Wow that's crazy!
I went from booth to booth looking to pick up copies and a few of the dealers threw out $90 at me. I haggled and got about 4-5 copies in VF-VF+ for about $35/40 ea. Watch out for the copies with the "printer defect" small tears at the bottom. And yes, the book continues to rise even as the weeks go by.
What kind of grade drop will these tears cause? If a book looks like it would otherwise grade 9.8 but has these tears, what will it grade?
They don't drop the grade. Look up graded 9.8s on eBay, you can find several copies with several tears along the bottom edge.
I can confirm this. My friend got 3x 9.8s back that all had this.