The Walking Dead # 13 (Is feathering considered as spine damage?) 2 2

[Krat]

The Walking Dead #13 has a black spine. Currently, my copy has a white frayed look to it that runs throughout the whole spine. I tried to take the best pictures as I can, but my camera wont focus that well. 

Is this damage or a manufacturer error? It color breaks the whole spine to white (is this called feathering? im not sure, sorry)

The comic has clean corners and looks good, no spine ticks or color breaks that I can see. 

Is this even worth getting graded?

[scburdet]

As long as it hasn't been made worse by handling, I think you're OK. A grader might choose a 9.6 instead of a 9.8 just b/c of general presentation. Since like 99% of 9.6s and 9.8s don't have graders' notes, it's kind of a black box. Your photo of the front face of the cover looks fine to me. The whether to grade question might be a different one. Unless this issue holds some personal meaning, it wouldn't be at the top of my grading pile. There's a recent sale of a 9.8 on ebay for $150 and a 9.6 double-signed by Kirkman & Moore available for $120. Grading/shipping costs somewhere around $60 and pressing around $20 more if you want it. Depending on what you paid for it, you might come out ahead, but there's not a great ROI. That said, if you just want it graded for your PC then there's no reason to worry about potential profit margins, present or future.

Here's an old thread discussing it: 

 

Edited September 4, 2022 by scburdet

[Galen130]

This could be considered the infamous ‘frayed spine’ defect, which has been hammered on new books down to an 8.0.  Or it could be a 9.8.  I don’t know, since I don’t work for them. 

[grendelbo]

9.0-ish.

Type in "frayed spine CGC" into your Google search bar and you'll find many posts on this subject and you'll also see the community can't really figure out what CGC will say about this.

Thanks for posting.