"surface breaks"

[joemad]

by "surface breaks" i mean any defect that breaks the "perfect mirror-like" flatness of the cover....these are the defects that are found after observing the comic at an angle in the light and are dificult to identify while looking at a comic through the polybag or cgc slab...they could be anything from single-point surface breaks resulting from the cover being improperly handled to a non-colour-breaking corner bend....i find it is very hard for me to find modern raw nm+ books without these annoying minor (?) defects...

 

my question is: how do these affect the grade? i have looked through the overstreet comic grading guide and they dont really talk about these types of defects much, and do not show them in their pictures....and i've tried comparing scans of slabbed books to my own but the type of defects i'm looking for dont show up in scans....i find that many of my books would easily be 9.8's but are held back because of one minor cover surface break or a slight bent corner (resulting from shipping and such)

[THE_BEYONDER]

Non color-breaking stress lines or creases....?

[joemad]

yes, which grade allows these?

[fantastic_four]

Non color-breaking stress lines or creases....?

 

I think he means what I've most often heard described as "surface impressions." The term "surface breaks" causes confusion for the reason you illustrated by asking your question--it makes you think the person might mean color is broken.

 

If the impressions are small, I'm rather certain CGC doesn't downgrade for them below the 9.9 level. If they're several inches, they should cause more of a downgrade, but I suspect CGC doesn't downgrade since we've posted examples of CGC 9.8 books with printing paper ripples several inches in length. To me, printing ripples are more of a defect than surface impressions, so if CGC barely downgrades for ripples, it's hard to see them downgrading more for impressions.

[sfilosa]

Non-color breaking creases (or surface wear as I call them), will downgrade a book, assuming it is not part of the normal manufacturing process.

 

As a matter of fact, if you see a beautiful book in a slab, but the grade seems much lower than the appearance, many times it's because there is "surface wear" on the book.

 

The entire issue of PRESSING being discussed on these boards is to REMOVE this "surface wear" or non-color breaking creases.

[joemad]

yes, that's what i'm trying to find out, how to get rid of "surface wear", it that can even be done

[sfilosa]

yes, that's what i'm trying to find out, how to get rid of "surface wear", it that can even be done

 

The book can be pressed to get out of surface wear. Please read all post regarding Pressing for more information.