Tom789

I bought a lot of 17 The Shadow (DC, 1973) books from Heritage that were described as VF+ on average. But when I got the books, wow. Looks like they were read once, carefully, and then stored away. Perfect corners and spines, a few finger bends. A lot of 9.4s and higher after pressing. Got lucky on this one.

I see one spine tick on the front, and on the back I don't know if those are up to 10 spine ticks or just image artifacts. Also might be some tanning on the top front cover, but might not affect the grade much (I have a 9.8 of my own with light tanning). The rest of the book looks fantastic, though there might be a slight finger bend front center right. 9.6 with the one spine tick and finger bend, 8.5/9.0 if those are ticks on the back.

I'm going through and cleaning and pressing my late Bronze Age collection with the goal of slabbing every potential 9.8 I find. This was one of those at first, but after pressing I noticed a faint reading crease on the front cover, bottom right corner - about 1" inch in length. The CGC grading guide says a 1"-inch crease on the front cover caps it at 8.0, but I think that would be a shame for such a beautiful book. I know it's not a 9.8 and no longer planning to submit, but are all creases created equal and could this actually grade higher than an 8.0? Edit: I apologize for the poor resolution on my camera phone, but there are no spine ticks or stresses and no other observable handling flaws.

Even if pressing can eliminate and reduce certain defects it may not be worth it if there is an overriding defect that caps the grade of the book.

This came as a surprise in a run of Iron Man #1-54 that I bought last year.

I bought this back in the early 1980s when I was quite naive about restoration. I'm 95% certain this book is trimmed on the long edges of the front and back covers, thus making it not worth grading (to me). But I want to make sure it's not some weird production issue, in which case I would submit it if it's a known issue.

This book has a small stain on the front cover. I thought it was an oily stain at first, but it does not penetrate to the inner cover, and I was able to make it fainter with an eraser. It has been cleaned and pressed. The stain is circled in red in the closeup photo - the other specks are not on the comic, probably need to clean the lens.

I know distribution ink is usually supposed to be a minor issue, but this book has a LOT and I have no idea how harshly it should be graded.