Glassman10

GPA at a 5.0 to a 5.5 gives about a 350 dollar spread which is pretty good. As a raw book, if you plan to sell it, expect to get less in the range of 30 percent less and it could be worse. . If you press and slab expect that to chew up about 90 bucks at a realistic minimum. This is where it gets hard. Look on EBAY, SEE WHAT IT DOES. lOOK AT GPA and you should join that group. The nice thing about a slab is the book is monetized and few fight that grading. If it's a love affair, don't slab it, read it , carefully.

no, I doubt you are going to get an 8. 8 is a large number. It is a nice looking book. I love reading mine (well, not that dumb vulture). The path to 9.6's is strewn with heartache. If you're new to grading as am I, look at a few thousand books just to gain some humility. Even worse, grade your own books and come back in a month and do it again. You'll be handing out .5's in no time.

I can't see a piece missing beyond a small marvel chip on the front middle right. Am I reading that correctly? The staples appear to me to be starting to rust and are leaving a rust stain by the upper centerfold staple which in my mind is not good. Some not very deep spine ticks and no apparent color breaks. I'm not sure what CGC would do with the date stamps, I don't think that really damages a grade but there's more knowledgeable people on those than I. One back corner looks roughed up. I'm at a 6.5 maybe 7.0. Consider a press. I continue to think the vulture was a stretch as a super villain, more like a super letch.

I was struck over the last few days how quickly this community has effectively tried to move in against successful theft. What I see here is heartening. I'm quite new to this, not a dealer, not really a collector anymore yet learning at a very fast pace about the monetized world of comics. I have this modest collection and I'm selling it and anyone who has followed any of my travels through this has been either irritated or pleased by what I'm doing which is simply selling a collection I built unintentionally over forty five years ago so my youngest can make a down payment on a house. In this I've met remarkably kind people offering to help me make it to the goal. I had to pass on one assist because I couldn't afford it but he was really kind helping me learn about grading which was comical given what I knew. I have in the interim sold some books to yet another and I totally enjoy the relationship I have had with Jeremy as I let a few books out. Many have encouraged me to get it out there for sale and i'm an old guy, not familiar with the nature of the internet and scanning and whatever I watch and see as I fumble along in my goal. What Jeremy has pushed at me has essentially how honest this board will be in dealings. He said it would be hard, I had to grade accurately and have a fair price but that essentially, I would be well pleased about how the sales went. I've still remained reluctant but less so now. The action over common theft has really sold me. He's coming back in about two weeks and has offered to list things for me, A relief for an old guy who bought these things off the news stand fifty years back. He has given me great confidence is helping reach what must appear to be a stupid and naive goal. Your actions really help me believe there's integrity somewhere. Hats off. Pete V/ ******

6.5 for me but the dark color in the center pages near the spine tells me something is going on there. That top cover is just waiting to chip.

I would actually give a 5.0 based on the snot I was looking at earlier today. Mine barely made a 1.5 and that was really squinting.

I think it's really hard with the blur. I'd be at a 3.5- 4.0. I have a 5.0 and I know what it looks like.

Just start referring to them as "He who shall not be named". Then absolutly no one will know who you're talking about. I find this little dance to be kind of pathetic. Honest discussion happens in sunlight.

It just strikes me that slabbing is about monetizing a standard of condition. It seems it has been the case that one company grades a bit higher than the other which virtually everyone had noticed and the jury for that will be in what a buyer is willing to pay for one grader over the other. Once it was observed that CGC sells for more than the other guy. it's pretty hard to ever get that toothpaste back in the tube. Offering graders notes for nothing has nothing to do with the simplicity of the math when you're counting your money at the end the day. And then there's the market which fluctuates and everyone expects to constantly go up. For some books, that's pretty much true although I have watched two AF 15 6.5's at auction recently. One went at a bit over $61K and the most recent one only pulled 59K. Then there was a 4.0 which went for over 40K and that just left me confused. Maybe people really are buying the books, not the grade. That's novel.

The rust really does leach badly on the rear cover. It's worse on the top staple but both have it. One can't tell how it affects the inner pages. The wrap is pretty off and some staining seems to be on the first page of the story at the top. A 6.0 is a fair grade tops..

It's hard to find obvious faults. The spine corners are a bit rounded. It appears to be a very nice book. 7.5-8.0

well, unless it's cash, don't forget the taxes. My collection too is entirely from the newsstand. Selling them is actually a hard look at marketing. If you got it off the stands, what lame excuse do you have for those creases? I have my excuses memorized.... I have about 1000 different ones. By now, 135 sounds like it would get you something you would like. I get tractor parts.

GPA says a 5.0 went last month at 213. A 5,5 went last month at 263. A 4.0 went last month for 225. So if you had to absorb the fees associated with ebay, that's about 12%. If you slabbed it as is. It's going to set you back , what something like sixty bucks. $135 would not have me getting excited about the sale but it depends on whether you paid much for it or found it in a box of comics. $150.00 would be discounting the 5.0 grade by 30%. 40% gets you to the 138.00. There's only one on ebay right now in that low a grade but it's slabbed. GPA doesn't make it clear as to raw or slab on the others. That old argument "what is your time worth? can come into play if you have to pack and mail it. Cash is nice.

I think you are right. I missed the long crease(s) on the cover. Too busy evaluating the avatar I suppose. In both cases, the top cover has issues. Damn Bait and Switch...

the book is too distant to read well. Currently I'd give a 6.5-7.0 based on a bad shot. Rounded corners and spine ticks at a minimum. The rack gets a 9.0..

I have an iron man 55 which is flawless , except that it isn't flawless.It has tan pages. I bought it on the news stand, put it away and curiously it has tanned where other books from the same period have not. Why, I don't know but it is what it is. Perfect but for that. It has yet to be slabbed. I will be fascinated to see what becomes of it. I won't sell it raw without the judgement of the amused gods.

I appreciate the insight. I think in asking the question, which may seem really dumb to some is probably a great help to many of the people on the board. Absorbing information is a full time job. There is still a part of the question that remains, namely what single defects kill the rating of an otherwise very nice book. I had two copies of ASM 129 and both appeared to be identical and I indeed did buy them both off the rack in 1974. One got a 9.4 and the other an 8.5. The 8.5 had quite a small stain on the back cover but otherwise was an extremely nice book. What other issues kill the grade of a book even more than dropping just to an 8.5?

let me display some ignorance here. Is a qualified label a label where there is a notation made on the slab material, such as "Tan pages", or something along that line? It's the single defect books which make me a little crazy. Can anyone show me a qualified label?

Can you be more specific?

I find the single most difficult thing I'm finding in grading is a book that looks absolutely perfect, or is at least an 8.0 in every way save one. The question is about the "one". As an example is an ASM I was raw grading yesterday evening. It had square corners, well centered, bright staples, glossy covers, one small spine tick, off white pages and no color breaks. I would normally be inclined to push this book- about 48 years old to at least an 8.5, possibly more with one huge exception. The centerfold is detached from one staple. The centerfold page has no wrinkles, no tears. But that's a serious flaw. I have another which presents incredibly well, about the same age and it has only one flaw- what looks like a deep crease that does not go through the book on the back page and is about 1.5 inches long. Clearly trimming is viewed as a serious downgrading flaw in any book. Tears are a serious downgrade flaw, So are ticks , rusty staples, color breaks but where does one start the downgrade in a beautiful book? In a book like the one I just mentioned, are there features that bring a book back up in grade when it has such a flaw as well as the one that brought it down. I think of the ASM 129 that is plastered with blue ink but is otherwise in great shape. This is the type of book that gives me fits when I'm trying to decide what grading is going to be. So what constitutes fatal flaws?

It continually amazes me as to what can happen to ruin one's profit at the end of a day. In Glass, I know about a million ways to lose money, some big some small. I remember a big German company making 30,000 lbs of a dichroic glass because they did not check the supply shed to see if they had enough Neodymium so the technical specs did not match up to the contract. . Bad move. Try to imagine shipping comic books all over the country to bus stations that could care less all for .12 cents a copy. Stan really was a visionary if he could put up with that stuff. We get to squabble over the errors.

It will have to wait until next week for me as some rather unexpected stuff has come up.

I have been told that type of marking is done during the distribution process to mark off a grouping of books.It usually is just on the very end of the book as a few bands of color and was not going to downgrade the book value. This is something else though and it's hard for me to believe the book will not seriously suffer in grade given the seriously heavy bleed. Other than the entire problem, the book looks like it's in pretty nice shape,something like an 8.0= 8.5, especially if you like blue. I genuinely would not know how to grade this defect and I would not bother with a press. I'll wait for the big kids on this one.

I don't have any investment in arguments about what is and what isn't attractive. I love really old cars too but I don't think I'd consider ever driving one of them across the country just based on the extreme likelihood of mechanical failure. Looking back, I feel really fortunate that I got to collect these things a month at a time on the rack at the bus depot and it cost next to nothing. Keep in mind that in 1967, the internet didn't exist and dealers were extremely rare ( Anyone remember Rogofsky?) . Getting books was actually kind of difficult if you missed an issue or wanted to go back in time. What we have now makes it far easier to collect but it's more expensive as well. Those days of finding AF15 in a dirty box are for the most part , gone. If moderns have a good following, I can view that as a very good thing since it insures that comic collectors will go on. I just wish they were .10 cents though. Just consider distribution issues, quality controls in printing, drawing, inking and lettering in a non stop deadline environment. People Like Stan Lee really were remarkable in their fixations on this strange hobby when you think about all those hoops to jump through. When I was a kid, we got punished for reading comics.

Jeez, maybe the shrewdest move would be to sell it for less than I paid for it and take a capital loss? That would foil them... except that I found this book in a box of comics in 1968 or 69, I can't remember. I suppose I could pay someone to take it off my hands.