Could a press/cleaned book still look like this? 1 1

[William-James88]

Got this book in today, bought it already slabbed. With the slab in hand it was easy to see how this couldn't be higher than a 9.4 due to the dust soiling on the upper third (right on the white letters). Now this kind of soiling seems the type that is advertised by pressing/cleaning services as being removable so it being here makes me think this book was not pressed/cleaned. Is that a fair assumption? Or do cleaned books still look like this?

 

[The Lions Den]

My sense of it is that this book has a little bit of ink transfer, possibly from being stored next to a book with a black back cover. That flaw by itself may have put it in the 9.4 range, but there's likely something more substantial going on, such as light spine stress, a corner bend or a couple of finger dents. If the book has those types of flaws, it usually does indicate that it wasn't cleaned or pressed. Either that or the person doing the work wasn't able to remove all the flaws...

[William-James88]

On 2/7/2021 at 6:15 PM, The Lions Den said:

My sense of it is that this book has a little bit of ink transfer, possibly from being stored next to a book with a black back cover. That flaw by itself may have put it in the 9.4 range, but there's likely something more substantial going on, such as light spine stress, a corner bend or a couple of finger dents. If the book has those types of flaws, it usually does indicate that it wasn't cleaned or pressed. Either that or the person doing the work wasn't able to remove all the flaws...

Thanks as always for your insights. I had not thought of colour transfer. Yeah, that would stay.

[The Lions Den]

16 hours ago, William-James88 said:

Thanks as always for your insights. I had not thought of colour transfer. Yeah, that would stay.

And it always looks worse when it's on a white area...