Albert Thurgood

That's a convenient milestone, but the silver turned to tarnished bronze with those stupid covers that I and @MattTheDuckmentioned. Maybe this is a good topic for another thread.

I regard the BA beginning when they started having those word balloons with ridiculous text on the covers. For the FF they routinely started this at #101 (after a practice at #99).

all 3

take [@20% off] thanks

It's an argument for another thread, but if not for BWS, Conan would not have got off the ground and ran for all those other issues. What does the market tell us? I just checked MCS for prices: the first Buscema Conan in CGC 9.6 is $129. The last BWS #24 is $1225 @ CGC 9.2 while #23 is $450 @ 7.5. Let's leave aside the last two BWS issues as they are influenced by the appearance of Red Sonja, but #19 CGC 9.6 is $359. Most of BWS' issues are classics. Frankly I don't remember much of the rest of the series and eventually stopped buying them at about #60. But yeah, this should be in another thread.

I think Barry Smith deserves the credit for that. His artwork created a world that fired the imagination like none of his successors could. No Smith, no Conan/BA S&S explosion, IMHO

Sorry to interrupt the thread, but even at only $4.95, that's the fugliest jacket I have ever seen!

Ahem...

I think it gets in the G/VG range.

Use the search function - look for the magnifying glass icon in top RHC of the page. Or easier in this case, click on your user name and go through the list of threads that you started. I had the same experience as you back in the day - send payment to US dealers expecting a book in reasonable condition and get back books that grade under 2. I think they saw overseas collectors as easy touches they could dump their lower quality stuff on. And they were right because there was nothing we could do about it.

Unless it hits you.

That is reasonable to me and it is what I would have given it when I saw the first post in the thread. It looks like without the stain it would have been a 5 or higher. CGC takes a grade off for a stain. As this stain penetrates the cover they took off more than a grade.

7.0 from me, too

How well could that BC be cleaned? I am guessing its currently a 7.5.

A way for people with deep pockets to exploit this is to corner the market on a book that had low numbers of copies but a relatively low CGCEMC. They could probably get most of the copies before the market realised what was going on so the last copies would increase dramatically in price raising the overall EMC. For example, a lazy $4M could get all 43 graded copies of Action Comics 2.

Thanks. My quick calculation was based on median CGC grade and Gocollect figures because I can't access GPA data.

Thanks @valiantman for doing all this! It is very interesting to see this sort of analysis - the first time for me, anyway. Looking at the list of 261 books on CGCEMC.com, it strikes me that there are NO EC titles at all (at least that I could see) and no Conans. A lot of people think EC had the best titles of the '50s and I think the BWS Conan books had some of the best work of the '70s, though they are terribly undervalued these days. So it would be interesting to see how they compare. (FWIW I estimate the CGCEMC of Conan #1 is over $5M)

My response was to someone who implied damage done by the publishers should count.

Could it be as high as a 6? Any reference for that? I thought such a crease automatically would get a score of 3.0 or below...?

But in-house for publishers. And pre-consumer.

Blame it on the "Macarena".

As I understand it, production flaws do not detract from a book's grade. Creases can take a book down to 3.5 But why aren't subscription creases counted as production flaws? After all, they were caused by the publisher, not by the owner(s).

i would go for a 7, too

4.5 to 5, depending on how BC stains are viewed.