oldrover

Maybe it it was a higher grade... thoughts? How much does that stuff lower the grade, anyhoo? Man, doing that would NEVER have entered my mind as a kid. Probably one boy loaned it to another... got it back, and was like, "What the..."

Once they ship. A day or two.

No. The opposite.

That sounds right, 4.5-5.0. The crease and the stain hurt it, but it’s a great looking book. No to the press, yes to the slab.

Maybe you should consider using an auction house like Heritage Auctions. They’ll take care of everything for you, for 10%, which is pretty reasonable. No money out for you.

Yeah, that number Dave posted totally changed my mind. I'm slabbing this.

I must be going blind. Where is the stain?

I just searched "Iron Man" the other day... no results. LOL Searched "Invincible" and it came up.

I accept!!!!!

IMHO, you should sell the keys individually.

in theory, CGC treats the tape like it's not there and grades it as such. In practice, I believe it's difficult to look at a lot of tape and not downgrade the book. But a piece or two should not affect the grade dramatically... unless otherwise it's an 8.0.

No problems here.

6.5.

Removed resto is better than restoration, value wise. And CGC can screen your books to tell you whether it makes sense to remove the resto. I’ve sent them 4 books with resto. They were able to work with 2... the other two they deemed not removable, due to the degrading of the book.

I’m in the exact same boat. I’m selling off other books I wouldn’t CGC to pay for the grading.

I would not try to grade this book based on these pictures. FWIW.

It will get the purple label. But, unless you keep it forever, how can you sell it to someone else and describe it accurately? And a 2.5 R sold this year for $3300, so I actually think you’ll do better with the purple label than if you sell it as an unknown restored quantity. The lower grades take less of a hit than the higher ones.

+1

The edges of the cover might benefit from a press, especially since it's such a good looking book already! I'm going 6.5 on this.

VG for me. BTW all these keys you're posting I would slab.

I'm slightly lower... 4.5 to 5.0. Is that dirt along the spine? If that could be cleaned off, you'd get a bump.

I just slabbed a FF52 that looks about the same, maybe even a little better than that, and it got a 5.0. I'll say 5.0. Hopefully they had an off-day with mine, and you'll do better. As for pressing, I'm not sure what it would address. The color breaking creases will still be there.

LOL... that piece was gonna fall off regardless of whether it was with me, or CGC. I half thought of taping it on. But I've learned to ignore my half thoughts.

I don't either. TwoPiece said 5.5 before the M fell off, to be fair, but I thought that was pretty high even then, for all the spine creases. Perhaps he was viewing on mobile. I was thinking maybe VG+ before the M fell off. Now I think I'll be lucky to get a VG-.

Man, nice analysis! Thank you! I figured this was restored, since this book unrestored and raw even back when I bought it (2002) would still have had a price tag I wouldn't have forgotten. LOL The front cover absolutely needs a press. I'll have CCS screen it, but I doubt they can remove all the stuff you outlined. I'm still gonna slab it, though. Gotta provide full disclosure for the eventual buyer. For some reason I bought 3 X-Men 1's back then... this one , the one in the PGM forum which is deteriorating as we speak (!), and an CGC 8.5 (R) book, which sadly was trimmed. Should have spent more on some AF15's instead, maybe... but I ain't complainin'.