Many consider Stan "The Man" Lee to be a creative genius. After all, his was the mind (along with Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko) that came up with Spider-Man, the X-Men, the Avengers, and scores of other original characters and teams. Today, Marvel is a multi-billion dollar franchise that cuts across comics, video games, TV, and film. But in 1974, Stan also created "Marvel Value Stamps," a promotional campaign that became the bane of existence for many comic book investors.

Let's take a closer look at these infamous stamps.

In 1974, Marvel Comics publisher Stan Lee devised a promotional campaign to increase sales; include "stamps" of prominent Marvel characters across all of their monthly comic book series. Readers were encouraged to collect all 100 stamps by cutting them out (thereby maiming their books) and placing them in collector booklets (see below) that readers could purchase through the mail.

Once all of the stamps were collected in these booklets, readers could redeem these booklets in exchange for merchandise. The campaign was so successful that Lee released a second set of stamps in its comics throughout 1975. Marvel included these Marvel Value Stamps in 129 issues that were published in 1974 and 1975.

Thankfully, many of these issues were non-keys. Of course, Marvel did include Marvel Value Stamp #54 (Shanna the She-Devil) in one of the most important key issues of all-time: Incredible Hulk #181.

Little did many readers know, in 1974, that Wolverine would become arguably the second most popular Marvel character of all time (after Spider-Man). Thousands of collectors were collecting the wrong item -- they were focused on these stamps when they should have been collecting (and preserving) this issue.

Today, CGC has graded 1,184 copies of Hulk #181 that don't have this stamp. There are 73 "Qualified" copies of Hulk #181. According to GoCollect, the FMV of a 7.5 green label is $2,220. The FMV of a 7.5 blue label is $5,250. That's nearly a quarter million dollars in lost value right there for just this one grade.

Hulk #181 wasn't the only key issue marred by missing stamps.

Some other major key issues that have a high number of qualified grades include:

Thankfully, Marvel Value Stamps didn't deface every major Bronze Age key issue that was published in 1974 and 1975.

For example, the first Marvel Value Stamp in the Amazing Spider-Man occurred in issue #130 -- just narrowly missing the first appearance of the Punisher in #129. However, Marvel did include the Stamps in Amazing Spider-Man #134 and #135 (2nd and 3rd appearances of the Punisher). The first Stamp that appeared in the X-Men was issue #97, narrowly missing X-Men #94 and Giant-Size X-Men #1.

At the same time, in some ways, I'm thankful that Marvel Value Stamps exist. I'm the proud owner of a CGC 4.5 qualified copy of Hulk #181, an issue that I could never afford if the stamp weren't missing!

*Any perceived investment advice is that of the freelance blogger and does not represent advice on behalf of GoCollect.