TALES OF SUSPENSE #87

Significant piece missing from the upper-left cover with a large chunk torn away exposing interior page underneath, along with heavy corner and edge wear on the left side. There is substantial spine/left-edge tearing and a large chip loss extending several inches into the cover art. Colors otherwise remain bright with no notable fading, but the major loss of cover material caps this well below mid-grade. Interior and back cover were not visible/assessed in this photo.

Tales of Suspense #87 arrived in March 1967 near the end of the title's long run as a split book pairing Iron Man and Captain America adventures before the series folded into standalone Captain America with issue #100. By this point Stan Lee was overseeing scripts across the line, with Gene Colan (credited in the period as Adam Austin) providing distinctive, moody artwork on the Iron Man feature, while the Captain America back-up carried the visual DNA of Jack Kirby's foundational work on the character. The issue sits squarely within the mature Silver Age Marvel house style, reflecting the era's escalating Cold War-inflected science fiction and espionage plotting that defined Iron Man's solo adventures.

The market data shows a typical mid-run Silver Age curve: values stay compressed and stable through the low-to-mid grades (roughly $42-48 from 4.5 through 7.5), before climbing steadily at 9.0 and above, then spiking sharply at the top of the census. With only five 9.8 copies recorded against a much larger surviving population in the 330-370 range, the top grade commands a substantial premium driven by scarcity rather than raw demand intensity — this is a book collected primarily by Iron Man and Captain America completists and Silver Age Marvel run-builders rather than a marquee character-first-appearance audience.

Expect this issue to trade as a steady, unspectacular commodity in low-to-mid grades, moving through dealer inventory and online marketplaces at modest prices with little urgency. High-grade certified copies, particularly at 9.4 and above, see meaningfully stronger competition as census population shrinks and condition rarity becomes the dominant value driver, making the 9.8 tier a genuine outlier price point reserved for advanced Iron Man or Silver Age Marvel specialists rather than casual buyers.