LowGradeBronze

6.5 here too. Great book!

Some creasing that would keep me at 7.5 but yes, a nice clean problem free copy based on what I can see! I do love this book!

It certainly is a handsome copy but when you put a grade aspiration in your description it makes it hard to come to a grade without being influenced by it.

Robert Aickman, The Unsettled Dust, a compilation of some of his short stories. He is revered in some quarters as an unsung hero of the horror/macabre/supernatural genre but he referred to his own style as Strange Stories. That they certainly are and I hope I have got someone intrigued enough to at least Google him! Go on, I dare you....

Hi and welcome to the forum! This question is best addressed in the Hey Buddy can you spare a grade section. Not sure a single pen mark alone can be given a grade drop, you always need to assess the book in question for grade as if it did not have the fault, then see whether the single fault affects the grade. For example if this was a 2.0 (I know it's not but this is a 'for instance') then the pen mark alone wouldn't matter. You see where I'm going with this. Hope this helps!

Since August I've been on a massive Kirby & Royer binge and Kamandi is just about my absolute top favourite title now. (The Kirby issues anyway.) Your choice of UXM 141 & 142 is excellent and those are the only 2 Byrne issues NOT reprinted in the Classic X Men title, which is a great way to get all the other Byrne X Men books for peanuts and I recommend it totally. Nothing beats raw in hand!

I'm seeing around 5.5

Betting that spine is brittle. Nice looking 4.0 or 4.5 taking structure as a main grading criteria.

So hard to grade loose leaves stapled together! You like to challenge the graders!

Looks round about a 7.0 but it's really hard to grade 'all newsprint' type comics. I was unaware of this book until now! I remember it being a big deal when the British weekly Mighty World of Marvel went to glossy covers (and a slight change of interior stock) with issue 67 (I think) and it's a shame that other UK weeklies were newsprint covers as it lowers the overall aesthetic appeal to a degree.

It all looked very low Res when I tried to zoom in. But it looked as if exclusive had been misspelled as esclusive. BTW anyone else just even slightly irked that the OP generates quite a few replies and provokes some good questions from other boardies, but never posts again in their own thread? I mean, was the guy just standing there handing out copies to random strangers?

Accumulation of tiny defects puts this at 6.5 for me. Maybe a 7.0 overall. The wear around the staples and corner creases prevent me from going higher. Presents very nicely and higher at first glance than the actual grade imo.

You've sounded this all out very thoughtfully. I used to have a lot of really high grade raw comics. I never even looked at them apart from the cover, since their high grade got in the way of enjoying them properly. Now, I have a lot of lower grade books as well and I do like to them for the smell, the artwork and the overall nostalgia. Books I have repaired do feel much more 'mine' than some high grade books that only ever come out on rare occasions. Enjoy the journey!

Good luck tracking down sales of worthwhile books. The two you've mentioned are on many people's wants list so you're off to a good start. Edit: Just to add that prices have hardened on lower grade books in recent years as folk realise they can no longer afford top end grades in many cases (silver and bronze mainly,) so the battleground for finding affordable books has moved to the lower end of the grade scale. Bargains can still be had with luck and a good eye!

I dabble in repairs when necessary and only recently bought a Doctor Strange 180 with covers detached and full length spine split. Library film rather than tape on the inside of the covers has been used to rejoin them and original staples reused after reinforcing the staple holes at the centrefold. Then as you say, heaviest books in the house to weight it down and I have a one piece book rather than 3 separate parts. I can handle this book as much as I like without harming its very low grade. What's not to like?

In the light of those pictures, I apologise and take back my rather flippant sounding original comment. I'd say you've done a pretty decent job of reducing the scribble that was spoiling the cover. If this is a comic you'd like to have a clean copy of, you could go onto Mycomicshop website and place an 'add to want list' marker on this book. (This exact issue 26 is currently out of stock there.) Then, when it comes back in stock, you'll get an email to notify you. They are not expensive books. Thanks for showing us your resto example!

Surely, interior cover missing, for whatever reason, would get a 0.5 'incomplete' grade. CGC wouldn't know whether it was manufacture or interference, but it would still be incomplete.

Please don't take this unkindly, but buy some colouring in books to satisfy your urges and leave the comics as they are. Two wrongs don't make a right where pen marks on comics are concerned. Welcome to the boards! :-)

I like this way of looking at it. Not considered it in quite those terms and it makes a lot of sense. Likewise, have a number of books that I would never consider buying at their current prices.

Was he just standing there with a pile of them, handing them out to anyone who happened to walk by? Welcome to the forum, with your intriguing tale.

I'm a big fan of keeping multiple copies of books I really like. The cold hard cash does not give me a warm & fuzzy feeling on a dark and windswept night. But having 2 nice copies of Kamandi 11 does.

Hi Uncle and welcome to the boards! I would imagine this falls within the allowable range of having X number of small defects, (in this case a bindery defect,) on an otherwise perfect book. I don't know exactly what the number/range of allowable defects is on a 9.8 but remember, 9.8 is not Mint, just very close to it.

OP raises interesting point though, if I may take it on a speculative diversion: A 9.8 with no fading is left exposed to months of summer sun and suffers a bad fade to front cover. If sent in for a reholder, (let's say there's a crack,) would CGC return it in the original slab, stating that if they were to give it a new case, it would need to be regraded too?

This increase alone makes almost all overseas purchases too expensive for me now.

1.8 to 2.0 here as well.