line that recycled early Amazing Spider-Man stories for a new generation of readers at a lower price point than the still-active flagship title. By this point in its numbering, Marvel Tales had settled into reprinting the Stan Lee and John Romita Sr. era of Amazing Spider-Man, and issue #87 reproduces material originally created for Amazing Spider-Man #73, featuring Spider-Man in conflict with Kraven the Hunter and the villain the Kangaroo. The original interior art and story are credited to Lee and Romita; the reprint cover for this era of Marvel Tales was typically a redrawn or re-lettered version of the source issue's cover, produced in-house at Marvel rather than by the original artist.

As a newsstand reprint digest, Marvel Tales #87 was produced in high volume and distributed widely, and it has never carried the collector premium attached to the Amazing Spider-Man issues it reprints. The absence of a published fair-market value reflects this: the book trades at or slightly above cover price in typical circulated condition, with value concentrated almost entirely in top-grade certified copies where survivorship of unread newsstand stock is thin. There is no first appearance, death, or landmark creative event contained in this issue, and it does not appear in price-guide key lists.

Collecting interest in this issue is limited to Marvel Tales completists, Spider-Man reprint-run collectors building full runs of the title, and buyers seeking an affordable, high-grade representative of Bronze Age reprint packaging. Raw copies in typical read condition are inexpensive and plentiful; the only meaningful spread in value appears at the high end of certified grading, where a well-preserved 9.8 commands a real but modest premium over lower grades. It is not a book bought for character or story significance, but as an accessible piece of Marvel's reprint history.