PGM What if...? 10 3 3

[scburdet]

We're just under a week until the next installment in the Thor franchise, so take a gander at my What if...? 10 if you'd like. I had forgotten it was a square bound book, so I guess there are at least 2 SBs in my collection that have a decent chance of scoring a good grade. Kind of surprised this didn't make the cut on the last set of pulls from my CGC facilitator. Maybe he thought it wouldn't come back before the market would start dipping or something. Not that I'm particularly worried about that for books in my PC.

[MrRoboto]

9.0. Is there a slight color-breaking bend on the bottom of the right part of the cover? If not, I see nothing wrong with this book, 9.4+ imo

[scburdet]

On 7/1/2022 at 4:47 PM, MrRoboto said:

9.0. Is there a slight color-breaking bend on the bottom of the right part of the cover? If not, I see nothing wrong with this book, 9.4+ imo

I agree there is something there that "breaks" the color (i.e. does not look like the corner you find in other examples, but I've checked & re-checked this several times, including just now. If it's a crease, there's no evidence of it on the other side of the paper or roughness in the front cover. Could be a printing defect? I have no idea. I feel like this is a 9.4/9.6 with this random corner color issue (or something else I don't see) dropping it out of the 9.8 range (I am generally not concerned with 9.8, though I know what it means for resell value in the current market). This would generally not be a book I'd share here b/c there's not much to quibble about in terms of defects, but it is notable for not being a beat to 💩 square bound comic and I've seen about 10K Thor: Love and Thunder commercials recently. Should be getting my other Thor comics that tie-in to the movie back from the Jason Aaron signing in 2-3 weeks. The SigRoom folks discouraged me from sending this to JA for signing even though it was an obvious source of inspiration for his run on Thor, which is one of my favorites in recent history.

[grendelbo]

Defects I see are a reader's crease and minor color rub.

Probably an 8.5 as is and a 9.0 after a C&P.

The wear from the staples, despite being really unavoidable and manufacturing-related will still get dinged by CGC.

Thanks for posting.

[Mmanick]

8.5/9.0 

[scburdet]

On 7/1/2022 at 6:24 PM, grendelbo said:

Defects I see are a reader's crease and minor color rub.

Probably an 8.5 as is and a 9.0 after a C&P.

The wear from the staples, despite being really unavoidable and manufacturing-related will still get dinged by CGC.

Thanks for posting.

I've very interested in the staple issue in square bound books as I seem to have a lot of key square bounds and this is a consistent defect. I actually haven't paid too much attention to What If 10s, but here's an example in a Marvel Feature 1 w/9.6 where the solid color behind the staples makes it quite obvious there's a color rub related to that (CGC Cert # 3768960006) and it's not in the graders' notes. I'm looking at a 9.8 What If 10 sold on ebay where I can clearly see the staples pushing up in the holder, but no color rubbing. It's a very interesting issue.

If I ever acquire the time stone, instead of righting some historical wrong, I'm going to travel back in time to yell at the Marvel EIC about putting out books in square bound form.

[Mars76]

9.4-9.6

[scburdet]

On 7/1/2022 at 6:24 PM, grendelbo said:

Defects I see are a reader's crease and minor color rub.

Probably an 8.5 as is and a 9.0 after a C&P.

The wear from the staples, despite being really unavoidable and manufacturing-related will still get dinged by CGC.

Thanks for posting.

Is the reader's crease you see in the bright area parallel to the spine? If so, you're right that there's something there. The glare makes it look a lot worse, it's faint, so I hope that will be amenable to pressing.

[Mojohand]

9.0

[Galen130]

9.2