RockMyAmadeus

That's good that you admit that. We all make mistakes. Admitting them and correcting them is the thing that makes the difference. That said, even with provocation, it's still not very classy to open a dispute before the item has been received back by the seller. At the very least, one should wait until the item has been received, and opportunity given to act, before filing a claim, even if goaded to it.

I found this comment to be the most interesting. There must be a phrase or saying for when a person does something to someone, and then, later on, someone else does that same thing to the first person, but I can't for the life of me remember what that's called...

Never having been to East Buttfork, I'll take your word for it that many copies went unsold there. They must have been triggered by the words "Spawn", "Venom", and "Carnage."

You ARE aware that the vast majority of books under $500 aren't worth the time and cost to press it perfectly, right...? When you're into the $1,000-$10,000+ range, now we're talking about books that are worth it. I'm perfectly happy turning a $2,000 book into a $10,000 book...or a $500 book into a $2000 book. I'm not happy turning a $10 book into a $20 book. It's not about the money. It's about being fair with people and telling them "this isn't worth it. Save your money and send me something that's worthy of the effort." No one spends time restoring a $5 oil painting their grandmother painted in 1957. But restoring a Water Lily...? Now we're talking.

Not sure what your point is. There are a lot of pressers who are doing "good enough" work. Of course you're not getting 1 or 2 hours work...but you STILL have not answered my question: have you ever pressed a book, personally, yourself? Are you aware of what it takes? I guess I haven't really explained myself very clearly. I've already said that spending 1 or 2 hours per book....with all that entails...is too much, unless it's a special book that is worth the effort. Most books aren't. However...if one is spending less than 15 minutes on a single book, they're not spending enough time on it. "Good enough" is not "perfect." It's just "good enough." And don't think for a second that there aren't pressers out there who say to themselves "ok, this ASM #14 has a grade limiting flaw. Even sending it through the process one more time isn't going to change that. It's good enough for the grade, and it can't grade higher. Done." I've certainly said that...but if there's something that can be fixed, it still nags at me until it's fixed.

Tons and tons. Every book is unique, and can't be done correctly without careful examination, which takes time and patience. Even something as minor as a 1/4" corner bend requires time to examine the whole book, to make sure something hasn't been missed. Because 99% of the time, the graders will catch it if you don't. If "I put it in the press, and you get whatever you get" is good enough for folks, pay the $7-$8...and most of the time, that's perfectly ok!...but if you want it done as good as it can be done, well, that's gonna take some time.

Yes, that's very true. In many areas outside of major metropolises, there weren't any comic shops within 50-100 miles, and the newsstand was the only way to get anything comics, unless you had a subscription (which quite a few did.) It was before the internet, after all. When did online ordering of new comics become "a thing"? Early 00's?

That also leads to an interesting set of questions: if one is spending, say, 5 minutes on any single book, how does one 1. take the book out of its bag and board; 2. examine and note flaws, front to back, 3. address those flaws with the proper procedure; and 4. examine the book when that procedure is finished to make sure they have removed said flaws without introducing new ones? I know there are a lot of pressers who aren't looking at these books. Like, at all. They take the book out of the bag, give it a cursory glance, shove it in the press, take it out when it's "done" (however long that takes), and then stuff it back in the bag...and even THAT procedure takes at least 5 minutes of activity. That's like restoring a 1967 Firebird by buying a gallon of Glidden latex semi-gloss, dumping it on the roof, and pronouncing it finished. You have to EXAMINE the books to see what's wrong with them, don't you...?

No, it means that I'm a perfectionist who is never satisfied with the results. The flaw is in the injudicious use of time, not the end result. I freely admit that I spent far, far too much time looking over a book, examining it for flaws, trying to smooth each and every one, without doing additional damage. An "assembly line presser" I could never be. Did I mention it takes patience...? But your question is an interesting one. After all...how good do you think I think I am...? It also leads to another question: how does the time it takes to do it relate to how good someone (thinks they) is (are) at something...? After all...not that I'm in any way comparing myself, but do you know how long it took Michelangelo to paint the Sistine Chapel...? 4 years...and that was just the ceiling. Maybe he wasn't very good at it..... You never answered my question: have you ever pressed a book?

"Skill" is something anyone can develop' "art" is something you either have, or you don't.

What is "adequate"? Just because a book achieves a certain grade, doesn't *necessarily* mean that all the defects are gone. CCS does an adequate job on the books they work on. But they aren't doing the very best work, because of the following reasons: 1. Every single book...every single one...is unique. No two books have exactly the same flaws, in exactly the same place, to exactly the same degree. 2. To remove all flaws on a particular book almost always requires a considerable amount of time, attention, and care. and, by far the most important practicality to consider, which you've pointed out: 3. The vast, vast majority of the books aren't worth it. I gave up pressing for others, having pressed thousands of books for 7+ years. Why? Because it wasn't worth it. Others were charging that same $7, so the customer base, of course, expected the same turnaround for that same $7-$8-$9-$10. It was madness, because I was spending an hour or two on each and every single book. Total madness, trying to get an X-Men #273 to be perfect. People were throwing hundreds of garbage Copper and Modern books at me, and getting angry at me because I took too long (and I did.) I had to start telling people back in 2014 that it would "take as long as it took", and that if they wanted speed, they would have to find someone else. Some stuck with me, knowing they'd get the best results possible. And boy, have I gotten some spectacular results. 8.0s to 9.4s, 8.5s to 9.6. 9.2 SA books to 9.8. Other Silver books that professionals had looked at and passed on, turned into 9.8s. Golden age 8.0s that are the highest graded examples. 8.0 Marvel Mysteries into 9.0s. Don't take my word for it; check out my kudos thread. And not because I want to brag, but to show what's possible, given the right amount of skill and artistry. Pressing is an endless tight-wire balancing act. On the one hand, paper is incredibly unforgiving. You look at it sideways, and you can damage it. On the other hand, you are introducing elements to the book that are perfectly designed to damage it: heat, water, and pressure! Too gentle, and the damage reverts, if it comes out at all. The book that looks wonderful right out of the press, looks like you haven't touched it 7 days later. Too hard, and you damage the book. Yes, there have been books that I took "too far." I paid for those mistakes, both financially and in stress. It takes patience and gentleness and patience and persistence and patience and time and patience and skill and patience and knowledge and patience and experience. Did I mention it takes patience...? How many people do you know that have that kind of patience? And the Goldilocks Factor, that balance of "just right" is different for every single book. And it's different for every era, too. Did you know that pressing a Defenders #10 requires a procedure different from pressing a Defenders #1? Did you know that ASM #129 comes with AT LEAST TWO different cover stocks, a glossy and a matte-ish, and that both of those require a little different handling? Do you know how to deal with the overflash for Silver Age books? Did you know that pressing a modern squarebound, like, say, Vengeance of Bane #1, requires a completely different process than, say, Marvel Tales #1? Do you know that Golden Age books tend to have heavier cover stock in many cases that doesn't respond nearly as well as the wonderful cheapo cover stock of a 1962 Marvel? Did you know that pressing DCs from 1962 is different from pressing those 1962 Marvels...? Or Dells, for that matter? That the worst books to press are the very low grade books, because they always, always look like they've been "squished"? (And don't let anyone try to tell you they "know how to make that not look like that." They're lying. A book that is in the 2.0-3.0 range usually has enough accumulation of flaws that pressing is going to make those flaws look unnaturally flaw, when they should have depth to them.) Do you know that there are few things more breathtaking to behold than a pre-1964 Marvel in 9.4+ condition? Now if I do any pressing for anyone, it's only on books that are worth the effort, if at all. Just got back an X-Men below #10 that was a slabbed 8.0...came back a 9.4. THAT'S why I do it. That made my month. I saw the potential and I made it happen. It's a stunner. And that was for a client. Not because "I'm great, look what I can do" but because "wow. Look what's POSSIBLE!" No, there are a lot of people "doing" pressing these days. I had a guy buy 160 long boxes from a storage unit in Georgia...knew nothing about comics. Asked me if I "pressed." I nearly laughed out loud. But I can't justify charging what it would take for me to do the work, because none of those books is worth it. Send it to the assembly line pressers, and hope for the best. There are probably less than 6 people that really know what they're doing, and have the temperament and talent to do it.

I recently (2016) looked at some books I had had pressed in 2009, before I started doing it myself. I had sent them in, and, since this was when CGC decided to change Modern to 1980-up, I decided to have them sent back to me instead of slabbed. Among them were various Star Wars #5s and #6s. They looked like they hadn't been pressed at all. And this was a presser who gave "grade estimates"...the grade estimates of the books at the time of pressing and then after 7 years back in the box were entirely different. The 9.8s had reverted to 9.4s, and the 9.6s to 9.0-9.2s. Not that the presser had done a "bad" job. A bad job would have been unremovable defects...and yes, folks, all of us have done that. The best of us take responsibility for it, but if you've pressed more than 100 books, you've done some unremovable damage, no matter how slight, to a book or two. It's the nature of the work. Any presser who says otherwise is lying...either to themselves, or to everyone else. But they literally had all their flaws back, as if the books had never been touched. I re-did the work, SS'd them, and they came back 9.8s with a handful of 9.6s...and I suspect they'll stay that way, because I'm an anal-retentive obsessive.

For the record, I think #361 is Bagley's best cover, ever, and one of the best covers in all of ASM. Certainly in the top 50.

New books, at least on the West Coast, came out on Friday in those years.

Normally, that would be the case. But let's look at some hard numbers, and see if we can't come up with some reasonable extrapolations. According to the SOO printed in ASM #375, which would cover approximately issues #358-372 (keeping in mind that ASM was a 15 times a year title that year), there were an avg. of 660,958 copies printed that year. Avg. sales was 544,900. Returns (this would be newsstand copies only) was 115,308 copies. Remember, these are averages. We know, for example, that ASM #365 almost certainly had a print run of over a million copies, based on the Cap City numbers for that issue. So that would skew the averages quite a bit. The sell-through rate for that year was a phenomenal 82.4%, exceeded only once, a year later, in the "standard newsstand" era. Keep in mind though, that that number represents the combined Direct AND newsstand sales, while the number returned represents ONLY newsstand copies. So what percentage of sales was Direct, and what was newsstand? We don't know. We can guess, based on very rough estimates, but they're only very rough estimates. Only Marvel and Curtis would have known the actual newsstand numbers, and they're probably lost by now. We can make some guesses, based on historical sell-through rates from before the Direct market era, but they are only the broadest of guesses. It's as reasonable as anything to say, however, that print runs in early 1992, when this book was published, were fairly evenly distributed between Direct market and newsstand. Normally, even if initial print runs were identical...and they weren't, but say they were...then at 30-60% (or more) of the newsstand run would have been returned and destroyed, or "destroyed", as "unsold"...meaning that, even with matching print runs, surviving copies of Direct (which normally had a 90%+ survival rate) and newsstands (which had a 20-50% survival rate), would be substantially different...maybe 75/25, or 66/33, or, as you say 80/20. So, then, a certain percentage was returned and destroyed...right? For this book, no. Or, at least, not really. This book was hot the day it came out (keeping in mind this was just before the internet, so widespread information about the cover...other than the small pic on the letter's page of #359...wasn't available. Previews didn't have a picture of it, for example. It wasn't particularly hyped, either.) Needless to say, that cover thrilled the entire comics buying world, and it was an immediate sellout at comics stores across the nation, within the week. Because of the 2-3 week lag between Direct and newsstand, by the time the newsstand copies of this book came out, it was a $5-$10 book. So, people haunted the newsstands to scoop up those copies, and scoop them up they did. At that time, there was very little distinction paid on the secondary market to whether a copy was Direct or newsstand; it was simply a copy. In this case, then, with of course the very small percentage that didn't sell at the newsstand...and it would have been VERY small, and VERY unlikely in any place close to a metropolitan area...the distribution of this book, as I have said elsewhere, was far and wide, both on the primary, then the secondary, markets. Newsstand copies of this particular book would have survived nearly universally, without the usual "unsold percentage" of books like, say, #357 or #359. In fact, it's probably fair to say that extant newsstand copies of those books don't exist in anywhere near the numbers of #361. If more than 5% of the newsstand run was "returned as unsold", I would be shocked. It's reasonable to say, then, that roughly as many newsstand copies as Direct copies of this book still exist, AND it's also reasonable to say that they exist in very high grade in about even numbers, too. Any book that had this kind of instant sellout, like the ones mentioned above, would have immediately entered the secondary market, where, because collector, rather than retail, prices were paid, far more care was taken as a result. Exact numbers? We'll never know.

There are too many factors which are unknown to reasonably come up with any meaningful numbers. We don't know what percentage of a given print run was newsstand, if we even know the print run, and what was Direct. We do know that Direct copies have, in many cases, a 90% or better survival rate from this era (late 80's/early 90's) in all conditions. Newsstand copies, however, had "return" rates of up to 70-80% of the entire newsstand print run...but were all of those actually destroyed? Too many unknown variables. All we can reasonably conclude is that 1. Direct market books have generally survived in higher numbers than newsstands at least from about 1986-on. 2. Direct market books generally survive in higher grade. Chuck Rozanski's numbers are completely made up, and bear no resemblance to reality, however.

You misstate my assertion. Allow me to state again: "And newsstand copies of ASM #361 are probably rareR than Direct copies by perhaps a factor of 1:1.05. In other words, for every 1,000 newsstand copies, there are, perhaps, 1,050 Direct copies. " Please note what that said. "for every 1,000 newsstand copies"...that mean total extant copies, not just SLABBED copies, of THIS SPECIFIC BOOK. You can't compare total extant copies...from which my newsstand:Direct "1:1.05" ratio is derived...of a SPECIFIC BOOK to the newsstand:Direct ratio of SLABBED copies of a DIFFERENT BOOK. Yes, when it comes to slabs, that ratio is, as you state, clearly not applicable. However...on that note, I will say that for a book like ASM #361, the ratio of 9.8 newsstand:Direct is going to be substantially HIGHER than for a book like ASM #300, because ASM #300 wasn't an instant sellout like #361. Instant sellouts behave differently in terms of both surviving copies AND surviving copies in high grade. You will find far fewer copies of ASM #300 newsstand as a PERCENTAGE of total extant copies, than for #361. Perhaps 50% of the newsstand print run for ASM #300 was "returned" and destroyed; that percentage almost certainly dropped to 5% OR LESS for ASM #361.

Sure, and that's why it's simple logic. In this case, however, this is an exception that makes the rule. Books like Superman #50, ASM #252, Thor #337, Batman #457, and other "hot the day they came out" books weren't subject to the usual conditions. And, for the most part in this era, there is going to be a much higher survival rate in high grade for newsstands, because even casual buyers were taking better care of them than in the past.

...with the implicit understanding that that "difference" may be "nothing", as it will be for most books printed from 1980-1994-ish.

Newsstand copies from 1992...despite what misinformation Chuck Rozanski believes...are not rare in any way, especially in high grade, and especially for books that were "instantly hot", like this one. This was a book that, due to the distribution of the newsstand at the time, was scooped up the day it came out, as it was already a $5-$10 book for Direct market copies. That "scooping up" meant those books didn't have time to be mangled on magazine racks. Those who try to hype newsstand copies as "rare!" or "rare in high grade!" are usually trying to sell you something. ASM #361 has a lot of 9.8s, true...but it isn't anywhere near as common as #362, or #363, or #375, or #365 (which was the only issue of ASM to ever break the 1,000,000 copy print run barrier.) And while this was in the era of "let's print a bazillion of everything!!", it wasn't quite at that point for everything just yet. That would come with #365. ASM #361 had highER print numbers than immediately preceding issues, but not MUCH higher. I don't have my Krause handy at the moment, but the number for #361 from Cap City were, I think, in the neighborhood of 60,000..maybe 61k? Not substantially more than #359 or #360 (in fact, I think #353, the first issue of the Punisher crossover...remember when THOSE meant something...?...was substantially higher than #361.) #362 had much higher orders, and #363 had orders topping 102k. 102,000 copies JUST for Capital City. #363 had orders, and an extrapolated print run, almost 60% higher than #363. And newsstand copies of ASM #361 are probably rareR than Direct copies by perhaps a factor of 1:1.05. In other words, for every 1,000 newsstand copies, there are, perhaps, 1,050 Direct copies. Not rare. At all. No, I'm not currently selling any.

Have you ever pressed a book...? I'm guessing not, by your response here. I've seen plenty of books "pressed" by "respectable pressers" for "$7" that still have problems. *I've* had those same problems. Anyone pressing a book for "$7" is either dealing with a book that has very little wrong with it to start with (which is certainly true for the majority of books from 1980-up), or they're simply not getting everything they could. "Finger dimples" are one of the more difficult problems to get out without leaving a trace of evidence. (note emphasis) Think about it: is spending a mere "$7" on something going to get you the best results possible...? Again, anyone can buy a press, stick a book in it, and get "ok" results. But for $7, they are NOT spending any time on that book, and they certainly aren't doing the best job that could potentially be done the vast majority of the time. "But most books aren't worth more than that to press!" GRANTED! No question about it. And, for most, an "ok" press job usually has an acceptable result. I have a point whether the book has "serious defects" or not: the temperament to properly press isn't innate in most people, and while many, many people can do a mediocre job of it and call it "good", very few people can do the best job possible. After all...lots of people can bounce a ball around a basketball court.... PS: I said "art", not "high art." What Susan Cicconi does is high art; everyone else just does art, at best. PPS: This may be a quibble, but a "crease" cannot be removed, from any book, by pressing. While admittedly the definition isn't completely concrete, a crease is a fold in the paper that has damaged the underlying structure of the paper fibers/ink/sizing, whether it actually breaks the ink surface or not. What you're referring to are rather more properly classified as "bends."

I've said this surrounded by a table of good pressers: pressing is an ART as much as a science. I don't mind sharing what I know, because good pressing is like good painting: any insufficiently_thoughtful_person can throw oil on a canvas, but only an artist can make art. Proper pressing requires a temperament that most people don't have. All the "technical knowledge" in the world isn't going to make you Kobe Bryant...nor is it going to make you Susan Cicconi. So, good luck pressing your books...when you're done ruining them, contact someone who knows how to do it correctly. There aren't that many out there.

Resellers that roll in with their flatbed carts and 10 boxes have been around for...quite literally, now...decades. That's not the issue, and never has been the issue. The issue is that it has "gotten out" in the creative community that people are "making huge profits" off of their signatures through slabbing, and some...maybe a majority, now...are offended by that. The sad thing is that they are offended about something they don't understand, and, in certain cases, don't want to understand (yes, I'm looking at you, Marv Wolfman, and I hope this gets to you.) Their offendedness isn't even based on reality. It's the worst kind of offendedness: offendedness at something that doesn't even exist. So, no, the "flatbed cart" folks have been around since the 70's. That's not the issue. The issue is creator ignorance and offendedness based on that ignorance. And no, McKone's signature isn't worth $10, but if that's what he wants to charge, more power to him. If he's not charging a different price based on where he believes the item may end up...which is discrimination...then great, knock yourself out McKone.

Great post. And the ones who "do it really well" are the ones who paid the most attention to accumulating, protecting, and getting signed only the books in the highest conditions possible, because that is the vast majority...90-99%...of the value of almost every Sig Series book.

Allow me to quote myself: (emphasis added to "almost") "Almost" is an adverb, a qualifier...and the presence of qualifiers means one is most decidedly NOT "speaking in absolutes." I would be very wary of those whose only contribution to a discussion are comments about the other people in the discussion, especially those who presume to say anyone else should be "stopped." Let's leave moderation up to the moderation. That said, those arguing the exceptions to the rule as if it was the rule ought to have that explained, for the benefit of everyone else. Thanks to revat for doing so.