First of all, your grades are excellent - it's obvious that you preserved your comics very well. Second of all, as you noted, things are much different than the 80's. Non-colorbreaking damage was almost completely overlooked then (or at least considered to lower the grade very, very little.) And there was nothing above NM. Finally, the CGC era has ushered in fugly miscut or otherwise defective 9.8s while taking a perfectly cut, perfectly centered book down to 9.4 for one color breaking back cover 1/16th inch crease. Once you learn the system, I believe you will do very well, because you already have the chops as it relates to selecting high grade books and preserving them.