Wow...

So...for the longest time I've had this issue loose in a comic box...I bought it loose off of some dealer on eBay. The issue was in pretty bad shape...crinkled upper corner and bends, dents and creases all over the front AND back covers on this poor thing...the dealer even, once finding out my grading intentions for the book, tried to talk me out of spending the money on the book that I spent(like $40 I think).

But I had hope. I had a dream. I had a vision...well...not really...I just knew I had never seen the book before and I really wanted it regardless...I mean c'mon, it's a variant cover featuring Magik! It could have had a footprint on it and I would've at least thought about it ...but moving on...

So that took place around two years ago...

Fast forward to the night before this year's Wizard World Chicago and there I sat, looking at a comic box populated solely by books that I've set aside here and there over time with the intent on grading them...it's in the back of this box that the issue had sat buried for nearly two years...

When I stumbled across it I smiled almost like finding an old friend in a shopping mall at Christmastime...I pulled it out of the Mylar and boards I had sheltered the poor mistreated thing in and placed it on the table in front of me and sighed...it was such a cool book...don't have the slightest inkling where it was released or it's print run for that variant cover...but I didn't care one shred...

I sat there and thought to myself that, if I submitted it for grading, it would limp back to me with a 8.5 or a 9.0 as a "pie in the sky" grade and my heart sank a little more...

Then I looked at the info regarding the pressing that CCS was offering on-site at Wizard World Chicago this year and grinned a little.

I had, at that moment, decided that at Wizard World the great experiment...my first experience with pressing...would transpire for good or ill. I told myself that it didn't matter if it didn't snag a high mark like a 9.8 because of the extensive mistreatment of the issue...but only that I wanted to try and mend this really cool book and give it the proper home that such a book deserved.

With that mindset, I walked into the con the next day and submitted it and went back to the hotel bar, had a drink and hoped for the best, knowing that this wait for a book, above any other I've ever submitted, would just eat me up inside till it was returned to me in it's shiny new CGC case...

So if you've read my Wizard World Chicago report I posted a while back then you know how this played out for me...again I say ugh!

So guess what came in the mail today? Yup, my newly pressed and graded variant with my favorite character on the cover, sporting a 9.8 grade! I wish so badly that I had taken "before" pictures to post alongside of this so I could show you all how amazing of a job the CCS gang did with this book...if I didn't know any better I would say that this wasn't even my original book...

Behold the power of pressing...

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