scburdet

Said quite tongue-in-cheek. I think they might have called some of that red stuff on the Popular 66 a stain, and I thought it was ink transfer The stains are tough though. It's almost like an excuse to hammer a book, albeit my object is usually the hammering when it's barely visible or something small on the back cover.

3.5. Apparently, I have trouble seeing stains (see: Round 1 grading contest, book 1). It seems like a good clean & press might make this look closer to a 4.0, but seems like the creasing & discoloration might keep this out of the 4s

As-is, I'll say 9.0/9.2 b/c of the indentions along the back of the spine. Those look pressable, so I could see this getting 9.4/9.6 (leaning to 9.4). I doubt 9.8, especially b/c all the keys and semi-key Spider-Mans are higher census books, so they look at a lot of copies.

probably. I mostly end up doing this with the GA books b/c I don't collect/handle/see these in person at all. My only experience with the GA books is in this forum. Lots of the time I'm just trying to figure out what the covers are supposed to look like since it's my first time seeing them. I guess the exception this round is I was curious how much a low grade Hulk 5 was going for these days, saw the 1.5 & couldn't fathom spending $20 on it let alone the asking price https://www.ebay.com/itm/256007209242

6.5/7.0. I think it looks higher, but the tanning/foxing is at least moderate. Probably loses at least a couple grades (I have an 8.0 where I didn't notice the tanning at all, so that's my reference point)

Kind of laid an egg on the round, but here are my grader notes. IMO 'The Thing' is way overgraded compared to examples I saw checking how my guess stacked up to comps. I can rationalize the rest of the deviations between my guesses & the slabs. The list of defects have a line, which is the tipping point for assigning the grade. The column of ranges comes from the CGC book.

I just spent 5 min looking at the photos again thinking I was crazy or losing my mind Then I read the post again to see the scans were replaced by photos. I had a suspicion it could be a scanner artifact, and it looks like that might have been it.

This was a pretty low risk buy. Shipping was 1/3 of the total cost. Seller wasn't too descriptive about the defects, but I was fairly certain the top staple was detached. Not that bad otherwise. Got another one of these a while back that looked OK in photos, but in reality was not that nice.

That all depends on your goals here. If it's for your personal collection & you just want it graded, then I see no reason not to take the chance. Using an authorized CGC partner instead of submitting yourself could get another set of eyes on the book in-hand to help make the ID. If it's all distributor ink, it's not a big deal. If it's just some ink loss, a little more grade impact but survivable. A stain on the front cover is a grade killer & IMO you would not recoup your grading investment in a sell price or stored value. There's not enough market data that I can find/access to tell me what the FMV is of this book graded. An 8.0 could be <$100, whereas something in the mid-9s or higher might score a couple of hundred dollars or more. I think a lot of the existing are probably lower grade & there are only about a dozen in the census, so kind of rare, but maybe not a ton of demand either. It all depends on what you want to get out of a grade.

Are we sure that's not distributor ink? That was my first impression

around 9.0

I'd call this at least a 4.0 & probably higher. The outer edge looks like Marvel chipping, which won't get hit as hard. A 5.0....*maybe* 5.5 wouldn't surprise me. I'd call this mid-grade & definitely consider grading for preservation. Not a really high value book, but just not a lot of these floating around that look decent. TIL this is the white box variant (price box) as they exist without the box. IDK if one is rarer than the other. CGC doesn't denote a difference on the labels.

dark back covers that get a little scuffing from rubbing on the backboard are tough. Around 9.4

4.0 is CGC's absolute floor for a spine roll FWIW. Definitely hoping for a press out there. It's true there are books you just have to jump on when someone's selling one. Ironically, it's probably easier to find a comparable grade for something like Giant-Size X-Men 1, even if you'd have to spend a lot more for it.

8.0 just for the little creasing & corner crease along the top. Nice Romita cover

seems like there's a decent size piece out at the bottom staple. 5.0

Looks like an light oil transfer stain on the rear cover and maybe some light foxing too. Around 5.5

Nothing on the pages. You can see the darker spots away from the spine do penetrate. Not a lot going on with the bulk of the spots. It does look/feel like typical water staining. I'm going with the book was stacked on....something....which had some kind of gunk on it. Maybe something more oily. IDK. At some point it doesn't matter that much what it is. I'm in the 4.0 range personally b/c it's all on the back.

7.0/7.5 there's a light line running parallel to the spine. Not sure what that is. As far as shopping goes, for raw books, mycomicshop is the best for a book like this. Their grading is strict & you might pay a dollar or two more than an auction, but at least you're getting what you paid for. I'm pretty convinced that a lot of online sellers are just "trying" to sell their collections b/c their spouse is making them. They set the prices high so their inventory never actually sells

6.0/6.5 I was about to go higher, but it looks like there are readers crease(s) running through a large part of the length of the book

which are easy marks for people to color touch

Relatively speaking, staple tears are viewed more leniently than other tears by CGC. Creasing is not quite as bad as a tear, but you're probably not looking at a big difference in grades between creases around the staples and small staple tears. Maybe 0.5 higher.

OK, I know the Marvel UK publishers weren't thinking about collectors decades into the future, but these unattached free gift inserts must have been a nightmare for newsstands back in the day. Unless they were sold in a plastic bag or something. I'm intrigued by these weeklies that split comics over multiple issues b/c of the cover are that's different from the American releases

Well....I've got *a lot* of space dedicated to comic storage. 1 magazine isn't going to be the proverbial straw, but going to an e-copy rather than trying to locate & dig a boo out has some advantages. I kind of like the idea of putting multiples back out in the wild b/c some of these books are getting hard for collectors to find. Plus, for every $1 you make selling a book, you get to spend $10 on something else you want