Qalyar

Spine ticks, especially (but not only) near the barcode box. That FC LR corner is a mess. Impact creases along the FC top edge. Smudge at BC LL, and possibly at BC UR also. Honestly, I would have said "8.5/9.0" if this had been posted as a PGM book. The back cover translucency has nothing to do with this grade.

In principle, some of the lower grade Universal copies could be signed books that had the signature treated as a defect rather than a Qualifying condition. Also, insert the standard disclaimer about inaccurate census counts due to the crack-and-regrade carousel. But, the general point stands in that there are almost certainly fewer unsigned copies than signed (one way or another) copies. That's not unique to this book; indeed, there is an increasingly large number of low-print-run variants where the trend to have hot books signed by someone, anyone is quickly exhausting the supply of unsigned copies in general. So far, at least, signed books (generally) trade at a premium -- in part, I imagine, because modern signings are typically not free, so a signed book bakes in additional "cover" price in that sense. It will be interesting to see if that continues over the next 10, 15, 20 years. For my part, I prefer my books unsigned except in cases where no unsigned copies were intentionally released.

As I recall, they were awards from some contest, although I do not remember the details. Honestly, the 2D printing of Miracleman in 3-D #1 is the best known of the 3D-in-2D books, and it likely demands the highest prices on the market. Because Miracleman, and all. But I don't think it's the rarest. All four issues of Adolescent Radioactive Black Belt Hamsters in 3-D presumably exist in 2D form also, but there are no copies of any of the issues on the census, and to my knowledge no copies of #2 or #3 have emerged on the secondary market within the last decade at least. Also, there was some collector interest in these books when they came out. That's where Miracleman in 3-D #1 copy 23/100 came from, and likely why it remained in such good condition. But I suspect that a substantial percentage of copies sold went to their intended market: people whose vision conditions prevented them from reading the 3D books as intended, who may or may not have been interested in comic preservation over the years.

Second printing copies are indeed so marked in the indicia.

New Legends is absolutely an underground, and just about everyone involved ended up being notable in one field or another. It's a great book and imo underrated on the lists of undergrounds because it's just creative storytelling rather than the sex-and-drugs content of the highest profile undergrounds. No idea how many were produced, but it's certainly rare. I imagine there are sleeper copies hidden in stacks of books in the Boston area for the diligent to find. Still, undergrounds are their own creature. If you're into variants, then the gold seal copies of Marvel Super Special #11-13 surely warrant mention, with confirmed print runs of 25 copies each. Likewise, the various Eclipse Comics non-3D special printings of their 3D books are maybe a year or two too late to be Bronze Age depending where you draw the line, but they're beasts to locate. The most common might have a dozen known copies; several, so far as I know, have never seen a copy emerge on the secondary market.

A talented and groundbreaking actress, and also a phenomenally nice human being.

I'll go 7.0 here, but that's a real nice looking book you've got there.

Please add to Babylon 5: Babylon 5 #nn (2007). Cert #4090255001. Slot added per request 8/19/22

Fictional depictions of "dangerous snakes" have a tendency to sort of blend together the salient features of multiple species. So you get venomous snakes, often with cobra hoods, that are also constrictors. Sometimes they're also even rattlesnakes! That's not at all unique to comics. I don't generally let it bother me too much.

Still around, since 1981.

Honestly, my guess is that this is recessed staples, rather than just creases or tears. But we're honestly all just spitballing right now, because trying to divine things from grader's notes alone is pretty much right up there with entrail reading. I understand that the OP doesn't have photos available right now, but ...

I can answer that; yes, this is the UK edition. I'll also go 7.5 here. I think a press might improve the UL corner and the LR back cover, but I'm not confident it will resolve any of the issues sufficiently to get this to 8.0. Regardless, nice book; UK copies are a lot harder to find than normal ones. Not confident on what that means for market value though. EDIT: Just for context, I think the established number for the print run on the normal version is ~135k copies. The UK version is believed to have been a run of 2k or less. Demand may or may not be there in terms of actual market value, but this is definitely a tough book to find.

I have had one round of books for through CCS, with no complaints. All books badly needed the care, and all came back 9.8. I'm sure things can go wrong, but I -- personally -- don't have any evidence that it's likely or systemic. That said, I have another presser that I prefer in general. Pressing depends a lot on the skill and experience of the person doing the work, and I like knowing who that person is.

5.5, with or without press. That bend should resolve with pressing without a problem. But the spine wear, LR corner, back cover staining, and especially those UR corner creases are the controlling defects, and the press can't help there.

Yeah, I have no doubt that Mike and the other CGC staff know all that already; it was more for the benefit of the community who might not have as much of any idea what I was talking about. I've long believed that implementing something like this is an important step to fixing the "error era". Improving the QA process serves to reduce errors going forward, but verification notations work to correct the potential market impact of problematic books that already exist. And that includes notations for certification numbers where there's credible evidence that open or unsealed slabs exist. We've seen pictures of a few others, where the slab simply missed the sonic weld. So far, those seem to have all gone to upstanding collectors who merely wanted their book encapsulated properly... but in the long run, they represent a potential source of outright certification forgeries, so they're important to keep ahead of.

So, NGC has a few extra complications over CGC because there actually are fairly decent quality counterfeit NGC slabs, while (to my knowledge) there aren't really any credible CGC slab forgeries. In part because of this, NGC has several notations that it can place on a certification which are visible when you enter it on their certification lookup tool. CONTACT NGC CUSTOMER SERVICE is sort of a catch-all. It means there's something that NGC would like to discuss with the holder of the slab. It's my understanding that this doesn't necessarily mean that the slab or certification is bad, but... well, you should contact customer service. If I was in charge at CGC, I might apply this status to slabs where there was reason to believe there was something wrong other than a labeling error, such as books known to have had substantial post-encapsulation (or, sure, mid-encapsulation) damage or that were encapsulated with debris or whatnot. POSSIBLE COUNTERFEIT HOLDER is exactly what it says on the tin; there is believed to be a counterfeit holder using this certification number. That doesn't mean, of course, that the slabbed coin you are holding is the counterfeit slab, so you should contact NGC customer service. I believe the general goal in these cases is to reslab the genuinely encapsulated coins with a new number, but I may be wrong. Eventually someone will try to forge CGC slabs, so it's probably a good idea to have a procedure in place ahead of time. MECHANICAL ERROR means that NGC believes the slab has been mislabeled. Like, well, a lot of the books in this thread. Their guidance says that "this coin should be returned to NGC so that the label can be corrected", but in the meantime, there's an obvious notice on the certification that indicates there's something wrong. To my knowledge, it doesn't say what is wrong, and that's fine. It's good enough to flag likely problems. Obviously, this is the way to deal with things like the several UF4 reprints that are sitting in slabs purporting to be the originals. DELETED is also what it says on the tin. Sometimes this means that they are aware that the coin was removed from the holder and so the certification number was retired. But I do understand that some coins have had their certification revoked for other causes. They do have a process via customer service to appeal the deletion of a certification in case there was an error in that process. Now what I can't answer is what their standard of evidence is to get coin certifications notated in these regards. I suspect that's not strictly public knowledge, especially regarding slab forgeries. But obviously, the CGC folks can walk down the hall and have a meeting with NGC's certification verification team.

These are not the stupid Bad Idea invisible comics where the publisher got to pay to choose their own grades and no, I'm not still annoyed that CGC allowed that, why would you think otherwise? These are ostensibly cases for copies of Wolverine #1 with no comic inside. So they're either broken-out cases or were shipped without the comic in error. If the former, the certifications should be removed; if the latter, the certifications need to be flagged for potential shenanigans in future. Either way....

@CGC Mike Not sure what the policy is for situations like this, but thought you'd want a ping on this one. The certification numbers are legible on these empty cases -- 4054624004 and 4054624005 -- and currently pull up seemingly normal records for 9.2 copies of Wolverine #1. I know I've said this before, but this is yet another excellent reason to about sister company NGC's policy of flagging certification numbers with known concerns. In this case, you'd almost certainly want to use the CGC equivalent of "CONTACT NGC CUSTOMER SERVICE". In this case, there are presumably good copies of Wolverine #1 in slabs with these numbers (however this happened), but the existence of empty slabs in the wild means that they should be resubmitted, re-evaluated, and issued new numbers if possible to avoid the potential for or appearance of potential for fraud. Hence, customer service. For many of the other books in this thread, where there are known Mechanical Errors, NGC preemptively marks the certification "MECHANICAL ERROR" to encourage label correction, rather than depend on slab holders to resubmit. The current CGC system disincentivizes relabeling of books incorrectly described as something more valuable than they already are, which keeps the worst of all error labels in circulation longer. NGC is just down the hall. It baffles me that CGC hasn't adopted the same certification verification safeguards.

Wow. First couple of pics, sure, you did really nicely. I'd rake Batman 211/245, and those Aquaman issues for a buck all day long. But Batman 251 and Ghost Rider 1 for a dollar? I guess I really don't understand how timezones work, because it's clearly already Christmas wherever you are...

It is always difficult to detect trimming or its absence from photos. But, um, that looks way more trim-y than pretty much any other book I've seen asked about here.

Ah, well, I clearly misremembered how that worked. That's ... actually pretty funny, really. Since it uses the CGC logo and such, I have to assume the company did at least give them the go-ahead, though.

Forgot about these. There was a 4001 AD CGC cover, too, as I recall. So, yeah, not the end of the world. Or even really anything new. But still dumb.

Meh. There have been a couple other variant things that went straight to CGC. I'm not thrilled that CGC is doing this, because I think they really should strive to just be an independent grading authority, and this doesn't feel particularly "independent". But I'm less bothered by it than I was (am) by that invisible Bad Idea "comic" with the preselected grades.

Without regard to my personal feelings on the issue, I do suspect the political element encouraged quite a few of the book's supporters, just as it was responsible for the burst in interest/market value for Cyberfrog books a little while back.