Spine on Marvel Comics early 1990's 0

[deczola]

Almost all of the comics I have graded have been 1987 and earlier.  I noticed that certain marvel titles that used the higher quality paper in the early 90's (Wolverine as a example) printing technique for the covers leave the spine edges flayed.  I will use Wolverine 9 as a example, when examining the spine there is no color breaks on the color but a side view of it shows lots of white on the spine.  This is inherent in all those comics that I own from that era in that specific printing format.  How does CGC grade these?  Are these a inherent flaw?  I have personally seen two copes of Wolverine 8 9.8 CGC graded with the same issue my comics has........any advice is appreciated.

[Qalyar]

This isn't unique to that era of books. Many covers have substantial color breaking along the spine. It's most pronounced on thicker covers, especially actual card stock, and worse still when that material is heavily inked and semi- or full-gloss. It's a production defect, and an and of itself shouldn't affect the grade of anything 9.8 or lower. When you think about it, it makes sense, the cover was folded in half, so it's not unreasonable for the spine to represent a color-breaking crease.

That said, this can precondition the spine for more serious problems if it isn't handled well; doubly so on those thick covers that also accumulate bindery tears at the corners. The bindery flaw at the corner can propagate along the weakened spine crease. But at that point, you're probably not looking at a comic that would have been high grade in the first place (and certainly isn't going to be).

[theCapraAegagrus]

21 hours ago, deczola said:

How does CGC grade these?  Are these a inherent flaw?

Yes. It's a MFG 'defect' from printing on certain cardstock and then folding it in half, effectively splitting the ink on the outside of the cover.