Sauce Dog

I literally JUST got this book in the mail this week, and it matches a few of your criteria though this one is the dreaded TRIMMED (which I am happy to live with if it means just getting a good looking copy of the book in my collection for cheap) Restored 7.5 (c-1): Paid $384 Universal 7.5: 90-Day Average $1559 (This super low as well, it was previously hitting a high of $2816 and typically you will see it listed online for at least $2000) So in your case it won't be as steep a price cut, and I would say around 2/3 of FMV for your restored GSX1.

She is getting those bonuses because she wasn't just an actor, she was also a Producer (So I would assume while others will see some bonuses they won't be doubled up like hers. I'm sure she had the most sway with contract negotiations as well on both sides)

A spatula, solvent, and a steady hand combined with patience

My comic reading nook overfloweth; This week saw the arrival of half of these trades (Inferno onwards), the other half arrived last week and I quickly devoured them as I worked to catch up on what is now clearly one of the best X-Men run I've ever read and possibly one of my top three rosters of the team.

All things being equal, yes I would always want a pedigree over a regular and happily pay a premium for it. At the end of the day even the rarest of comics of every era have pretty large print runs, so having something that effectively makes my copy 'unique' is always important and trumps so many other possible features (such as newsstand, signatures etc) This is specific though to books I'm not concerned about getting the highest grade to build a competitive set, in which case those I won't be holding out for pedigrees.

THE OPERATION BEGINS. All the tape has been removed from the cover (pieces holding chunks on), while this was by far the most delicate Silver Age paper I've removed tape from it went very well overall.

I happily buy Conserved books. Paper collectibles, regardless of hobby, need to be addressed if long term preservation is an actual concern (for most it isn't, as they just want the book in a Universal slab and then who cares what happens - it has the label and it's in there forever). If a book sits in a slab for decades I don't care if it's Universal, at the end of the day it will be suffering from deterioration from such things as acidity of the pages if not addressed. This is less about repairing a book and more of required maintenance. Likewise, I happily pay to have the most important older books of mine conserved (and in all cases the grades have gone up as well due to the work done. A low-grade grail book doubling it's grade is always welcome) Restored is a different matter, which mostly always comes down to price in relation to the work done on the book. I love CHEAP restored books nobody else would touch. I just bought an amazing looking (the color strike alone made it worth it! The cover was as if it was on an 8.5 or better copy) Golden Age More Fun #36 for pocket change on account of it having brittle pages and slight restoration (split sealed and cover cleaned) - it's now the oldest book in my collection at a price cheaper than many of the Bronze Age books I've bought. Same goes for key books I just want to own for fun, not as an investment, and wouldn't otherwise have shelled out money to own at high grades (bought the first Juggernaut appearance for $300 in 7.5 grade on account of it having a trimmed edge - oh no! It displays better than even other 9.0+ books I own but I paid basically the cost of a Universal 1.0 of the book). How well a book can display ends up being one of the most important factors to me - at the end of the day all slabbed comics are effectively just limited edition art prints one can show off like a gallery) The other side of Restored books is I buy them KNOWING I can either outright undo the work done (slight CT) or the slab pre-dates the CGC conserved label and I know it will be easy to convert it over.

I don't consider myself an expert (*shakes fist* not YET!), but I'm not seeing anything that would appear to be a tear seal on the inside. As others have said, it looks to be moisture damage.

The final piece of the puzzle has been found, thus technically making my absolute trash pile copy of X-Men #1 an official 0.5 at this point - so I guess I'm officially back in the X-club for real again! It won't remain in this state for long though; I'll be doing work on the pages myself (tape removal, restoration removal, stain removal and basic cleaning) and after they are all prepped they will be sent over to Youtube's Jerry the Jitterbug for leaf-casting. I personally usually just am to turn incomplete No Grade books into CGC 0.5 Universal grades (it is the only way I can afford to add certain grail books to my collection), but in this case I realized it was a far better idea to go the extra mile to reach out to another pro to make it structurally much better. Not sure where it will end up with the final grade, so it will be a nice surprise (I do know that if I do the work myself I would be limited to standard tear seals, and since there is a good deal of paper loss, especially now that I have the first page and what work that requires, I could not see it grading higher than a 0.5 anyways) The cover has some pieces of tape on it, but I'm well versed in removing those. Biggest work will be the restoration removal. The guy I bought the incomplete interior from actually attached a cheap reproduction front cover and reproduction first wrap to the interior using DOUBLE SIDED TAPE (which CGC missed and labeled just as glue), so removal without further damaging the interior will be slow (otherwise it might call for additional leaf-casting, adding to the overall cost). While the first page is restored with pieces added and a small bit of color touch - I settled with it as there were not many options for buying just that single page at the moment, but it should be an easy enough task to remove the poorly done infill and very obvious CT (black ink applied to the bottom of the pages panels) Goes to show you that no grail is ever really out of reach, even if you are working with a very small budget and feel priced out of ever obtaining one.

There is so much interesting stuff starting to come out about the making-of process for Barbie, and it is wonderful to see just how much freedom they had to explore and innovate. https://www.gq.com/story/barbie-greta-gerwig-barbie-land-technobarbie-new-color-pink

To be fair I think any leadership would not want Henry Cavill back because he can't play the Superman we all REALLY want, at least not until he goes through carcinization.

The state of DC movie 'confirmations' these days

At least we now have Crippling Depression Barbie that we can buy and use to play through the trauma!

It is also incredibly interesting to think about how much heavy lifting this movie is doing to help the bolster the Oppenheimer box office. There were scads of people in the audience wearing pink when seeing Oppenheimer who wanted to do the whole Barbinheimer double feature meme experience so the take of both films are going to be interesting to dissect and track long term as they are very much intertwined (while Barbie clearly has more legs at this point I'm sure it'll get more people to do the double feature experience while both are in theatres - afterwards not so much)

Got to see it tonight and didn't expect it to go as hard as it did. So much joyful camp combined with a very smart direction. It makes sense now why the sets had to be built for real - otherwise there wouldn't be anything for the actors to chew on while having that much fun (Gosling was clearly meant for this and stole every scene he was in, the dude knows physical comedy and gets it. I'm going to have to rewatch Nice Guys again just for fun now). Visually extremely well done (not just the sets and in camera effects, but the costuming. I can't even fathom how many times they had to re-dye every Barbie and Kens light hair to properly color sync them with every single outfit change for every new scene - I think I would die from that much hair dye) It is bonkers to think how easily a property like Barbie could have just become a typical movie like any other toy franchise without much exploration (Transformers, Battleship, Lego etc not saying they are bad, but they don't really stray too far from home overall). It really is a rarity to get a mega major property movie to venture into a direction such as this. The humour alone was surprising varied - going from visual slapstick to cheap dirty JO jokes all the way to very deep-cut historic niche references without missing a beat. There will for sure be jokes many will not get but I'm sure it won't feel too jarring) Also any man who felt attacked by this film might have missed the entire point it was making (IMO they spelled it out very clearly at the end/jokes that I'm now even more concerned with media literacy lol)

Finally got around to watching this now that it's streaming and...it was meh. I think I was honestly bored during a few stretches of it, regardless of how much yelling was going on. Nothing really felt compelling, especially once it became clear every moment was going to try for easy emotional hook by making it feel like someone was about to die (but never sticking to it - I honesty would have been interested to have Drax or Rocket die, even more so if Star Lord bit it), and what moments did start to resonate were often quickly cut short by a quick quip. On the plus side it sounded much better than it looked, though the soundtrack was the weakest of the trilogy (at points feeling a little forced just to get a 'classic' song into a scene). Third act was better than most of the other recent MCU offerings, which is something I have low expectations for now so that was a nice surprise (though I hated the inclusion of the evil-large-cgi-swarm-army at the end that came out of nowhere, offered zero real challenge, and looked cheap. The movie didn't need that 'spectacle' in order to highten the final act tension) Cosmo was the absolute star of the show and stole every scene, with the opposite being said for the waste of a role that was Adam - who really had nothing to offer the plot and served to just repeat jokes we've seen done before. 6/10 (with one full point being from JUST Cosmo scenes alone)

You mean sired by whoever's body he was highjacking at the time, those certainly were not Steve's soldiers swimming around in there

Part of me thinks this is just a 'working title' issue and it actually isn't WW3. With the Amazon show also on their slate I could see a case for this just being a brand new WW movie with no connection to the DCEU and casting Gadot in another role (perhaps as Hippolyta, or cameo as WW from another timeline ugh)

This stings extra hard knowing how much you also paid to ship it to you here in Canada

If CGC detects it has been wet cleaned with Peroxide they are not going to just say 'oh, well a little bit never hurt anyone!' Any chemical agent introduced during cleaning, be it wet or dry, is restoration.

Thank you so much Mike. I will message you directly to arrange that.

Well, this is looking like a bleak future

Speaking of cancelled Resident Evil projects...nice to finally see some visualization of concepts from this project. .

Oh, I love restored books - no problem with those. It's less of me trying to justify myself, and rather wanting to offer some positive sharing on why it is a viable avenue of purchasing for others that might otherwise feel they should always steer clear of restored/trimmed (it seems many entering into collecting just hear the that they should avoid them with no nuance given or a real understanding of just how much savings there are to be had - it's only ever talked about as something that would ruin your future profits while speculating). We need more restored love on all comic boards

There are some books I've always wanted to have in my collection just because of a favourite character, so getting them in as high grade as possible for cheap has been a goal - and I've recently made peace with accepting trimmed books when it means paying thousands of dollars less Jumped on this on last week on Heritage for only $384 (compare to a universal in the same grade selling for $1400-2000, even $2800 two years ago. A non-trimmed 7.0 C-1 recently sold for $900, so I think I can live with this cheap good looking display book)