jimbo_7071

I recently picked up a mid-grade copy of #5 for $40; I'd expect to get a mid-grade copy of almost any issue for around the same price. I can't see that low-grade copy being worth more than a few dollars as a reading copy.

Very tall, evil blonde bombshell to innocent-looking blonde bombshell assisting a bald, evil midget.

My post speaks for itself; interpret as you wish.

1) Cover shrinkage. If you look many pressed books, you'll see a thin line of newsprint peeking out past the edge of the cover. It's normal to see a little bit at the very top of the cover (probably from the cutting process), but if you can see white all along the edge of the cover, it's a dead giveaway that the book has been pressed. It is more noticeable when a presser is aggressive with temperature and humidity in order to reduce cycle time. 2) There will frequently be extra stress lines around the staples. This become apparent when you look at before and after pictures of the book. 3) In the case of GA books, it's not unusual for pressing to blow out (split) the spine. 4) Books have lost pieces around the edge or at the corners due to pressing. I'm not sure why this happens. Maybe bits of paper stick to the pressing machine because the paper that's placed between the press and the comic isn't seated properly, and the edge of the cover is actually contacting the press itself? These are only a few of the ways in which pressing can damage books.

Pressing does quite a bit of damage to books, so if you don't care whether you damage books by pressing, then why would you care about the negligible effect of pressing books with microchamber paper in? It would be like a murderer worrying about chipping his victim's fingernail polish during the process of committing the murder.

Anatomical oddity (no nipples) to Anatomical oddity (fused thighs).

That strikes me as a CYA answer. Nevertheless, even if that's true, there have been many 9.6s 9.8s with cream-to-off-white pages from day 1. I have also seen plenty of 9.6 Harvey File Copies with light-tan-to-off-white pages. I don't know whether I've seen a 9.8 with tan pages aside from the X-Men 214. So at best, it may be that light-tan-to-off-white isn't permitted in 9.8. I'll have to keep digging to see whether that's actually the case. Harvey File Copies and Savannah copies will probably be a good place to look. Unless pages are tan or brittle, CGC does not factor page quality into the grade, period. They should, which is probably why the rumor that they do keeps popping up.

I don't think that the page quality standards that you're talking about ever existed. Even in CGC's early days, I saw many 9.6s and 9.8s with cream-to-off-white pages . And then there was this example:

Those are both pretty cool Spirit sections. I picked up my first one on eBay tonight. I like the ones where the first page is a full splash.

Fox Phantom Lady to Ajax Phantom Lady.

Cap 1 is way too common to be a top 5 book. If realized prices have put it there, it won't stay. Tec 31 should have no problem pummeling it into submission. The same goes for Action 7, goofy as that one is.

Singing stoolie to singing lasso.

I decided to boycott the auction because HA had hired Mark Wilson, but I was tempted by both of those. Congratulations on two great pick-ups!

Yeah, but their asking prices on ebay were asinine. Those copies probably won't even be the highest-graded copies if the Mile High copies are ever slabbed.

L. B. Cole to L. B. Cole

Even for a GA collector like me, it's hard not to be a fan of AF15. I have no idea how many raw copies are still out in the wild, though, so I don't know whether prices will stay where they are. Original owner GA collections are still turning up from time to time, so how many original owner SA collections have to still be out there?

Our posts had nothing to do with you. I believe that Robot Man was saying that the German collector with whom Barry Sandoval intends to meet could be Wilhelm Ute. That wouldn't surprise me because if they'd hire someone like Mark Wilson, why wouldn't they do business with someone like Wilhelm Ute, too?

Crime-Smashing Expose to how police smash The Perfect Crime.

Ich glaube, daß du recht hast. Wilhelm Ute ist nicht so schlecht wie Mark Wilson.

I'm a firm believer that conspicuous consumption plays a major role in the prices on modern art. Whoever paid $43.5 million for that painting would have turned up his nose at it had it been offered for a paltry $10 million. I can appreciate art that is a little abstract, like Nude Descending a Staircase, but I groan whenever I hear someone talking about how moved he or she is by a Pollock or a Mondrian, etc.

OK, thanks! (It's one of those things I've been curious about for a while.)

How ironic is it that a mouse or rat nibbled on a Catman comic? LOL I'm not in the market for this issue, but I am curious about something. Do you know whether all copies of this issue were made with wartime half wraps? That's something I've only seen once on a book (a WDC&S no. 41), and I'm curious about how that was handled at the bindery. It seems like it would have complicated the binding process quite a bit. It's hard to see how the loss of efficiency could have justified the small amount of paper saved.

Maybe it was; I guess when I started collecting at age ten I was blissfully unaware of it. (It probably didn't have an impact on the low-dollar-value stuff that I was collecting back then.) What really gets me is that pressed books often get grade bumps even when they look worse (which we've seen over and over and over again) with smooshed spines, shrunken covers, and extra stress lines around the staples. There has to be something seriously off kilter with CGC's grading formula for that trend to prevail for 10+ years. I'm sure CPR has boosted CGC's earnings, so the current set up works for them, but I wish collectors wouldn't stand for it.

And since we already have two Planet no. 33s, I guess I might as well toss in a third: