jimbo_7071

Parked rocket ship to parked rocket ship.

Purple panther to purple costume.

To my way of thinking, any book with an autograph on the cover is ruined, anyway. The Sharpie ink in nothing but one big stain in a fancy design.

"Hat" popping off to faux head popping off.

More often than not, eBay could be a little disappointing. I picked this one up on eBay about 20 years ago for $15 thinking it would be worth about $50. It only had one picture (which was typical back then.) It turned out that there was a tear on the back cover and more creases than what were apparent in the low-quality image. $15 was still a fair price, but it wasn't the bargain I was hoping for. It did include some cool kite plans, though. (I still want to make at least one of these kites!)

Popped off hat to doffed hats.

Severed head to disembodied spectral head.

For pedigrees that were brought to market early, like the San Francisco pedigree, there are probably still many times as many raw copies out there as certified copies, and the ones that don't have a stamp will probably never be identified. Gilboy markings alone wouldn't be proof of the pedigree because there are Gilboy books out there that aren't San Francisco copies.

I remember that, but I wouldn't have thought that those books were valuable enough back then to have been candidates for restoration that frequently. If the restoration is mostly simple stuff like cleaning of the cover and sealing of spine splits, then I guess it shouldn't be too surprising.

Plant of Doom on a Standard Comics horror book to a woman at risk of meeting her doom due to a horrifying plant on a Standard Comics sci-fi book.

Thank you for the quick response.

I have a number of CGC books with no cover artist noted on the label. I have seen even very minor cover artists noted the label in recent years (unlike in the old-label days when only sought-after cover artists were noted). For books slabbed during the last few five years or so, I had always assumed that CGC didn't know who the cover artist was if no cover artist was noted on the label because I had been seeing little-known artists listed. However, I noticed this book on eBay, and the cover is signed RubiMor (Ruben Moreira), so there's no question about who drew the cover, yet no cover artist is noted. Could you please clarify the guidelines for whether the cover artist (and interior artists) will be noted on the label? The book in the picture was slabbed in 2020.

Ditto. However, I buy virtually all of my books already slabbed, so it would take me about ten years to use up $500 of grading credit, so I see it as something fun to do.

Large rising sun to tiny rising sun.

Whiz Bang to Whiz.

That one's my third favorite behind 13 & 14. It's supposed to be a Baker cover, but do you think that he drew the whole cover? To me, Phantom Lady's face looks like Baker's work, but nothing else does. I wonder if the studio lackeys did most of it and had him do the face because of his skill level.

Parachuting to parachuting head first.

Egad! I don't think I've ever seen that one before—or maybe I did and blocked it out! That one's almost enough to make me give up comic books and start collecting bottle caps or Precious Moments figurines. ETA: Collecting bottle caps was kind of popular when I was a kid, and I was curious whether anybody still collected them, so I looked on eBay, and sure enough, there are quite a few of them for sale. So I guess the hobby still exists. There were actually some pretty cool ones. Apparently there used to be Donald Duck Root Beer and some sort of beer featuring the Katzenjammer Kids on the caps. I share your disdain for pressed books, but they're virtually impossible to avoid now if you're trying to fill a want list. I can't avoid all pressed books, but if I can tell just by looking at a scan that a book has been pressed, then I'll pass. I see quite a few books on CLink with horrific pressing jobs. I don't know whether they're using CCS or whether they're pressing books in house before submitting them to CGC. If they're pressing books in house, they need to fire their pressing guy ASAP. I keep telling myself that I need to send out some low-dollar value books for pressing so I can educate myself about the differences before and after and maybe gain some competence at detecting pressing, but I haven't been able to force myself. My understanding is that pressing reduces the gloss on a book, and I want to see for myself whether that's detectable.

Dangerous woman to empowered woman.

Toothache to the immediate need for a full dental restoration.

Sheena to Tiger Girl.

Forgive my ignorance on this issue, but how did Library of Congress copies get into the market? Aren't those usually retained by the Library of Congress? I hope they weren't stolen.

I have one. It does have a check on the front cover; I don't know how many checks there are throughout the book. I don't think that you'll see large, obtrusive checks like you see in the "Adventure Stamp Page" example from the initial post. I vaguely remember seeing pictures of some Cosmic Aeroplane interiors, and I don't remember them looking that marked up.

Owl on 33 to Owl on 34.

I think that many of the nicest copies of those early Batmans made their way into top-notch second-owner collections years ago and haven't been slabbed. Dave Anderson's copies are probably among the nicest of most issues, of course. I was also surprised by how many PLODs are out there for Bats #5 and Bats #9. It looks like around 20% of the slabbed copies are restored.