Sauce Dog

Oh sweet hell... guys....I think it was my friend who bought the scam 2nd print off Ebay. He's has basically been living vicariously through my comic purchases for decades now due to his costly family life, but has always wanted a TMNT #1 someday - I've been sending him GOOD decent deal links to buy them for years now (Just last month he passed on a decent 3rd print I showed him that was only $350 because it was 'too expensive') but then he just suddenly emails me today saying he bought his grail...and showed me the pics. Usually I get text messages and emails weekly from him with long lists of ebay links he is considering buying - which I have to vet and tell him are not great deals...but this time, no warning or asking of advice...he just pulled the trigger! edit update: He isn't totally dumb. He knows he bought a reprint, and he only paid $70 for it but kept talking like it was a legit 2nd print he paid lots for. Whew...at least that's one crisis averted.

I sent em an email earlier raising the issue - as anyone buying this will be very upset if/when they learn of the true condition of the book.

I don't think logic will work well on someone who opts to take a blurry photo of their computer monitor, with a phone, in order to post it to a website on a computer

I can count on one hand how many people I personally know who own either an AC1, BT1, CAP1, TEC27 combined...whereas I'll need a pen and paper to give you a list of everyone I know that owns an AF15. If I'm asked to source a copy of AF15 for someone I know I can get at least a few potential people open to offers within a week, whereas the others - yikes. Demand is there, and he is perhaps the most popular (at the moment), but I would hesitate to ever put AF15 on comparable grounds to these GA grails. I'm very curious at which price point will it take AF15 to hit for a good deal of collectors to cash out and we see a noticeable uptick in offering of copies on the market (as the majority of those holding the book are not what I would call wealthy collectors with extensive collections - they picked up the character due to being a favourite after lots of hard work and savings. My best friend insists he never ever wants to sell his AF15, but every week checks in with me to find out where it is price wise and if it is a good time to consider selling at a huge profit )

but the REAL news is the coverless raw copy...looks like the floor for entry into the AF15 club is well over 10k (we can assume the cost for Spider-Man story pages from this to also continue to rise)

I'm just so happy I found that out NOW. I would have wanted to murder someone had I won this auction and found out later - thank you free grader notes from saving me at least a grand or two $$$. Checking every single books grader notes now that they are free is pretty much required.

Since most of the books I'm interested in are about a week away from completion I decided to go through them all and review the grader notes for each in order to narrow down my spending. This All-Star Comics #4 jumped out at me, which on the surface looked to be a great entry level copy for me to buy (I absolutely love this cover - my favourite of all Golden Age team covers. I have a very low grade copy that has a panel cut out, and I have dreamt of upgrading it) but now with these notes there is no way it won't be overpriced for what it really is! https://comics.ha.com/itm/golden-age-1938-1955-/superhero/all-star-comics-4-dc-1941-cgc-vg-40-off-white-to-white-pages/a/7266-97070.s?ic2=mytracked-lotspage-lotlinks-12202013&tab=MyTrackedLots-101116 Nice, right? Label looks good, right? PLOT TWIST...incomplete, at best a 2.0/2.5 on a good day. Grader Notes centerfold missing chews full top of cover front cover detached piece out left top of front cover

Yup, and honestly I think I prefer having some of these ragged incomplete copies pieced out and enter the market as pages in order to make the 'chase' possible for many collectors (both new and old). It is sometimes a overwhelming detriment for many who want to start collecting a series to know one of those books are 100% out of their reach forever and they cannot complete it no matter the situation. This also applies to many older collectors who might have stopped trying to build a run as the price of books shot out of reach. If more AF15 or BAT1 pages enter the market it can make people more open to trying for an original run (stimulating demand for all books in that run) and inject even more excitement as people show those pages off (as remember, many people only show off books with covers - lots of people don't ever have real exposure to the interiors of golden age books in an original way, especially for expensive books. It's super amazing to actually SEE the panels of such a grail when most of the time we've been used to just seeing complete graded copies as they sold at auction)

It really depends on exactly how much this piece is 'still attached', as I can see the text doesn't align and makes me think it can move around easily. It's a wildcard and would need more pictures.

Figured I might as well vent about it somewhere, but this was such an awful movie. I enjoyed the first one in spite of its many flaws, but still had low expectations going into this one, even then...damn what a stinker. Some enjoyable Eddie/Venom bickering moments (what I enjoyed most about the first film) but otherwise nothing I'm going to retain in my brain. Is it just me or did the -script lack an entire 2nd act? It was some initial 1st act setup, but them BAM!...escape and we are straight to doing the entire 3rd act dark-dusty church fight that felt like half the movie. More-so than the first film, the PG-13 rating is really noticeable here and feels wrong - Carnage is reduced to basically no on screen kills (and when he does...dusty obscured tornado move?), zero blood anywhere, and no real sense of 'violence' from Cassidy (other than we are told he is a serial killer).

Don't have it Restored, rather have it professionally Conserved - there is a world of difference between the two and with it you can still get a Blue Conserved label at a much higher grade with only minimal work done (and prevent any further damage, as it is not impossible the book continues to shift in the case causing stress to the tear - I have a few books with a defect that has grown over time while inside their CGC case. Conservation is also reversible.)

I hope they never reveal that! It would both fail to live up to any expectation AND destroy one of the last 'unknown' mysteries of Star Wars that hasn't been expanded on in detail.

Specifically the big thing to do is correcting the pH of the paper. Paper that is even slightly acidic will have already begun deteriorating by the time someone has it slabbed.

For me personally I was elated when a found someone selling the Doctor Fate story pages from More Fun #61, my favourite Golden Age issue of his (in which he throws an entire alien planet in a sun, as he figures its faster to kill em all rather than spend the time disarming the alien race). This was a story I LOVED to admire in the original print, as all the reprints of the story I own (even from the expensive DC archive HC) do not replicate the print colors & printing process correctly (and are all printed on bright bone white pages - no!!!!!). I had a raw reading copy (as well as a graded one) but due to its condition and page quality it started to become very risky to even open it up to admire these story pages - so I had it graded for its own protection. Once I saw these listed on ebay I jumped on them and hope to have them framed for display and easy viewing.

I love and understand the desire for pages from mega rare expensive key books. My best friend has always wanted the 1st Destroyer, but even decades ago it was impossible to find (and when he did it was outside his budget). I was finally able to hunt down pages from it and he's going to be the happy owner of the very first page. It scratches the itch of having the book (and the CGC label which he likes) and displays very well since it has Stan Lees name on the cover and features great Destroyer art. Full post on my IG: https://www.instagram.com/p/CTIzXkMMxsB/

Leaf casting in of itself isn't restoration if that is all that was done - as in no color touch was applied afterwards to hide it. From a purely structural standpoint I'm fine with leaf casting being Conservation so long as the piece fill isn't a large amount of the book. Married back cover however, not sure what I feel about it. I can see the argument being made for marrying a page would increase the stability of the that wrap and fall under the intent of conservation (since weight isn't all on one side of the staple) but for some reason it feels 'off' to me and as you said feels more like restoration / qualified would be a better label for this work.

#NeverForget For sure, but in your case it wasn't a requirement to grade those books 'for display' as a top loader would have sufficed and looked perhaps even more impressive (and I'm sure you most certainly didn't slab them for re-sale purposes at this point). People who grade their books for display are also in some way wanting to show off the GRADE of the book, that is a great deal of the 'flex' involved with collecting these days (and one reason why any non-blue labels are stigmatized). A certified grade says "YES, I INDEED OWN THIS. Not a reprint!" and "This book is objectionably better than others below its grade! Behold my power!" (I know plenty of people who don't consider they actually own a book worthy of showing off until it has been graded...even if the book is so low value and poor condition it isn't worth grading in the first place. ) The primary importance of grading is as you said being the integrity of the grade for resale, in which case it should be made absolutely clear what the book is. Could a compromise be found between all these labels and simply adding in information to a Universal blue label, sure, but at the end of the day this clarity to me is more valuable (especially in a world of questionable sellers and uneducated buyers. It's easy to hand wave away those being screwed by online auctions as 'not having read the label' or not having done proper due diligence, but these are real problems and a simple clear label is a great visual indicator of data. Conveying important information WITHOUT the need to read lots or hunt for info is the best possible way for any sort of packaging labeling)

I have zero problem with conserved or restored books, and I prefer the clear distinction between labels, so I find CBCS' approach to such things lacking. I would not want to compromise the classification and transparency of the hobby simply to appeal to some collectors OCD on displaying their books. The stigma isn't with the label, it's with people not understanding or appreciating the varied levels of work that goes into such things and generalizing (not all restored books are amateur color touched trimmed franken-books). I do love the new label for Conservation, as that level of work was being unfairly stigmatized by being lumped in with all restoration (a backwards approach compared to other paper industry standards) but should still stand out from an untouched Universal grade.

Watched it and the best thing was seeing 8D8. I'm very happy to have a speaking role for my most favourite character from RotJ. Poor droid is just itching to get back to doing what it loves...torturing! As always, great to see them revisit such characters who had limited screen time and mobility in the original films due to the limitations of the time (likewise I'm sure there are those who loved to see Gamorreans in actual action) Otherwise, found it to be a fairly bland start and thought it visually looked a little poor (especially night scenes) when compared to Mandalorian.

This just saved me a few hundred dollars of grief - a seller had a very nice looking 7.5 book for sale and stated the defects could be pressed out for a grade bump (spin stress)...but since notes are now free it just took a few seconds to learn that the entire book has rippling and 'moderate staining to cover' which wasn't at all visible from their photos. edit: To clarify, it's for these 'smaller' books where free grader notes excel. Before I would only purchase them for big purchases in order to vet something epic, but for anything a few hundred dollars or less it was never worth it to buy em. This will result in better confidence in buying CGC books overall (though they do need to have notes, at least one, on all books up to 9.6)

The first part of the movie really could have been the focus on the entire film, as it was playing with the exact same narrative idea as Wes' Cravens New Nightmare - unfortunately in this case they wrapped up that idea half way through the movie and then it just became a generic Matrix sequel (with the only real standout scenes being any Neo/Trinity interaction...either in the shop or on the bike when focused more on their relationship). Also more Chad. That was just perfection in every way (fully meta, meme terminology, IRL friendships, movie references etc...)

Ah yes, it's never an online discussion without some misogyny creeping into it.

It was pretty good and a fresh direction, with lots of good concepts that better expanded on the lore. The first half was the better part, and I would have loved more time spent playing with Neo's sanity and being pulled between the two 'realities', however the main issue with the latter half was the poor (by comparison to prior films) shooting of the fights (which wasn't the focus of this movie, as they implied within it, but still the quality of camera work stood out to me as wanting) that also lacked much 'threat'.

Dry cleaning can be detected if done poorly, but at that point it's less about noticing the 'dry cleaning' itself and more about noticing the defects it created (slight color lift in areas, gloss is lessened or outright removed - especially white areas, stroke lines from cleaning, small amount of residue/putty from Absorene left on the page that the cleaner missed)

Obviously, Spider-Man: No Way Home ...because everything I read made it clear that it's still a damn pandemic!