They're Still Out There! 22 22

[MrBedrock]

Dan provided a number of examples of impacted staples with tears that did not occur as a result of pressing. He could have provided a number of others, but out of brevity chose not to. I can attest that impacted staples like those on the Cap 46 do occur. The Cap 46 may very well have been pressed, and probably was. But the tears at the impacted staples are not the smoking gun that proves that pressing definitely happened - no matter how much anyone wants that to be the case. And those tears could have been and probably were there prior to and regardless of a press.

Edited July 3, 2021 by MrBedrock

[Randall Dowling]

This feels like a "mammals and animals" conversation to me.  Pressing can cause stress on staples and result in tears.  But not all staple stress and or staple tears are from pressing.  

Also, I don't think it's a safe assumption that books in old label holders were never pressed.  Or that raw books weren't either.   

[buttock]

40 minutes ago, jimbo_7071 said:

I can't tell whether you're visually impaired or cognitively impaired. Or maybe you just need a good hard spanking.

The staple on the Cap 46 is far off the spine and is embedded so deeply that it's nearly invisible.

You showed several pictures of run-of-the-mill slightly-imapcted staples. The only one that's embedded nearly as deeply as the Cap 46 is the last one, and that one's aligned on the spine. Even with that one, the embedded appearance of the staple may be from the pulling away of the covers; it's difficult to say without seeing the whole book.

None of your examples showed an off-center staple deeply embedded into the back cover—not the spine—of the book.

Tearing around off-center staples is common, but I have never seen an off-center staple embedded into a book so deeply as to be nearly invisible.

There's no convincing you.  I should have just stopped after your post about how CGC can't be trusted with their PQ assessment, but I held out a sliver of hope you might respond to facts and reason.  I appreciate you showing me that I don't need to bother.  

[RareHighGrade]

4 hours ago, Scrooge said:

Is this a game where we have to guess which comic?

Okay, I'll play.  Mystery Men 6?

[Randall Dowling]

I don't think, in any case, staple tears should be considered a production defect.  That's weird territory.  So no matter how they got there, they should reduce the grade.

[path4play]

2 hours ago, buttock said:

There's no convincing you.  I should have just stopped after your post about how CGC can't be trusted with their PQ assessment, but I held out a sliver of hope you might respond to facts and reason.  I appreciate you showing me that I don't need to bother.  

Its no doubt a losing game to rant against pressing, that ship has sailed.  My personal thing is the Promise Pedigree corner crushes or dings/tears graded at 9.8, 9.6.  I guess per this thread they are considered "production defects"... for this Pedigree.  However, my submissions with similar "defects" are not considered as such.  Yeah, I'm a relative newbie compared to many here and by absolutely no means a grading expert.  Just feels "off" but who cares, I can't afford the Promise Pedigree's anyway....

[buttock]

1 hour ago, RareHighGrade said:

Okay, I'll play.  Mystery Men 6?

[N e r V]

4 hours ago, MrBedrock said:

One of the things I have come to love about these boards, and the primary reason I now only pipe in with snarfy posts, is the rapidly growing number of uninformed BS comments like these, which are meant only to support a narrative that only exists in the poster's already biased bat brain.

[N e r V]

2 hours ago, Randall Dowling said:

I don't think, in any case, staple tears should be considered a production defect.  That's weird territory.  So no matter how they got there, they should reduce the grade.

If you tear your jeans that’s an accident.

If they come that way from the factory they’re designer and you pay more.

I’m calling it now. Comics  have finally arrived as fashion now…

 

 

[VintageComics]

11 hours ago, Cat-Man_America said:

My thoughts on this are that anyone selling high dollar books should consider providing as accurate a representation of the book being sold as possible just as a cost of doing business.  I know there are cases where winners of books have refused or returned them as not representing what the bidder observed.  It’s an imperfect system and there are lots of variables are involved including the device on the user’s end, but where big investment is involved I’d think the weight of responsibility should always fall on the seller and deference given to the buyer.

Digital devices aren’t a good excuse for big catalogue sellers as the images reproduced ...at least in the past... often reflected excess boosting to make the books more appealing.  That isn’t fair to bidders who may lack the opportunity to view those books in person prior to the auction.  From my perspective, both as a buyer and seller, the “silk purse from sower’s ear” defense doesn’t hold up.

i agree with you on spending an infinite amount of time tweaking images.  The minutia is a monotonous task and isn’t critical for the average mid-grade comic or lower end investment book.  High dollar pedigrees and six figure keys are a different animal altogether.  I’d think expectations are higher for big ticket books and should be, if they aren’t there’s something wrong.  That’s just my opinion, other’s mileage will scan differently. 

As someone who has used MULTIPLE scanners, cameras, cell phones etc over the last 20 years trying to capture images over the years I've NEVER seen a single device do it perfectly. Not one.

Look at the discussions we've had here and comments people have made in this forum...

Heritage's scans are too amped.

Connect's scans are too dark.

Two monster auctions houses, literally two of the biggest in the world, and they can't get their scans right.

I think Comiclink seems to have the LEAST chatter about the quality of their scans, which leads me to believe that they're doing something right.

My real point is that I don't think any major sellers are doing it on purpose and each does the best with what they have.

[tth2]

7 hours ago, Randall Dowling said:

Also, I don't think it's a safe assumption that books in old label holders were never pressed.  Or that raw books weren't either.  

I think the odds are heavily in favor of them not being pressed.

[batman_fan]

26 minutes ago, tth2 said:

I think the odds are heavily in favor of them not being pressed.

Definitely less likely to be pressed than a book in a new holder.  

I use to think "I am not going to get my books pressed because I am a purist" then I saw books I sold getting pressed and selling for way more so now I plan to press anything that would upgrade before having it pressed.  You leave too much money on the table not to doit.

As far as raw books, a ton are pressed because it improves the appearance in many cases.

[Cat-Man_America]

1 hour ago, VintageComics said:

As someone who has used MULTIPLE scanners, cameras, cell phones etc over the last 20 years trying to capture images over the years I've NEVER seen a single device do it perfectly. Not one.

Look at the discussions we've had here and comments people have made in this forum...

Heritage's scans are too amped.

Connect's scans are too dark.

Two monster auctions houses, literally two of the biggest in the world, and they can't get their scans right.

I think Comiclink seems to have the LEAST chatter about the quality of their scans, which leads me to believe that they're doing something right.

My real point is that I don't think any major sellers are doing it on purpose and each does the best with what they have.

These are excellent points and you're absolutely right, it's tough getting good scans in every instance.  All I'm trying to demonstrate is that there are tools available to get books closer to how they look in hand with a modest amount of effort and I'm one of the worst when it comes to technical skills on a computer.  The other point I was making, albeit clumsily, is that it really does matter to those bidding on big books.  

Moreover, ...and this is perhaps the most relevant point... there's a salient reason why it's exceedingly difficult to get decent scans from encapsulated books in holders with a recessed lip and label on a higher plane that extends beyond the limits of the scanning device and technical ability of the dealer or auction house and I'd be remiss not mentioning that as well.

[Randall Dowling]

13 minutes ago, tth2 said:

I think the odds are heavily in favor of them not being pressed.

Maybe.  I seem to remember the guy running CGC at the time saying it was a mistake to assume that "old label" = "not pressed".  

[tth2]

2 minutes ago, Randall Dowling said:

Maybe.  I seem to remember the guy running CGC at the time saying it was a mistake to assume that "old label" = "not pressed".  

I'm not saying it didn't happen.  But it was rare.

[Randall Dowling]

1 minute ago, tth2 said:

I'm not saying it didn't happen.  But it was rare much less common.

This is my final offer.

[N e r V]

24 minutes ago, Randall Dowling said:

This is my final offer.

 

26 minutes ago, tth2 said:

I'm not saying it didn't happen.  But it was rare.

My takeaway experience on old label books if they were stored correctly since being slabbed it’s very possible to get a higher number on grading and a bump up on PQ even without a press. I’ve seen 8’s go to 9’s and OW/W get solid white. I believe the books in the beginning period at least were subject to tight grading. I don’t think that’s even a CGC thing in as much as we held books to a higher grading standards in the 1990’s and early 2000’s. You can argue it was a dumb down in standards or just a settling period on how the numbers should be assigned. All I can say is my old raw books I once called 9.0’s in my collection are sitting in 9.4 or 9.6 slabs as this is the standard now. My old VF’s are solid 9.0’s today. Things changed…

Edited July 4, 2021 by N e r V

[Pickie]

I find it hard to imagine that the OO actually read all the comics he acquired.  I mean, when you were a teenager, did YOU follow so many DIFFERENT series, let alone genres? That's simply too much. I'd rather think that he, for the most part, was collecting the books for them being comic books (and MAYBE read the rest of them later).

[N e r V]

26 minutes ago, Pickie said:

I find it hard to imagine that the OO actually read all the comics he acquired.  I mean, when you were a teenager, did YOU follow so many DIFFERENT series, let alone genres? That's simply too much. I'd rather think that he, for the most part, was collecting the books for them being comic books (and MAYBE read the rest of them later).

When I was 10 I was reading about 50+ comics a month. Toss in another 5 magazines or so and maybe 1-2 treasury books by Marvel or DC. Cost was about $5.00 a week to do that.

[N e r V]

That’s about 600 comics, 60 magazines and 18-24 treasury or related my first year alone and yes, I read them all. Didn’t take long to go into the thousands when I started buying back issues soon thereafter…