scburdet

Perhaps the cover writing skewed people's grades a little. Nice looking book.

Everyone pretty close here. Would have liked the 6.0 Just a bit too creasy for that I guess.

Consensus was low here too. Pretty darn happy with this

Consensus was a little low. It is a nice looking book.

Only soiling can be readily removed. I see some of that, which might come off with dry methods. I also see evidence of foxing and stains (esp the bottom edge) that penetrate the paper. You need aggressive/wet methods to have a chance at removing things that aren't surface dirt. CGC can detect this & considers aggressive cleaning an alteration and a Restored label will reflect that. Restored label comics can sell for 50% less than the equivalent Universal label books. Let's say this book was completely clean, but still had the other wear issues, and we give it a very generous 9.0. The FMV for a graded 9.0 of Conan 11 is around $100-110. A 6.0 is around $75. CGC's pressing service, which may not be a thorough as an independent service with cleaning, costs $30/ea. for pre-1975 books. I am erring on your side in terms of values. In reality, you are likely looking at a narrower potential profit margin. The amount you want to invest in cleaning/pressing/grading correlates strongly with the expected value of the book. If it's a high value key, then the investment is probably worthwhile. For "regular" books, you'd want to start with one that's nearly perfect, or only needs trivial work (and even then it may not be worth the $$$). IMO, this is the kind of book that should be left raw. Perfectly collectable as-is. You would not have to dig too deep on this forum to find people who submitted nice looking, perfectly collectable comics for grading, but have buyer's remorse b/c there's no way they can get back the investment with the upper mid-grade results they get.

6.0/6.5 stains on back cover

7.5

4.0 is definitely my upper limit. You never know what will happen at CGC. zzutak is correct. Raw this is maybe $40-50.You *might* get $100 graded, but I kind of doubt that. There are other reasons to slab something, but in this case, it would need to be for reasons other than value.

7.5/8.0 It looks to me like there are some spine stress lines that are hidden pretty well by being on a white cover

4.0

yes. a totally lost cause that should be sent to me to sit in my long box of shame

Think I can see the crease in the side-on shot. Amazing that the color isn't broken given what the reverse side looks like. I assume there hasn't been color touching. Someone would have to be really skilled to have it look so normal. Sticking with my grades. I'd definitely want a professional to give this a once over b/c it's a really nice looking copy. I'd happily take it off your hands for a crisp $20 bill.

Water stain, max 6.0. I'd say 5.5

>9.2

You will get more traction post actual photos rather than external links. There also seem to be limits to the enlargements one can easily do in a Drive pdf. Looks like it could use a professional press to see if some of the waviness can be flattened out. Seems like there's a hard crease on the outer part of the inside front cover, but I can't see it on the outside. This is strange. A crease like that would cap this around 7.0. I think with proper TLC this could get to 6.0. Maybe 5.0/5.5 now

yes. IDK how that typo happened

Front has a general 4.0 look to it. 4.5 if not for the brown stain along the spine. The back is worse. Max 3.5 overall

This is probably a better topic for the Grading & Restoration forum, however... Leave it. None of those defects will be fixed by pressing. The combo of color-breaking defects are what have this at 4.0. IDK exactly how one removes glue, but I don't think it's worth the trouble, money or risk. Taking off the glue could require removing paper, and still not be successful. You could lose a grade to get a Universal, or you could invest a bunch in removal and end up with the same or lower restored grade. With current fees, you'd be spending at least $100-150 to increase the value by at most $400-500. IMO, this type of restoration shouldn't hurt the FMV as much as something like color touch in the first place b/c it's a structural fix not an attempt to hide damage. Very limited sales data, but I don't see a huge drop in FMV for this book universal vs restored at this grade. My guess is that restoration removal usually has the most upside with books that have values in multiple thousands of dollars (or is a very trivial removal).

9.0/9.2 pressed

9.0/9.2, maybe a grade higher pressed

6.0/6.5. Thinking lower b/c of the dark marks around Wilson on the back in particular

3.0 max, more likely 2.5

7.5 give or take

Fair number of what appear to be light color-breaking lines on the front cover. Not really sure what they are. 6.5/7.0 max

Kind of surprised when this showed up in MCS's inventory recently. It was one of the missing TT's fanzines there for a long time & I had only send 1 ebay sale in the last year that I totally missed in real time. The significance is this is Jim Starlin's 2nd full length "comic" after the TT Doctor Weird 1 fanzine. I think it's his first published original creation though (all this is supposition based on what research I can do). The most notable thing I see is the darkening of the paper. Note that unlike other TT fanzine from the same time period, the book is entirely newspaper-quality paper, no cardstock or heavier weight paper for the cover (some of their later stuff is on glassy paper). Kind of reminds me of early UK Captain Britain & similar books, only in B&W. Internal pages added for looking at the coloration of the paper.