fantastic_four

I remember this book--I fell asleep during that auction or it probably woulda been mine! Great books, try to find a way to keep them!

One might wonder that because you started the bidding below the reserve. Why not start at the minimum? I ask rhetorically, already knowing the answer--it's a game to generate interest. Can't mentally fault bidders with a for playing the silly little game that's been set up for them to play--that's just a bizarre thing to fault them for. Under the law, can the seller or authorized agent bid beyond the minimum reserve?

Bronze.

Can CGC detect deacidification? I used to know the answer to that but haven't thought about it in 5-10 years and forget. Don't run when you see the presser-haters pull out the torches--turn and fight them. It's a lot more fun for the rest of us to watch if you do.

Understatement of the year!!! I suppose I actually meant "nerd"--I'm no geek, I'm actually quite suave and coordinated. Don't make me come to your house and dunk on you in your driveway. No hoop. No driveway for said hoop either (at least for a few more days). Well I can't dunk right now anyway, so maybe I'll be at it again by the time you get a hoop up. Talking about it the other day jazzed me up...I played Saturday and Sunday and am planning to play Thursday and Friday as well. Tough to stay in shape playing once a week, I need to do it at least 3-4 times per week to stay in shape only via basketball.

What kinds of things do you frame? Any idea what people with Da Vincis, Van Goghs, Picassos, etc use for the plastic in their frames? Or do they tend to avoid layers over art entirely?

It seems that you're new here, so hello, VintageComics, it's great to meet you--welcome to the boards! You may be unaware of this, but people around here have formed entrenched sects with regards to what they believe is and is not restoration. Deacidification is additive whereas pressing isn't. From that perspective, some might think of it as being more of a restorative measure than pressing is, and plenty of people define pressing as restoration.

Casarachi claimed it's around five times more expensive than Mylar--you disagree, or do you mean as compared to competing brands of rigid material?

Has anyone else experienced this? I can't say that I have, although that's not indicative of anything--different bag manufacturers may use different processes to seal the Mylar together. I do vaguely recall that the tests the Library of Congress ran on Mylar were on bags that were sealed on the sides because they ran multiple tests on bags sealed on variable numbers of sides--the tests were with Mylars sealed on four sides, three sides, two sides, one side, and none at all, i.e. paper sandwiched between two loose sheets of Mylar.

Understatement of the year!!! I suppose I actually meant "nerd"--I'm no geek, I'm actually quite suave and coordinated. Don't make me come to your house and dunk on you in your driveway.

What's the cost? Does it take expertise to do, or can anyone buy the spray and apply it assuming they're moderately careful?

The Mylar itself doesn't contain plasticizers, but I thought he was referring to the acidity of the material used to seal the two Mylar sheets together. I'm not disputing this, but do you recall where you heard it?

The fact that a clear backing board won't absorb acid off-gassing from the comic is definitely a concern and a slight disadvantage of clear backing boards. However, I doubt there's any way to create a great-presenting clear backing board that could fill that role, and as you suggested, there are other ways to absorb acid released from the comic if you prefer the superior presentation of a clear board. Microchamber paper interleaved within interior pages seems like the ideal substitute if you're not going to use an inert, buffered board such as those sold by E. Gerber or Bill Cole that you have to change every decade or two.

THANKS, I appreciate all the info! (thumbs u I can't entirely trust the word of the scientists alone you were referring to who work for DuPont and GE--they're biased because they sell the product. What I usually can trust is an independent third party, particularly a museum or library. Mylar is trusted because the Library of Congress ran tests a long time ago--I think the 1950s--and determined that Mylar didn't start to break down and release acid for a bit over 100 years. The material CGC used for their well, Barex, had no such independent tests run on it, so a non-profit hobby organization--I think one of the CBCA's predecessors, I forget who sponsored it--had an indepedent assessment run on the material. If memory serves, Tracey Heft ran the experiments in a similar way to the ones were run on Mylar by the LoC, and he published the results either in CBG or CBM. We discussed it around here when he ran the study, and Tracey himself posted about the results in the restoration forums here about a decade ago--I think it was 2003 but I could be off by a year. I just did a search on the LoC web site on the term "Lexan" and only found one reference to it where they recommended it interchangeably with Lucite and Plexiglas for framing art as the layer of plastic that comes in direct contact with the art, so that's a decent indicator of its quality. Do you recall where you heard Lexan becomes acidic more slowly than Lucite, or where you heard that the Mona Lisa is encased in Lexan? I'm not sure I understand why you're asserting that unlike Mylar, Lexan never needs to be changed out. What makes you think Lexan breaks down more slowly than Mylar? The LoC found that Mylar without plasticizers breaks down in just over 100 years--where did you hear Lexan breaks down more slowly? The anecdote you gave about jet fighters being made from Lexan not deteriorating for 1000 years is interesting, but it doesn't really go towards establishing its archival durability relative to Mylar--I'm sure the Lexan in those jet fighters will start releasing acids long before they become brittle enough to break after ~1000 years. Oh, and by the way--I'm not grilling you just to be a . I'm a bit of a conservationist geek and I think your idea for Clears is a great one--I've posted here several times over the last decade wishing there was a product like yours on the market, and I'm glad to see you created it and impressed by what I've heard so far regarding the approach you've taken to create the product.

Your ad says that "many museums and conservationists" use Lexan for inert archival storage...where did you learn that from? I'm not disputing it, I'm just looking for references to back it up to make sure. Shortly after CGC started we had the same questions about the Barex that the CGC inner well is made of...someone did a study of the Barex and found it to be of almost the same archival quality as Mylar.

This is my favorite FF cover. There's a beautiful TC copy just sold recently on Clink. I bid on it to a point but then it went to silly money, well at least for me Great book Hem… How much silly? Over eight grand, like I said silly money, but then I am not very wealthy (thumbs u That book has two stigmas--it was just a 9.2 mere months ago and anyone in the recent market for that book will remember that, and it has a fugly dust shadow along the top edge. This is by far the lowest total for a 9.4 copy of FF 13--the others all sold for over $12K. The book sold for a record low as a 9.2 as well presumably due to that dust shadow.

As far as I know it's not specific to magic marker, it's completely an effect of color and light--with black light you can't see black color touch with any kind of material from magic marker that bleeds to acrylic paint that doesn't.

I'm sure they exist with both the price circle and stamp in intact, sometimes Silver books were cut well wider than average. The widest-cut Silver book I have is a copy of Spidey #20--I can't fit it in a Silver Age mylite bag, I have it in a GA bag because it's about a half-inch to three-quarters of an inch wider than the average Silver book.

I wouldn't say my 12 has a full CCA stamp, the extreme right edge was cut off--but with how packed the graphics are on this issue, you can't have both the 12 cent circle and the CCA stamp both be intact unless they miscut the issue to be wider than most Silver books are, which is possible. Actually I think your 13 may be slightly wider than my 13 by about 1/8" of an inch, you appear to have the same amount of space to the left of the price circle as mine but more room to the right of the CCA stamp.

I'll assume you mean my 13. It's a 9.6/9.8 book that if I remember correctly Steve Lauterbach dripped a spot of water on putting it in his car at the original owner's house. Definitely the best-presenting 9.2 I've ever seen. I bought it from drummy a while back now...I think he didn't notice the water spot (which is extremely faintly visible in the scan) and resubbed it due to it's insane appearance. From 2000 to about 2010, I think I saw two copies of FF 13 hit the open market that were 9.0 or better besides this one. Used to seem like one of the rarest possible Marvels, but the last two years have seen quite a few surface.

The cut on that book looks fantastic, GRATS! There must be some well-hidden defects as it looks a notch or two higher than 8.5--all I can see is the slight bindery tear in the upper-left corner and 2-3 spine dings. The book probably has fallen in price a bit because they seem to be coming out of the woodwork the last few years. You used to go 3-5 years and not see one copy at 8.5 or better, but there have been quite a few 9.x copies per year hitting market of late.

I'm in the middle of four books: - "The Way of Zen" by Alan Watts (reading it for a fifth or sixth time for the benefit of my girlfriend who is also reading it. I read it 4-5 times between the ages of 17 and 23 but haven't read it in over 15 years.) - "The Hobbit" by Tolkien - "Catcher in the Rye" by Salinger - "Freedom" by Jonathan Franzen

AWESOME book! Where'd you get that raw?

When and where did you pick this up? I'm guessing pre-CGC? Fantastic book...odd that it's the only copy I've ever seen in 9.2. And a weird thing--I looked up the serial number and the grade date was listed as 3/2/2005, yet it's clearly an old label book. Was it regraded, or is CGC's database hosed?

An interesting aspect of the certification lookup tool is that you can identify books that are old label-graded but have a new label due to reholdering since they show the grading date in the detail. My ASM 1 has a new label, and I was already aware that it used to be in an old-label holder because forum member Robert Zipperer used to own it and I saw a scan of it when he first bought it via E-Bay, but now that they've opened the cert tool up, I found that it was graded in early 2000 shortly after CGC started up. I wasn't sure until then whether it was a crack and resub or just a reholder. So I knew it was old-label, but I didn't know it was THAT old-label.