Randall Dowling

That's an excellent center piece to any collection! Congratulations, Aaron!!

That sounds about right for the WAC 2. Give or take a 1/2 point.

There are multiple Eldons. Also, your image is zoomed in too far for my liking.

You're like a tiger. And every once in a while, you come out of the jungle with a gazelle in your mouth.

@OdinsSecrets There's a thread devoted to the fishy grading come out of Heritage, both certified and raw. Rather than make you sift through the whole thing, there seem to be some odd things chalked up to "production defect". And there are a few books with rat chews and torn off corners getting inappropriately high grades.

You beat me to it!

Something weird is happening in here.

A few nice magazines in this thread. Grab 'em while you can.

The second image looks like it was traced from the first, not redrawn. And then inked rather heavily.

He may be forgotten but he's not gone. My guess is he's still working...

This is my final offer.

Maybe. I seem to remember the guy running CGC at the time saying it was a mistake to assume that "old label" = "not pressed".

I would have totally gone back, chased him down in the most awkward way possible, and asked him something like "Mr. Waters, when you were making the movie Hairspray, and you cast Divine as the mom, was that the right choice?" And then stare at him with a slightly aggressive, expectant look. Not making a sound until he broke the silence first.

I don't think, in any case, staple tears should be considered a production defect. That's weird territory. So no matter how they got there, they should reduce the grade.

This feels like a "mammals and animals" conversation to me. Pressing can cause stress on staples and result in tears. But not all staple stress and or staple tears are from pressing. Also, I don't think it's a safe assumption that books in old label holders were never pressed. Or that raw books weren't either.

If you're serious about this, I recommend @oakman29's advice- Buy the keys first and then fill in the rest after. If history is any indication, you'll never be able to purchase Amazing Fantasy 15 for less than it is right now. And the keys will outpace all others in terms of value increase.

That's what she said... ?

I say smash 'em.

Nice hauls, guys!!

Gorgeous books, @dover! Every Frazetta cover is a win!

It's an excellent copy with great page quality, pal! Impossible to do better without spending a small fortune these days.

Nice work, John!!

Country Girl has one of my favorite George Gross covers.

For the record, I'm far from an expert in restoration. I replaced the staples of a book decades ago with a coworker that had done it before and I've researched it recently because I have a magazine that's tough to replace with migrated rust from the staples. Having said that, I practiced a few times and yes, it's ridiculously easy to rip the centerfold. I have a bit of experience with x-acto knives and was able to do it with one of those. But you can't pry it up using the blade as a lever. You have to apply upward pressure on the staple tine while holding the book down. There are other tools to use but each has it's own considerations. And some books are probably almost impossible due to how they were stitched and how bad the rust is. It really is a case by case basis. Having a set of wax tools like this is also useful.