STRANGE TALES #164

Cover shows moderate wear consistent with a mid-grade Silver Age book: visible spine stress with some whitening/ticks along the spine edge, slight corner softness at top left and bottom right, and a faint vertical crease running through the lower portion of the cover. Color is bright with no major fading or staining, but there is some minor edge wear and a small amount of surface sheen loss near the top. The book is in a protective sleeve, and interior pages and back cover were not assessed.

Strange Tales #164 arrived during the split-feature format that defined the title's late Silver Age run, pairing a Nick Fury, Agent of SHIELD story with a Doctor Strange serial. By this issue the Fury feature was under the visual command of Jim Steranko, whose collage-influenced layouts and psychedelic page design were reshaping how Marvel's espionage strip looked and read; the Doctor Strange half continued the mystic serial that Stan Lee had shepherded since Ditko's departure from the character a few issues earlier. Neither story introduces a major first appearance, but the issue sits inside one of the most art-historically discussed short runs in Marvel's 1960s output.

Market data shows a typical mid-run Silver Age curve: raw copies in low and mid grades trade in the $20–$35 range with modest, steady turnover, while certified copies climb sharply from grade 8 upward, with 9.6 slabs fetching roughly $300–$350 and thinning out fast above that. The 320-copy Universal census reflects healthy survivorship for a 1968 cover-dated book, and demand is driven almost entirely by Steranko's authorship rather than any character debut, which keeps the book a steady presence in Silver Age Marvel sales without the volatility of a recognized key.

This is a collector's and completist's book rather than a speculative one: buyers are typically assembling a Steranko run, a complete Strange Tales set, or a Doctor Strange pre-solo-title collection. Lower and mid grades move consistently at modest prices as reading and run-filling copies, while high-grade certified examples, especially anything approaching 9.6 or better, see outsized premiums due to the scarcity of pristine survivors from a title printed on standard-era paper stock. A 9.8, largely absent from the certified population, would command a strong premium over the best confirmed sales on record.