MARVEL TALES #4

This pre-1977 issue shows moderate wear consistent with a mid-grade copy: visible vertical creasing and slight color break along the spine, soft rounded corners especially at top right, and a general loss of cover gloss with some surface wear across the yellow background. There is a small crease near the upper right price box and minor edge wear along the top and bottom edges. No tears, missing pieces, or major stains are visible, but the interior and back cover were not assessed.

Marvel Tales (Volume 2) launched in 1964 as Marvel's vehicle for reprinting the early adventures of Spider-Man for a newsstand audience that had missed the character's scarce, fast-selling first appearances. Issue #4, cover-dated September 1965, continues that program, reproducing Stan Lee and Steve Ditko's original Amazing Spider-Man material from the title's formative run. As a reprint book it carries no first-appearance or origin significance of its own, but it remains a document of Marvel's early efforts to keep Ditko-era Spider-Man in circulation at an accessible price point.

Market behavior tracks that expectation: raw and low-grade copies trade for token sums, mid-grade copies cluster in the mid-$20s to low-$30s range, and only the top of the certified population commands real premiums. The FMV curve shows a pronounced steepening above 9.4, with 9.6 copies realizing multiples of the 9.4 price on a reasonable sales sample, and the small number of 9.6/9.8 census copies indicates that true gem-quality survivors are scarce despite the title's low profile. Demand is driven almost entirely by condition-census chasers and Spider-Man completists rather than by story or historical importance.

This is a book bought in bulk at the low end by dealers filling Silver Age reprint runs, and pursued individually only at the top of the grade scale by registry-focused collectors seeking a scarce high-grade slot. Mid-grade copies move steadily but modestly as reading/display copies for Ditko-era Spider-Man fans. The gap between typical raw copies and a 9.8 is wide relative to the book's face value, meaning grade, not story content, is the primary value driver for this issue.