scburdet

Looks pretty damn sharp to me. The CGC Cert has "Key Comments: Used in SOTI". Am I dumb? Should I know what that means?

Lots of Golden Age book showing up here lately, so I am sharing mine. I literally own 2 GA books and the other one is definitely not worth sharing. IDK if this will be worth grading, I just liked the cover and grabbed it several years ago. The low prices of these books amazes me. There always seem to be a few copies of this one floating around in online markets, so I don't think it's that rare. This one has a scuff around the word 'Marshal' and a solid reader's crease. Other than the spine, the book looks pretty good. Still holding together well and the paper isn't brittle. Someone seemed to have taken care of this one pretty well for a long stretch of it's 71 years on the planet. It's all I've got in hand to calibrate my GA grading eye, so I am interested to see what people think.

I'm going with 4.0. I've also said 4.0 on about every GA comic posted lately. The back isn't bad. I don't really notice the rippling, so I'll take your word for it. The water stain on the front is what will get you. I guess the question is does CGC hate water stains on GA books as much as they hate it on books from other eras. I'm always amazing some of these books look as nice as they do after so many years.

is that tanning on the back cover, or something weird with the pictures?

I'm at 3.5±0.5. I've been pretty consistently coming in too low on the GA books in the contest, so I am adjusting accordingly. I was going to say 4.0, but the piece out of the cover on the spine stops me. Although the Green Lantern book in the contest has a much larger piece missing. What I'm saying is my grade is not reliable at all, so you're paying too much for my opinion.

the little mark about the Hulk's head is giving me fits. B/C the book looks pretty great except for that and the divot on the back edge. 7.5-8.0. I can't see higher with those 2 medium level defects Also

4.0-4.5

The spine edge on the back cover looks a little rough. Is something going on there, or is that an illusion? I see some light to moderate creasing around the spine that might look better with pressing. There are people with actual experience pressing GA-era comics that I would defer to though. This books really looks great for being almost 70 years old. If there's a GA-bump, I could see this going 8.5±0.5, but my feel for what CGC feels are acceptable defects on these are vague, at best. If I was way off in either direction, I would not be surprised.

The cover image could be better. I see several spots that look like color rub (e.g. at the start of the white line that goes toward Dr. Spectrum's arm). I see what looks like a crease on the outer edge of the cover that runs vertically and parallel to the edge. The surface of the front cover looks less than perfect, but that could be the image and not the book. Pending higher resolution photos, 6.0.

Sharp eyes you have there. This appears to be a light crease that doesn't break color. The light reflection makes it look a bit heavier than it is. Hope that's something that will partially or completely press out.

Y'all scored my ASM121 higher than I thought, so try this one

It's small and on the back, but CGC hates stains. So, 6.0-9.0? I'll guess 8.0

You might have better luck getting expert eyeballs on this in the Grading and Restoration issues thread. To me, that looks like ink, which would not be cleanable by noninvasive methods. It may or may not be ink from printing, which would impact grades differently. I'd say press to get rid of the apparent spine role to get >9.0 as long as the spot isn't deemed staining.

+1 The bottom right corner of the cover is the tipping point between potential for 8.0 w/C&P and a 7.5. Could go as low as 7.0, but this looks better than typical 7.0s from the era I've seen.

Waiting for CGC to push mine through grading (I'm expecting ~4.5). Yours is much, much nicer Spine ticks, rounded outer corners and light color rub on the spine corner. 7.5±0.5. The dark colors make the defects look worse, so I hope they won't get hammered unfairly. I've got a book from this era with ticks that are a bit longer, but on a light background, that came in at 7.0. I think this is a better book even if the ticks on mine are "hidden".

I was going to start with 8.5 again b/c of the scuffing? ink transfer? around the top corner and showing on the white of the spine. It's not totally out of the question some of that could be characterized as manufacturing defect. But it does look like there's a small crease on the back corner and the other corner looks rounded. Therefore, I'm going with 8.0-8.5. I don't see that below 8.0 is justifiable & getting to 9.0 would be a heavy lift.

Nice copy. I see enough spine ticks and maybe wear along the top edge to think you might be out of the NM range, but I have noticed a lot books from this age grade pretty high with some noticeable ticks. 8.5±0.5. Definitely higher grade than mine that got the CGC stain hammer.

These darker covers always look worse to me in my photographs than the book in hand. IDK if the photos better represent how a grader doing a detailed inspection views the books tho. Nevertheless, a few typical defects and some distributor overspray. The back cover is the reason I'm sharing this one. Board members have convinced me that pressing should remove non-color breaking indentions pretty well (this one is much less severe than the on on my Hulk 141). However, I assume that pressing will no help the bent staple, and that messing with the staple would risk breaking/losing it. So, how does a bent staple factor into the grading? #TeamMan-Thing

It's always possible my laptop screen is dingy, but I would have someone (not CCS) take a crack at cleaning the cover a bit to maximize the presentation/grade, if it hasn't been done already. It looks just a little dirty, and I concur this has >9.0 potential and looks very nice. I don't see many references to this as a bondage cover, but it really should. I've tried more than once to get one of these in auctions.

Tough one for me. 5.0±0.5 after it's pressed to take some of the wrinkles out of the back cover. I'd like to go higher, but that is a pretty hard reader's crease. The writing on the back doesn't help, but I doubt it hurts either as the crease sets the grade. Forget the grade though, it looks really nice. The defects aren't that noticeable

3.5±0.5. Looking for the Spider-Man bump to get an extra half point

I think this book actually looks better in hand than in photos. More so than other things I've posted anyway. The main reason I'm sharing this one is the "creasing" on the top right corner in the "DERS" and similar things can be seen at the top of the back cover. I don't think this is normal creasing (exhibit A, it's a curved crease). It reminds me of paper coming out of a xerox machine that doesn't feed quite right and gets tiny creases (or sometime big ones). Is this a reasonable hypothesis? Is there a name for the defect? Is this common? I can't think of another book I have with this.

Lucky for me, I bought this >20 years ago. I was more interested in having the original version of the Marvel Tales book I had growing up than the death of Gwen Stacy key. I remember thinking it was an expensive then, but now it would seem like a bargain (if I could remember what I paid). The spot has a texture to it, but it has resisted my patented "rub it lightly with a fingernail" technique, which has been surprisingly effective at removing "stuff" on books that are decades old.

Another. Type "stain" into the search bar, and use the drop down option to choose This Forum (otherwise you get a bunch of other stuff)

Here's one.