Qalyar

Well, "as it should be" is probably the case for C-1 restoration, which is pretty common. A lot of comics have that sort of (usually) well-meaning amateur "help". And for those books, it's pretty easy to imagine what the book's state would have been without the restoration. But it's utterly impossible to reverse engineer more involved and/or professional work. And what would the "without restoration" grade even mean for a book with a married cover? A trimmed book? There's no way to even guess at the previous state. It's not a bad idea, exactly, but it's not a very feasible one. CGC sees what the book looks like now, and that's all they can pass judgment on.

I'm pretty sure that purple would be considered C-1 color touch. It is not a professional-grade effort to restore the original appearance of the cover, but it does serve to (vaguely, at a distance) conceal the defect. It's not really any different that using a sharpie to fill in a scuff on a non-matching black field.

This book was a little doomed from the start because that bad miscut (which wouldn't itself count against grade) left the top margin of the front cover unprotected. And it shows, with the creases up there, especially the long horizontal crease that breaks color and marks where the cover overhangs the rest of the book. Oh, and I don't think that stain is distributor ink. I think it's just a stain. The spine is in rough shape too, not the least problem of which is that big notch in it at the base of the Marvel Comics Group box. I can't decide from these pictures whether there's also significant darkening of the back cover along the spine and in a broad area at back cover top right, or if that's a trick of the light. Given the rest of the book's condition, I don't expect the latter. For that matter, we don't have a close-up of the bottom staple, but to my eye, it looks darker than the top one, which is, shall we say, not a good sign if that's actually the case. There's quite a bit we can't see at all that might matter, including interior paper condition (I don't think this has white pages...) and the centerfold in particular. These badly skew-cut books are prone to little page tears around the staples. I'm not the grading expert that some others here are, but my gut instinct is 6.0. I am not a frequent advocate for pressing and cleaning, but I especially don't think it would help here, in terms of the presentation appeal of the book, its technical grade, or its monetary value. A press might help the wrinkles at the upper left front, and might remedy the problems at the back cover bottom, but it simply can't repair color-breaking faults, and this book has a lot of color breaking faults. That stain isn't going anywhere, either. I don't think a full grade from pressing is realistic unless a lot goes in this comic's favor during the process. I think a 6.5 post-press is more likely. For slabbed books, Gocollect reports a $20 FMV jump between 6.0 and 7.0 on this book. That's not going to pay for the pressing even if you get a great press.

I don't think the defects on this book are the sort that can be remedied by pressing. But I tend to be a pressing pessimist (pressimist?) in general, so if you feel it's worth the expense to attempt, it's certainly your prerogative. Also, I'll side with the masses here. This book's a 9.6.

Honestly, right now, I think one of the biggest appeals to yellow-label books (either from CGC or its primary competitor) is that they are witnessed signatures that can be realistically guaranteed to be authentic. Signature collecting has been a thing for decades, but so has signature forgery. And with current estimates that 60% (or more!) of the collectible signatures currently on the market are outright frauds, well... For example, Stan Lee signatures outside of a witnessed book are rapidly approaching worthless because there is so much bad paper that it drives out the good. And I don't see any realistic way to change that; PSA is a trainwreck that shows signature authentication is only slightly less dubious than handwriting analysis. So, to some extent, some SS books will always be valuable. But I don't think their lofty heights are forever, and I certainly don't think they're going to be forever viewed as "superior" to high grade Universal copies.

For a lot of people, yellow label is better, and worth more. But not for everyone. I tend to think that this signature craze is a lot like restoration was in the 1970s. It takes a book, and (often, and stereotypically) makes it worth more, so why wouldn't you? But it didn't take all that long in the scheme of things to go from "restoration makes your comics better!" to "restoration makes you the sad owner of a PLOD book". Personally, I'd be happy to never own a yellow label book, just as I don't collect purple ones. I view organized, systematic comic collecting as a very "young" hobby. As I've pointed out a lot on these boards, we don't even have a truly comprehensive catalog of print variants for the people who would choose to collect that way (Overstreet ain't it). Other, similar hobbies learned a lot of these lessons. Once upon a time, people did the same sort of restoration on stamps, and cleaned or polished coins. Stamps with restoration are essentially worthless in all but the edgiest of edge cases, and cleaned coins are considered damaged (and get the equivalent of green grades, at best). Tiny printing differences in postage stamps -- the paper used, the gauge of the perforations, sometimes even the phospor tagging visible under black light -- can make hundreds or even thousands of dollars of difference. Slowly, sometimes too slowly, we're learning. There are several GA keys that are now all but impossible to find in unrestored condition, because everyone had tears sealed and pages cleaned, even when the books really didn't need any help. And, yes, most of the hoopla over newsstand variants right now is flipper cash-grabbing, but some of those books are real rarities hiding in plain sight. Thirty years from now, are we going to look back and wonder why people "back then" got so many comics signed by... well, anyone vaguely related to the book? Cover artist, interior artist, Stan Lee, writer, actors who played the characters in an adaptation, Stan Lee...? Every time someone makes a 9.8 SS book, that's one less 9.8 Universal that will ever exist. For a lot of books, that won't really matter. There will still more 9.8s out there than collectors who are likely to care. But there are limited books, low-print run books, books famous for poor quality production runs, where that might not be the case. There are over twice as many 9.0+ SS copies of Cerebus 1 as 9.0+ blue labels (and that assumes that none of the blues were cracked to hand back to Dave Sim for signing); I'm sure there are plenty of other examples. No matter what happens to collecting trends, a 9.8 Universal will always be a high quality collectible, even if something bad happens to CGC or to the slabbing industry as a whole (after all, you can always crack a slab). You can't have a cover unsigned.

This is cheating, a little bit, because "The Pit" by the Silversun Pickups is literally based on Charles Burns' Black Hole, although it doesn't exactly follow the story in sequence. Regardless, I associate the song's themes with Keith and Eliza's last story arc in 11-12.

I'm not as enamored of pressing as most folks these days, but even I would get this one pressed. It's tough to predict how well crease smoothing will take, but I think this book should deserve an 8.5 when all is said and done. Comparing it to that Heritage copy does it a disservice, because there's no way that book deserved the grade it got. That dark strip at the top is exactly mirrored on the back cover, so if that's just a... really aggressive dust shadow, it penetrates all the way through the copy. Compare it to what probably is more normal dust shadow at the front cover right (near the "8"), which discolors the blue field but doesn't show up in any sense on the back cover. I'd look warily at the latter because it can indicate fiber degradation, but I can't believe they didn't ding the former much more harshly because it certainly does (in addition to being a large and unsightly defect).

Sometimes there are real dogs of comics that manage, despite the odds, to retain a beautiful cover. We like to euphemistically say those "present well", and they make the best low-grade slabs. This thing is the exact opposite. That cover could barely get worse if my dog got to it, but the interior pages are fantastic. I agree that this would get a 0.5 label, but I even more fervently agree that it shouldn't be slabbed. Slabbing this book would rob it of the features that make it worth owning; it needs to be able to be opened to be appreciated for what's genuinely very good about it.

I'm stunned by how nice this copy looks. Every copy of This is Ann I've ever seen could have been generously described as "mauled". For those who don't know what this thing is, it was a 1943 US GPO publication giving advice on avoiding mosquito bites to members of the military in the Pacific in an effort to combat malaria. The book was uncredited because it was a military publication, but it was (obviously) illustrated by Captain Theodore Geisel (later, Dr. Seuss) and written by Munro Leaf (best known then, as now, as the author of The Story of Ferdinand, about the flower-sniffing bull), who was working with the Army Department at the time. Leaf was actually involved in quite a few (rare!) "cartoon books" for the government, including the later Who Is the Man Against the Marshall Plan?. I half expect to see one of those in this thread next! :P

So, Midnight Nation 1 shipped with a 50/50 ratio of two covers. One shows David Grey in full figure, and has a primarily black background. The other has David's face over a skyline with a bright red background. By convention, the former is the "A" cover and the latter is the "B" cover. There are also a bunch of other versions of this book: a Dynamic Forces variant cover, the DF cover with a gold foil logo, the DF cover with a blue foil logo, a DF "European Exclusive" variant cover, and a 2nd printing of the comic itself (which uses the "B" cover, color-swapped from red to blue). And that doesn't include the black and white re-issue under a slightly different title, which we can safely ignore for the rest of this thread! The CGC Census for this book lists 29 copies with no variant, 4 copies of the DF variant, 5 copies of the DF gold, 4 copies of the DF blue, and 4 copies of the European Edition. Presumably, no one has ever bothered submitting the 2nd printing for slabbing. Strangely, it also notes "Gold foil logo" as "Key Comments" for the issue as a whole, which is factually incorrect (of the 7 distinguishable versions of this book, only one has gold foil). But what concerns me is that, based on the Census, all normal (non-DF) copies of the book have been slabbed identically without regard to the A/B cover distinction. I was able to locate one such slabbed book -- a CGC SS 9.6 (fair disclosure: I don't own this; it's currently listed on eBay, but I don't collect signed comics). I've cropped and attached the label from that book's listing. It bears a note that "Two different covers exist both by Gary Frank.", which is certainly accurate, but doesn't really do anything to enable distinct collection of slabbed copies of the two covers. I suppose that it's possible, if immensely unlikely, that all 29 submitted copies are, like that book, cover A? If a submission for grading and slabbing included both a copy of Midnight Nation 1 (A cover) and a copy of Midnight Nation 1 (B cover), how would those be labelled? Would they be distinguished in a way that would allow for separate entries in the Census and a theoretical title Registry (as none currently exists)? I presume that the 2nd printing would get the standard "2nd printing" treatment, and all the other variants of this issue are recorded correctly, so it's really just the A/B split that leaves me concerned. I know nothing can be done about the way this book was graded previously, but I have an eye to the future here. I know CGC doesn't get into the weeds on all variants (direct vs. newsstand, among others), but surely entirely different covers should be labeled separately? ...and, yes, for everyone else reading this, I know. I'm quibbling about the labels on slabs for books that might, on a good day, maybe be worth more raw than their original cover price. We all have our peccadilloes, do we not?

If/when you have it in hand, I'd be very interested to see if the indicia/colophon gives any indication of the printing. I assume it does, in some fashion.

So, I tried to dig into this a little bit. I don't have physical copies of these at hand, and haven't for years and years. Certainly, several retailers (including Chuck) list and price sundry printing separately. I really do assume that there's a colophon in there somewhere. However, I also have good news and bad news, depending on how strict you are about what constitutes a "first [English] appearance". The first US printing of Pokémon: The Electric Tale of Pikachu was released by Viz on November 27, 1998. At least some comic sites consider this the first appearance of Pikachu (and Ash, but really, people are in it for the Pikachu, right?) in English comics. This book is now on [at least] the 16th printing. If not for the pandemic, I could probably scare up some physical copies and conclusively determine how to identify the printing. But... as it turns out, arguably, that's not the first appearance of Ash and Pikachu anyway. A few days earlier, on November 24, Viz released the first VHS compilation of episodes of the Pokémon anime (Pokémon: I Choose You! Pikachu!). Some initial run copies of this VHS tape were packaged with a so-called "manga sampler" ediiton of Pokémon: The Electric Tale of Pikachu 1. This sampler edition is shorter than the normal comic and simply cuts off the story midway through. It is also easily distinguishable from traditionally-released versions of the comic due to the modified cover. Nevertheless, it arguably qualifies as these characters' actual first appearance in English comics (and Bulbapedia, the community-driven Pokémon encyclopedia, considers it such). I've never actually seen one of these, for what it's worth, and none of the comic book indexes or sales sites (GCD, MyComicShop, and even Chuck) make any mention of its existence. Locating a copy will be a lengthy and difficult quest, but I have found and attached a cover scan at least. For the sake of providing comprehensive information, there is also a similar "manga sampler" edition for Pokémon: The Electric Tale of Pikachu 2, released in the same way as a VHS pack-in, but no equivalent versions are known for the later monthly comic issues.

I'm inexpert at this, but I'll take a stab with a 9.0/9.2. The biggest issues are that semicircular color breaking stress mark (front cover, bottom staple); and the crunched spine at bottom (most visible from the back). There are also a few handling marks along the bottom edge back. The good news about the spine is that I don't see any ticks in the traditional sense, but that color breaking arc is almost certainly worse. Finally, I really can't decide from the pictures whether that whitish mark above "Got Milk" is an intended part of the design or a surface scuff. If the latter... that might knock it down another point?

I don't think there's any reliable method based on the covers. You're likely going to have to open the book and check the indicia.

So, pressing can probably correct the smaller crease near the right side, which doesn't appear to break color, but the big told is color breaking and can't be corrected. I'm not at all confident that a press will be worth the cost, nor that it will substantially improve this cover's presentation. A shame, as it's a real pretty book otherwise. I don't have a great track record at numerical prognostication, so I'm hesitant to drop a number down. But I can safely say that EC's recent grade estimates are, with no offense intended, uselessly lowballing these comics. If I absolutely had to guess, I'd suggest that this told is significant enough to be a major defect, and that the final grade is probably 6.5. If they're willing to let that crease go as a moderate defect, I think you could get a 7.5. Either way, that's a $50 slab, give or take a little, per gocollect.

Really? I guess I'm often surprised by what defects are still tolerated. That said, wouldn't there be a "name written on page n" label note if there was?

I assume this isn't the book you had signed. Unwitnessed signed books are not getting a 9.8 blue label. That aside, you may actually want to contact CGC for the pictured book, because you are correct that it was mis-labeled. The pictured book should be the "Convention Edition", not the 4th printing. Both of those have the same overall cover art, but the Convention Edition has the blue SDCC medallion and the 4th printing has a black "Fourth Printing" box near the bottom. They'll generally reslab these errors for free.

Personally, I have to say that I would find a full run of Sandman in 9.8 to be absolutely fantastic, although it's unquestionably a huge commitment both in terms of slabbing fees and the hunt for pristine copies of those mid- and late-run books that no one pays much attention to.

Ah, my error. I knew that they were not currently mutually recognized, failed to realize that there was (formerly) a one-way transfer possible. I stand corrected.

More broadly, neither company will honor the other's yellow labels. If you crack a CBCS yellow-label slab, you get a green-label CGC. If you crack a CGC green-label slab, you get a red-label CBCS. So, you know, don't crack slabs with witnessed signatures, regardless of the grading/witnessing company (well, except maybe gold-label PGX...). EDIT: Not always correct. Struck. See below. My bad.

I'm actually going to lowball this as a 9.2. The front is pretty good; the most serious of the spine ticks breaks color in the A below the bottom staple. But there are two pretty substantial creases near the spine on the back. One is a little bit above the top staple, the other about the same distance below the bottom staple (and might be continued on the front as that color-breaking tick, I'm not certain). They're in non-printed areas, so they're not color-breaking, but they're much longer than typical spine ticks and I can't help but feel they'll have more knocked off for them accordingly.

Cyberfrog has a following that is apparently both pretty rabid in acquiring copies and quite well funded in doing so.

Here's my opinion on the whole topic. I get that many collectors don't really care about the difference. However, eventually, these are going to be recognized as substantively different books, at least for the specialist collector. I like to make comparisons to philately: two stamps that have the same design and are printed in the same color might still be different stamps from a collector's standpoint if they have different perforation gauges or are printed on paper with a different watermark. Right now, there's no equivalent to the Scott catalogue for stamps or even to the Red Book for coins. Overstreet is not really the same category of collector's tool, which makes us depend on directly commercial sources like MyComicShop and Mile High. I'm glad those resources exist (even though they're not comprehensive either!), but the inherent conflict of interest makes it harder to depend on them as a source for "catalog value". What no one should do, though, is assume there's a simple mathematical formula for value differences. Chuck seemingly believes there's a "newsstand value multiplier". Chuck is, with all due respect, crazy. Valuations for varieties of collectibles don't work that way. Back to stamps, "coils" -- with straight edges on two opposite sides -- were printed especially to be sold in stamp vending machines, making them arguably the closest parallel to the direct market vs. newsstand comics distinction. Ask a serious collector of early 20th century US stamps "how does it change the value if the stamp is from a coil roil?" They'll laugh at you... or else they should. Some -- many -- coils are worth no more than their sheet-printed equivalents. On the other hand, Scott #319 is a sheet-printed 2-cent stamp from 1903, worth maybe $20 in the highest realistic grades, but its two coil versions -- #321 (vertical coil) and #322 (horizontal coil) -- are among the greatest rarities of 20th century US stamp collecting. Only about 150 of the latter are known, while there are only around a half-dozen authenticated example of the former, each of which is easily worth in the hundreds of thousands of dollars. Many newsstand issues (and similar variants) are probably worth right about the same as their direct market counterparts. Some will be exceptions. Some of the 1999/2000 Marvel newsstand price variants are extremely hard to find and would likely be worth substantially more. Batman #457 2nd print newsstand is a famously rare book. On the other hand, some of the earliest direct market titles are probably "worth" a premium over their normal (newsstand) versions. Or would be, in a fully mature market. And that's not even getting into edge cases like the Adventures of Superman #443 mall variants! We do not have a fully mature market for this material. CGC didn't initially care, which I think was a mistake. Their hesitation to do so now is owed in part, I am certain, to the enormous backlog of slabbed books that would have incomplete labels (and thus be eligible for technical issue reslabs if they embraced the difference). That means we lack the CGC Census's power to determine the quantities of these books on the market and their available grade curves. Also, again, we don't have anything remotely like a comprehensive guide to comics, not even for the main publishers. I hope that at some point, Overstreet will step up to fill that role. If they don't, sooner or later, someone else will. Once that happens, collectors will have an easy means to see what exists to collect. Some collectors -- many here on the boards, for example -- will become what philately calls "type collectors", as uninterested in UPC box variants as their stamp-collecting brethren are in perforation sizes. They won't pay premiums for whichever books deserve them by dint of variant rarity. But other collectors will when warranted... or won't, when the (lesser) demand is comparable to the (lesser) supply. But Batman #457 2nd print NS will likely be considered a key piece to a truly comprehensive collection of '90s Bats. And so on. Someday. Until then, newsstands and a lot of other weirdness is trapped between lowball pricing (from people who don't know there are variants, or who aggressively don't care) and what is essentially speculative pricing in the belief that their apparent rarity translates to huge factors of extra value. Truth, for most books, is likely in the middle.

Possibly a lot. I ran across a rather oblique comment from the early 2000s from someone who had a box of HoH books stating that there were "many" limited editions and alt covers, some with < 1000 marked print runs. Now, obviously, that's not all HoH Presents. There are a few limited editions that are fairly well known for some of their titles, but I think the overall implication is that they printed a lot more variants than MCS or Chuck currently lists.