jimbo_7071

I'm not personally interested in the book, but I'm curious how you were able to tell that the interior is married since it's glued in. Are the staple holes in different locations? (I'm trying to educate myself about restoration. The way the Promise Collection was graded has left me disillusioned with slabbing, so I think that I'm going to go back to collecting raw books—but I need to get a lot better at detecting restoration before I can do that.)

To me anyone paying for an autograph is out of his mind. Not only would I not pay $1 for an autograph, I wouldn't want one for free, and I wouldn't want a comic that had been defaced with an autograph unless there were a way to clean it and get the autograph off without getting a purple label.

Claw with yellow skin to Claw with green skin.

Big villainess to big villain.

I've been referring to him as Dung Smell for so long that I forgot that his name was actually Doug.

I believe that it had a detached centerfold, and the staples were manipulated to hold it in place even though it had torn away from the staples the way they were originally positioned—but that isn't restoration, apparently.

The Blue Fairy of CCS can do anything!

The Crackajack is an OK example, but I guess you must have forgotten about the Church Boy Comics #17, which had dreams of becoming high grade the way Pinocchio had dreams of becoming a real boy. The Blue Fairy of CCS granted the comic book's wishes, and it rocketed up from a 4.0 to a 7.5 and then to a 9.0.

It is a nice book! I'm surprised that you offered it raw, @rjpb. You don't see books like that offered raw too often these days.

Here are a couple more points of comparison. Note the smudging in the tip of the ear and the spot on Bugs Bunny's toe. I think that the white that you're seeing on the B in the non-ped copy is probably scuffing on the inner well. I have seen quite a few newer-gen holders with similar scuffing.

Many books that have had big grade bumps after pressing were probably books that were very strictly graded to first time and very loosely graded the second time. To me the Vancouver looks like a 9.2, and this "non-ped" copy looks like a 9.2. You Texas defense attorneys got T. Cullen Davis off! Nuff' said!

Other copies have that odd printing defect with the little white rings on the yellow areas, but they're in different locations on other copies. I looked at many copies and couldn't find any two that had those spots in the exact same locations as each other. Both books also have the same mis-wrap and a color-breaking spine tic in the exact same location. I'm sure a clever defense attorney would try to raise reasonable doubt, but I think the prosecution could secure a conviction in this case. If it is the same book, maybe the seller thought that including the pedigree on the label would hurt the final hammer price if prospective buyers knew that the book used to be a lowly 9.0.

I was surprised by how much the 9.6 non-ped Four Color 33 resembled the 9.0 Vancouver copy.

Black Owl back to Owl.

Lasso to lasso.

I guess there's no such thing as a run-filler any more. To me that's a $20 book raw.

That's one's on my want list, but I'd be afraid to buy one at the current prices. The strong sales have brought so many copies out of the woodwork over the last few years that a correction seems inevitable.

Nice! Ed Jaster brought the run of Church Wows to the Motor CIty ComicCon back in 2001. That one must have already been sold off from the run, or I wouldn't have been able to say no. I bought one of the issues raw but later sold it to Jeff Tingle. (I paid an absurdly high price, but somehow Ed was able to infect me with his passion for the books; I guess I didn't have much sales resistance back then.)

Death under the stars to a death-defying ride under the stars.

Let me guess . . . you held off because you're trying to save up for this stunning Wolverine 1 black line variant that's available on eBay, is that it?

Hand planted on a face to foot planted on a head.

Hat falling off to hat flying off.

That one isn't a Promise book, but this one is. I don't know if stigmatized is the right word, but they're not commanding the multiples that they were before. They're still selling for strong prices relative to the grades, so most buyers either don't have much awareness of the soft grading on many of the books or they can live with the soft grading in order to own pedigree books with nice cover inks.

Maybe the same person bought both. Maybe someone's trying to build a set of V-shaped comic books.

Planet Comics in general have been high lately—too high considering how common most of the issues are—so $1,400 wouldn't look too high for that #63 if it weren't for the horrible mis-cut. That's a copy I would have passed on at any price. With GA books it's tough to get too picky about finding a perfect wrap and cut, but I don't know how a cut that bad managed to avoid a green label.