PGM Tales of Suspense 59 and Tales to Astonish 63 with dumbazz Johnnie Lewis's name written twice on the cover 1 1

[FFB]

The OSGG is not a great resource for this and while I have my own opinion on the matter, I definitely want a reality check.  

Once upon a time there was a kid named Johnnie Lewis.  Johnnie Lewis loved silver age Marvels back in 1965-66 and wanted to make sure all his friends and siblings knew these were his comics.  He took good care of them and loved them and wrote his damn name twice on them.  (I have others with his name on them, but these are the two I'm asking about right now because these were his best ones.)  But he didn't have enough really nice ones to have someone call his collection a pedigree years later.  So now his dumbazz name is written (twice!) on a few of his silver age comics and there's no pedigree mystique about his name like there is with Lamont Larson's and we have to figure out how to grade them. 

The books are nice, roughly VF to VF+ structure and nice white pages, maybe off-white to white at worst.  Really fresh paper and nice inks.  And that damned name twice on the front cover!    Damned Johnnie Lewis!  

  

[grendelbo]

I got this with Kathie's name on it.

I love it. Been in my collection forever.

Also, PGM would ask that you post one book per thread. Less confusion. Rules and all.

[zzutak]

The two-book posting doesn't bother me as FFB is really asking for our opinions on grade deduction rather than grade.  His question, restated: What would be the grade deduction for books with duplicate signatures on the front cover (where the signature is not that of a creator and does not identify the book as part of a pedigreed collection)?

Most of my experience is with Golden Age rather than Silver Age issues.  That being said, my sense is that CGC regards an unobtrusive, inked owner name/signature as a minor blemish that doesn't normally warrant a grade deduction.  There's certainly a point where this type of post-production addition becomes distracting or even defacing, and that point could be related to name/signature size, number (duplicate, triplicate, etc), or medium (crayon, chisel-tip marker, etc).  However, I think that point is pretty fuzzy.  Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, after all.

Here are a few examples of graded books with a single name on the front cover.  The Eldon example was certified prior to the collection being recognized as a pedigree.  I believe these examples support what I wrote above: that CGC regards an unobtrusive, inked owner name/signature as a minor blemish that doesn't normally warrant a grade deduction.

Would I personally downgrade your books for being twice-signed?  Yeah, I find the duplicate writing distracting.  I'd deduct one grade increment (0.5 point) for any book that would otherwise grade FN or better.  One man's opinion. 

Edited November 6, 2021 by zzutak
Typo Fixed !

[FoggyNelson]

I think the name adds some character‼️‼️ We all signed our comics back then because that was the only way we could tell whose was whose when we got together to read our comics, I agree with above that CGC would deduct 0.5 for the name though but your comics are still nice condition😷👍‼️🏆

[Qalyar]

Depends on the overall grade. Below 8.0/8.5 ish, the owner sign is no longer the controlling issue, so doesn't move the dial. Above that, I would knock it down one grade, and maybe two at the extreme top end (because of area effected; capping the books at 9.4).

However, CGC doesn't treat my opinions as gospel for some reason, as the 9.8 proto-Eldon indicates. Still, I think double-signed books above 9.0 ought to take a one tier hit.