You can learn from failure...

I have had very little to no movement at all among my invoices over the last few weeks. In fact, I had two invoices sit in quality Control for two weeks until I called and got them in motion.

But after all that time with almost nothing, today came along and... WHAM!!... status changes GALORE!!!

In one day, I had the following changes...

7 invoices go from Verified to Scheduled For Grading

1 invoice go from Scheduled For Grading to Graded

1 invoice go from Graded to Grading/Quality Control

1 invoice go from Grading/Quality Control to Shipped/Safe

Sheesh! Talk about movement across the board! Wow!

Now as far as the Shipped/Safe invoice goes, there was only one comic book on the invoice. My X-Men #112!

I bought this issue from a dealer at the Florida Supercon in July. I took it out of its bag and gave it a quick look-see. I did not really examine it too thoroughly, just enough to make out its overall condition on the cover and basic page quality.

My initial reactions to it were so-so. There were a number of slight indentations on the front and back cover, but nothing with any real color break that I could make out. I felt that a pressing could smooth out the vast majority of these slight imperfections.

I was in kind of a hurry and did not really give the issue the proper eyeballing I should have, especially in regards to the interior pages, but I felt that with a pressing it had a shot at 9.4 or maybe 9.6 with OW/W pages by my estimation.

The biggest reason for my picking it up was because both of the cover artists were present at the show and I could get their sigs added to it. I just could not pass up on the opportunity.

So I bought it, got the sigs and submitted it for pressing and grading.

Well, the verdict is in, and I am both pleased in one sense and disappointed in another.

The good news? It did not get OW/W Pages. It got WHITE PAGES!!!! So this aspect of the issue was better than I predicted!

The bad news? 8.5 ... Yes, 8.5

Not at all what I thought following a pressing. The only reasoning I can give to the final grade is that it must have been because of condition on inner pages somehow, since that is the only aspect of the issue that I really did not examine very closely.

It is also possible that the pressing did not improve it nearly as much as I thought it would. I will keep this in mind when personally grading future issues. When I take lots of time to thoroughly examine a comic, I seem to be right on the money most of the time, but when I hurry through the process, it does not work out so well.

So obviously being slow and thorough is the way to go for me from now on.

Officially, the comic is now X-Men #112 SS 8.5 WP with sigs from Bob Layton and George Perez.

I will consider keeping it for the memories it holds from the Supercon, but I may just sell it to recoup at least some of the cost back. We will see...

Meanwhile, I won a Harvey issue from Heritage Auctions yesterday! It is the first Hot Stuff Sizzlers issue for me and the AP/RP ratio I got on this baby was unbelievable!! Check it out below!

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