Many of us probably understand how he feels a wee bit. A few months back, I submitted five of my comics to get graded. Now, to set the story, these comics of mine (and about 99% of all my other ones) that I purchased back in the very early 90's have never been opened or read. At that time, I went to the comic book store and the owner allowed me to carefully hand pick the comics out of his just arrived shipment of new comics. I immediately placed them into a cardboard backed, acid free plastic bag made for comics. I then placed those comics into a comic storage box. I have four long boxes of comics sitting in a humidity controlled (and mostly dark) place in my finished basement for years! Not sure if anything else I could have been done to keep them in more of a pristine condition.
After all these years, I thought....why not get a few graded. These things are in mint condition and should get a super high rating of at least 9.8! Why wouldn't they! - (see first part of story above) . You can imagine my surprise when I received them back a couple months later. Two of my Spiderman's were rated at 9.2. Vamperella #1 was rated at 9.2, Spawn #1 rated at 9.4 and another Spiderman rated at 9.6. I read the notes (i.e. "faults") that they associated with each of the comics and tried my best to find them. I honestly can say that I might have found one of the "issues", but I sure as hell couldn't find any of the others!
But, I guess its the luck of the draw (and someones opinion that day), so to speak. Am I a bit bummed that they were not graded higher? Sure, who wouldn't be. Do I believe they should be rated higher? In my opinion...yup. But, watcha' gonna' do. It didn't deter me from sending in another five comics two months ago (waiting on results). Kinda' feels like buying some scratch off tickets. You may be a bit disappointed after the first one is scratched, but hoping the next ones better.