Qalyar

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.

1998 books, so not quite as exciting as the 2000+ newsies. But I'm pretty happy with these, and the price was more than right, especially to pick up the run all at once. Unfortunately, #3 has a little collection of spine ticks, so eventually I'll probably try to upgrade that. But it isn't like these are being slabbed any time in the forseeable future anyway.

The GCD is, regrettably, really incomplete here. They don't make any note of the KSP 2nd printings. They do list the Fantagraphics republication of #1, but not of #2 or #3, and are silent on 2nd printings of any of the Fantagraphics original issues. I've reached out to Fantagraphics to see if they can provide a definitive answer, but -- understandably, given current conditions combined with the 20 year history -- haven't heard back from them.

Happy to see a nod for Burns here. Oddball indeed, but since I even have his work as my icon, clearly an opinion I agree with!

I'm not sure how the market values will ultimately shake out. If I could tell the future for any financial activity, I'd be retired on my private island by now, after all. But ultimately I do think the comic collectors' community will standardize their understanding of individual variants (and I don't just mean that in the 1:25000 LOL whatever modern sense). In philately or numismatics, something as different as direct market vs newsstand, or price variants, or obvious print run differences would be listed as separate targets to collect. But Overstreet is a long way from being a Scott catalogue or its ilk. Of course, not all collectors will care about the differences; not all stamp collectors care about perforation, watermark, or tagging varieties. But once there's universal recognition -- and, critically, a standardized and comprehensive index to such things -- enough collectors will.

As a quick summary here. All "real" archival tape is intended to be reversible. That is to say, it is intended to be possible to remove the tape without damaging the paper or leaving any adhesive residue. The process of reversing archival tape application varies based on the tape being used. Some reverse with water, some reverse with heat application, and some reverse with particular solvents. No archival tape can just be pulled off. Some papers and inks make this whole process more challenging; Lineco's Transparent Mending Tissue is probably my usual choice for commonly available material, but it is reversible with mineral spirits, which may not be compatible with some books. Remember that evidence of solvent exposure will get you a restored grade in and of itself. Is that material a good choice here? I don't know. I'm not a conservator. Professional conservators may or may not even use any of the commercial products, opting to pair custom selected taping material and adhesive to meet the needs of the individual product. Additionally, brittle or flaking paper can complicate the removal process (and makes safe application of the tape more challenging). I'm not going to pretend that taping a simple tear is a particularly difficult or error-prone process, but taping a cracked spine is harder, and you can easily end up with your book in a worse state that you started. This is a skilled trade, after all. As for grading: Obviously, a book with conservation repairs is a restored book and will get a purple label if slabbed. The goal, of course, is to get an A1 restoration grade (for conservation repairs, rather than pure aesthetic reconstruction). Beyond that, and what sort of numeric score you'd get from CGC with a nearly-split spine versus a conserved spine versus an entirely failed spine... I'll leave to more experienced members.

I would not attempt to apply archival tape on your own. You are not a trained conservator, and it's entirely possible to make things much, much worse even with conservation-grade archival tape. Honestly, I think you have two options here. You can keep the comic as it is now. Store it properly and it's not likely to get worse than it is now. Don't use this as a reading copy unless you want it to end up that way. If you think that the comic is in significant danger of deterioration, that's literally what professional conservation work is for. Respectable conservation workers should be willing to work with you to perform only reversible (archival tape, etc.) work rather than spine stitching and the like. Either way would earn you a PLOD if you had a subsequently slabbed, but that's the trade off. Do-it-yourself "restoration" is potentially the worst of both worlds.

Extremely uncommon (or at least, extremely poorly attested!) price variant.

The store I managed had a great run in the mid-to-late 90s in the middle of the market contraction. Yes, we were helped greatly by some non-comics income sources. We gambled and won on Magic: the Gathering from its launch in 93, and the US release of the Pokemon CCG in 98 was a such a license to print money that we occasionally felt dirty about it. But we ran a clean, (mostly) organized operation, modernized as we had the opportunity to, and fed off the corpses of our competitors as the Image/Valiant crash (and mismanagement) did them in. We were in an affluent suburb as well, so occasional weekend trips trolling garage sales for boxes of comics left behind when trust fundies went off to college was, um, lucrative. We closed doors right around 2000, not because the store was doing badly, but over co-owners' drama. I was given a super low-bid offer to buy out the place before we shut the doors -- which I sometimes regret not taking -- but was too intimidated by the idea of entrepreneurship at the time.

I've reached out to Fantagraphics also, but haven't heard back yet. I don't expect a rapid reply from them -- most people probably aren't interested in printing information from 20 years ago. But I figured it wouldn't hurt to check in here; the surest way to determine that something exists is for someone to have a copy of it! And, besides, if the history of comics printings tells us nothing else, it's that sometimes more things get created than were "supposed" to exist, right?

No, no, not the ~1980 Whitman series with the chase #4 issue, but the 1995-2004 Kitchen Sink Press/Fantagraphics series by Charles Burns. As an aside, if you're not familiar with this coming-of-age/body horror series with Burns' disturbingly beautiful black and white artwork, and think that chain of descriptors is even a little interesting, I strongly recommend picking up the easily-accessible TPB. Now, back to the printings... So, I know this started with KSP. Issues 1-4 were printed with KSP indicia. Issues 1 and 2 sold well enough that KSP reprinted them (as 2nd printings). In 1999, KSP went bankrupt and the series was acquired by Fantagraphics, who continued publication. Issues 5-12 exist only as Fantagraphics books. Additionally, Fantagraphics re-issued (at least some) of the KSP issues: #1 (3rd printing), #2 (3rd printing), and #3 (2nd printing) are all Fantagraphics books. Which brings me to the questions at hand: 1) Is there a Fantagraphics re-issue of #4? 2) Which issues from #5 onward received 2nd printings? Both mycomicshop and Mile High list 2nd printings for #5 an #9, but no others. Are there others?

DC is apparently sourcing one or more alternative printers (to replace their current printer, which has suspended operations) and is exploring non-Diamond distribution options. Especially if they run comics at multiple different printers simultaneously, folks should be on watch for oddities and unplanned variants once distribution resumes. Marvel, meanwhile, is Disney, and has all the money there is. The idea that this will put Disney in financial hardship is ... not realistic. They can weather the storm better than almost anyone else, despite theaters and parks and comic stores all being shut down right now. I would not count the industry out yet, although the toll for LCSs -- especially in oversaturated markets -- may well be very steep.

Recreating this particular piece is rather complicated by the death of Herb Trimpe in 2015. Anyway, especially with unique items, I don't think it's ever bad for the collecting community to know when they've wandered off, just in case they turn up via an inappropriate third party or the like.

That is an impressive set of Punishers. And yeah, I can imagine it's tough to find 9.8s for random issues late in a run that virtually no one else slabs. Do you just pick them up in relative bulk and put them through the CGC prescreen?

For the 1995 (volume 2) series, I can confirm #1,#2, and #5 exist with newsstand versions. I'm not aware of any of the other issues as newsies. In particular, I really don't expect #4 in newsstand, since some combination of the polybag/unbagged split probably was used in that way.

I'd absolutely slab an Action 1, AF15, or Det27 with no BC and half a FC. Copies of all of those trade regularly for pretty solid folding money in even worse condition than that.

I'm not sure how much hope I'd have. Has anyone else read their auction participation terms -- and I'd like to make clear that this means "Relic Vintage" specifically, not all of Invaluable? That's some of the skeeviest fine print I have ever read. Relic Vintage offers absolutely no guarantees of any sort about the material they're auctioning, including no guarantee that they have legitimate title to sell it in the first place. But still no returns for any reason. They require the bidder agree that "the dispute resolution specified in the foregoing paragraph as the bidder's sole means to resolve any and all disputes" -- that preceding paragraph, for the record, stating that there is no dispute resolution at all. And they demand that you don't complain if they screw you: "the bidder specifically agrees that they will not file a dispute or chargeback of any kind with an online venue, a credit card merchant, or any other third-parties". Finally, since they went out of the way to point out that they don't ensure they have legal title to the stuff they sell, they require their buyer "waives and releases Relic Vintage Inc. from any and all claims, of whatever nature based on alleged defect(s) in legal title". This is bad enough boilerplate that I'm not sure it's even legally enforceable, although clearly that's not an argument anyone should get into on an internet chat forum. But yikes. No one should do business with people like this.