My dear Watson,

As you are well aware, my cases as of late have been frightfully dull and uninspiring to a man of such intellect and deductive reasoning as I.

I very much regret the death of my arch-nemesis, Professor Moriarty. Ever since his demise, it has become nearly impossible to truly engage my interest in a case. Missing people, lost kittens, illicit affairs and such are just not worthy of my abilities.

However, as you know, my presence has been absent from our Baker Street offices as of late. I hope Mrs. Hudson has been seeing to everything while I have been otherwise engaged. That woman can be... well, maybe I should stay to the business at hand.

I am writing to you now, my dearest friend, to inform you of the case I am currently invested in. I am sorry to have not asked for your help initially, but I felt that I would surely have no problem reasoning out the facts in this interesting conundrum.

However, I have found myself in a quandary. Understanding how such eventualities as this case has mustered and deciphering how it has happened in the first place, has left me both flustered and quizzical. Forgive me, I prattle on when I should be explaining the facts that have led up to this point. It is simply this.

How on earth does a Universally graded CGC 9.8 WP comic book go from the aforementioned 9.8 to a Signature Series 9.4 and back to 9.8 again?

I know this must sound incredibly strange to you, my dear fellow, it did to me at first, but rest assured, it has occurred. I have seen the final results with my own eyes, and I cannot easily dismiss it out of hand. Not since the departed professor stole the Mona Lisa and attempted to pass off professionally rendered fakes have I been so utterly perplexed.

Here are the facts, in sequence.

The book was purchased from an online website called "Ebay". It was already Universally graded by a company known as CGC at 9.8 White Pages. Earlier this year, the owner of the encapsulated product cracked it open and prepared it for two signatures to be applied. It was sent to the owner's brother up north in Philadelphia, a city filled with both beauty and darkness. The locals have an affinity to the Eagle, a majestic bird in its own right, but I digress.

His brother then took the said manuscript across the country to Seattle, Washington for the two signatures. They two have an affinity to birds. It is said, that just last year, their Seahawks were better than any other avian groupings. I feel that I might have to investigate further on these migratory species. I'm sorry, my dear Watson, let me continue.

Once the book was signed, the brother turned it over to CGC for "re-grading", as it is referred to here. The item was taken from one side of the continent to the other. Pacific to Atlantic, North to South, but I need not tell you these trivial things. It was after an abysmally long time, the book finally made its way from the CGC offices down in Florida, back into the original owners hands, also in Florida.

Unfortunately, it had unexpectedly dropped in grade from its original 9.8 status down to 9.4! Not only did the numerical importance change but so did the label. The formerly blue labeling was now yellow in hue, and adhered safely within the encapsulation, above the item in question. This drop in grade is both highly disconcerting to the owner as well as detrimental to the overall value of the book!

Understandably, the owner wished to rectify the situation, and as such, he sent the book back to his brother again, who from my gathering, is as generous as they come. I dare say, my own brother, Mycroft, would be entirely to ensconced on his own affairs to do such a thing for me. This time, the owner planned on having "CPR" done to it. I had never heard this term before, but apparently it refers to "Cracking" the book open, "Pressing" the book in some sort of heated press, and "Re-grading" it afterwards to attempt to bring the item back to its former glory.

My understanding is that this is a risky proposition at best, since performing "CPR" on it is no guarantee of success. In fact, it could very well result in dropping the grade further in some rare cases! Also, the owner has already spent money in procuring the item in its current state, and now must spend even more. This is extra financing that could be used in other recreational activities.

Here's where things become incredulous, Watson! In the process of sending the book back to his brother, the owner realized that a third signature could be added to it at a gathering of like-minded individuals called "Comic Con", which it so happens his brother would be attending! The owner reasoned that if he was going to take the risk of trying to increase the grade of his book, he may as well add another signature to his cherished item.

I must commend him on a brilliant bit of reasoning. This is something I myself might have discerned under the circumstances.

His brother took the book to the convention, acquired the third signature, and resubmitted the book to CGC for this "CPR" process I mentioned earlier. Once again, after a long wait, a wait that makes a journey around the Earth seem trivial, the book finally arrived back into the owners hands, and this is where the problem was brought to my attention.

The owner was at a complete loss to explain how the book could have gone from 9.8, dropped down to a 9.4, and then all the way back up to a 9.8 again! He had hope that it could happen, but never really expected such an end result to truly occur. It was simply the best thing that could have happened in this case, but we are still left with the ultimate question. Why?

I was informed of this most interesting situation last week, when the owner sent me a message, informing me of both his confusion and desire to come to a full realization of the true facts in this case.

I must say, my dear fellow, after speaking with everyone that I could up to this point, I too have been left quite at a loss to fully explain these events. I can imagine our very own Inspector Lestrade from Scotland Yard would likely attempt to explain this away with some of his outlandishly misguided, and totally erroneous suppositions.

While I initially felt that I would not require your assistance in this matter, I must humbly ask if you could possibly disengage yourself from your practice temporarily, to take an airplane (infernal contraptions that they are) over here to America and give me your unique perspective.

I'm sure with you at my side, we can come to a satisfactory conclusion in this case, as we always have in the past.

Yours most truly,

Sherlock Holmes

P.S. I forgot to mention that the book in question is a New Mutants #33 and has been signed by three individuals. Steve Leialoha (most interesting name, I must say), Ann Nocenti and Chris Claremont. I have enclosed a picture of the book as it stands now, for you to examine before you arrive and see if you can find something that I have missed, though I'm not sure what that could be.

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