VintageComics

Invaders #1 CGC 9.8 White Asking $400 (shipping included)

Incredible Hulk #122 CGC 9.8 OWW (Hulk and Thing battle) Asking $1100 (shipping included)

Eternals #1 CGC 9.8 White Asking $1100 (shipping included)

Beware #1 CGC 9.8 White (Tough book in grade) Asking $1100 (shipping included)

Batman #251 CGC 9.4 OWW (Classic Neal Adams Joker cover) Asking $1700 (shipping included)

Amazing Spider-man #194 CGC 9.8 OWW (1st Black Cat) Asking $1750 (shipping included)

Amazing Spider-man #119 CGC 9.8 White - (Spider-man and Hulk battle) Asking $1200 (shipping included)

Sorry guys. I was waiting on scans from CGC (they always seem to arrive later than you expect them to) and have been in Chicago for the last couple of days at C2E2. Posting the remaining scans now...

I'm assuming it would be somewhat useful if every book was scanned by the outer covers but there are many things AI won't do. AI won't be able to detect gloss at an angle, how the inside cover looks (and how much foxing or tanning goes through a cover), check for staples at the centerfold or look for interior defects. So I'm assuming that CGC would then start having captured images of every book they scan?

Eh, no. Er, maybe? The pages peeking out are a product of age, moisture content of the paper and how the book was stored. Yes, pressing a book CAN make the paper change size but it's a process that occurs naturally and you have no way of knowing how or why it got there. That's why some books EVEN AFTER THEY HAVE BEEN PRESSED have all the edges of the pages and covers line up (Silver Age, Bronze Age it doesn't matter). The book looks trimmed...but it wasn't, and the covers didn't shrink even though they were pressed. Why? Because when the book was new that is the way the book looked on the newsstand and we are not used to seeing books that way because they have been aging for decades. Fuzzy paper at the staples is usually a product of reading a book and paper being stressed at the staples. I've had many books pressed and have never thought to myself 'hey, this paper got more fuzzy after pressing' Impacted staples happen THE MAJORITY OF THE TIME on specific issues in the mid 1960's from the way the book was produced. The top staple is usually the one (not always) and it's (IMO) too tight, causing the paper to indent around the staple. I'm not going to start disclosing which books have it because in this new market all knowledge is valuable but it does happen with regularity with some issues especially in the runs you collected. Pressing 'might' weaken those areas but more often than not, the problem was there to begin with. Also, stored a book upright will cause the interior pages to lean outwards from the cover (top leaning out first usually) and weaker staples will be more prone to indenting at the staple from the interior pulling out. Horizontal crease close to the spine? First I've heard of it. It's likely a reading crease that was already there before pressing. I don't see how a pressed book can create a horizontal crease along the spine. Some SA (and BA) books come with creases because the paper didn't fold properly for whatever reason and again, pressing can either make this pre existing condition worse or better just as handling the book could. So, I disagree that the more of these stigmata a book has, the more likely it's been pressed because these all appear on unpressed books and are not products of pressing.

I responded to you about people bad mouthing a 9.4 but didn't single you out on that later post. I did 'single you out' when I quoted you and the list of defects that you attributed to pressing much earlier, all of which can and do exist on unpressed books. But we're all over the road now. The single point I've been trying to make through all of this was meant to be that just because pages are peeking out (even all the way down the book) does not automatically mean a book was pressed.

I actually didn't single you out but you do have a history of talking about pages peeking out and pressing negatively and all I am trying to do is balance the conversation and show that just because a book has pages sticking out it does not mean it was pressed.

If you're talking auction books, most auction books are usually consigned months before the auctions start so I don't think it's related to coronovirus scare which is barely 2 months old and the markets have only been correcting for the last week or two, when most of these books were already ending.

So you are still a virgin. Come over here. Have some! I had pizza the 1st time I was ever in Oregon about 11 years ago. It was a Taco pizza. They make pizza very different in Oregon than they do in Chicago.

It's normal for major companies to go under and for the strong to survive. Maybe the market is just too saturated with product and not enough readers over all.

@Scott =) @Brittany M. We should know soon enough.

Here's the long and short of it: Whether a book has pages peeking OR NOT, whether a book has impacted staples OR NOT, whether a book has a twisted spine OR NOT and whether a book has fuzz around the staples OR NOT, none of these are 'tells' that a book was pressed because both pressed and unpressed books exhibit these qualities. And if I was auctioning a million dollar book and some randoms on the internet were posting misinformation that my book looked improperly pressed (when in fact the book looked the same raw before it was pressed) I wouldn't be happy.

Or better said that a 3rd ARE miswrapped then. And that's a very high percentage. And you are probably going back as far as two decades in looking at the Heritage examples whereas over time, the better wrapped copies may be kept longer leaving more miswrapped copies on the open market.

No, you used the 9.4 book as a soapbox to go on and explain how it was caused by pressing when that is not the case. You're so childish it's impossible to have a rational discussion with you. 1st, the chances that the Pacific Coast ASM #11 CGC 9.6 WASN'T PRESSED is slim. I don't know if Schmell owned it or not, but I'd just expect the majority of high grade SA Marvels to be pressed. 2nd, there ARE SA Marvels that don't exhibit pages peeking out. I never said there weren't. Not all SA Marvels look the same, but pressing is not the reason why they look different. IT ALL DEPENDS ON HOW THE BOOKS WERE STORED AND HOW THEY AGED OVER TIME. Some books that don't have pages peeking out get stigmatized as being trimmed because people aren't used to seeing them that way when in fact they aren't trimmed. So your single picture of a book that may or may not be pressed, that is a one off example and not indicative of the majority is really just that. A single picture of a book.

I didn't get a questionnaire but did they really ask this?

For a scientist, you sure to use personal attacks and lack facts a lot. Let me show you how you are lacking facts: Do you have pictures of books from these collections? They would be starting points. My guess is that they would still how varying degress of the defects we're talking about. Why? BECAUSE THE PAPER AGES OVER TIME! That is the point all along. So a collection that was brought to market 30 years ago, depending on the storage conditions may or may not have that attributes but still eventually could as the paper ages. All of which are occurring anyways in comics that weren't pressed. Got it. There's NOTHING wrong with having a discussion like this in the AF #15 thread. BTW, did you see the OO AF #15 I posed with the pages peeking out? Just to bring the conversation full circle, I also have a picture of the torpedo 9.4 copy when it was raw (the picture was taken before the collection was even purchased) and the book looks EXACTLY THE SAME RAW AS IT DOES IN THE SLAB NOW.

Here is the book from the old, off continent collection I wrote about earlier. Noticed that the pages are showing all down the right side of the book. This book was not pressed. It was an original owner book, stored in a stack along with the rest of the collection.

1. The notion that I'm responsible for stigmatizing pressing for early SA Marvels, rather than the thousands of results that pressing of early SA Marvels has generated is absurd. 2. Please find my quote that states flaws introduced by pressing are 'the rule'. Good luck with that. You're drawing attention to defects THAT EXIST ON UNPRESSED BOOKS and stating that they are because of pressing. It's ridiculous. And the only reason we're having this discussion is because your attention was brought to these sorts of things through an extreme example where a batch of books that used to be yours were pressed improperly and we had a discussion about them here. It's like when I bought a white Dodge Caravan thinking it was a cool looking car and then after I purchased it, I noticed that there were White Caravans everywhere but hadn't before. So you are making it sound like all of your listed traits are the norm for pressed books when in fact, they are the norm for Silver Age books in general, which were just throwaway newsprints books with low production quality.

Yes. I've noticed this as well. And as an interesting side note, I have a theory as to why. Years ago I picked up an original owner Marvel SA collection from off continent and all of the issues that were notorious for off center miswraps were perfectly centered. I attributed it to those issue being early off the presses (because they had to travel further to reach the newsstand) and therefore have stronger production quality. I just went back to look at the AF #15 from this batch, and you guessed it, it was nearly perfectly centered with only the tip of the A touching the spine, the circle fully present on the left and the comics code fully present on the right. As was the FF #48 and all other issues that are normally poorly centered.

Or you can walk a show floor and find 1000's of examples exhibit these traits that have never been pressed (or would want to be pressed because they are worthless). What you're doing is stigmatizing something that you don't personally like and drawing attention to examples and making it sound like it's the rule when it definitely isn't. It's called bias and the examples you post are called confirmation bias. I learned that from you.