Judging Marvel Silver Age Page Color 1 1

[RobHW]

I'm trying to get my head around this and I would appreciate feedback on what to look for.  If I'm buying raw books then I want to feel like the page quality is at least Off-White.

Here are four silver age books that all seem to have nice page quality.  Upper-Left is Thor 165, UR is Daredevil 16  LL is Amazing Spider-man 39, and LR is Amazing Spider-man 51.  The square piece in the middle is a swatch to help with comparisons.

The first picture is a group picture at the centerfolds.  The second picture is the interior front cover and splash page.

Does any book seem like it has White pages?  Does any seem to have less than Off-White pages?  Any general guidelines to share for judging?

[namisgr]

It's hard to gauge page quality from scans, which are so dependent on lighting and the angle of the camera to the page.  So consider these ballpark guesses only.  The Thor 165 looks to have white pages, followed in quality by the DD and the ASM 39 as possible off-white to white, with the ASM 51 looking like a possible off white.  The ASM 39 is hardest to judge, as the inside front cover clearly shows paper yellowing - sometimes the preservation of the cover stock and interior pages go hand in hand, but other times they diverge.  And the ASM 51 could be an off-white to white example that's just not as well lit.

 

Edited April 17, 2023 by namisgr

[shadroch]

The Thor 165 is the best candidate for white pages.  I don't think the others warrant consideration.

[RobHW]

On 4/17/2023 at 5:36 PM, Bob Loblaw II said:

Is the OWL card any good?

From what I've read, it is not helpful.

[MattTheDuck]

Man, I can relate to the OP.  I look at some of my books and think "wow, those pages look super white!" and then hold up a piece of copy paper and go "nope."

[RobHW]

Below is what rodan57 said on a CGC forum on July 22, 2013 which looks helpful.

What follows is just opinion and a lot of it is terribly simplified and self-evident but it is an approach.

The OWL card is really far too difficult to use easily.

It displays the lowest acceptable colour for each category.

The chart colour for off-white is cream and the lowest range displayed for white is actually pretty white.

Putting to one side anything that is cream, find a book where the whites of the word balloons are clearly and evidently white. Compare the white of the word balloons to the white of the page edges. If they match, it's white. If the edges are a bit less white then it's OWW. Colour assignment should work from the edges inwards.

As white pages are less farther along the scale towards paper decay, a book with white pages will probably also look brighter -- colour and inks.

Identify a couple of books this way and you can use them as models. Holding the pages of one book to another does allow you to more confidently categorize your books.

Be sure to use a consistent incandescent light source. Regular florescent light has an incomplete spectrum and things tend to look a bit less red and grayer.

And, cream coloured paper is yellowish brownish. You're not looking for soft yellow tones.

[RobHW]

The little thing I've learned that maybe everyone knew but me is that the page color shown on the slab is describing the page color at  two different locations on the page, namely the edge and center, like:

    edge color  -  interior color

Knowing this is helpful.  So if the slab says Off-White - White then the page edge color is Off-White and the page interior color is White.  If the slab says simply Off-White then both edge and interior is Off-White.

 

[shadroch]

On 4/17/2023 at 2:36 PM, Bob Loblaw II said:

Is the OWL card any good?

It's better than a kick in the balls, but not by much.  A good idea that was poorly executed.  Sadly, there are hundreds of thousands of these things out there.

[The Lions Den]

You're in a really great place with all four of these books.

From what I can see, none of them should rate less than OW/W, with the Thor book being a great example of a vintage comic with White pages. To be honest, I've seen some slabbed books with the white page designation that didn't look this good...  

 

[RobHW]

On 4/18/2023 at 8:53 PM, The Lions Den said:

You're in a really great place with all four of these books.

I really appreciate all the great comments.  I'm happy to report that I've had two of the books graded and they both came back White, namely the ASM 39 and the DD 16.    The noteworthy thing is both books have nice looking pages that you might guess are good enough to be  white, but both have interior cover pages that have clearly lost some of their original whiteness.

[The Lions Den]

On 10/31/2023 at 3:15 PM, RobHW said:

I really appreciate all the great comments.  I'm happy to report that I've had two of the books graded and they both came back White, namely the ASM 39 and the DD 16.    The noteworthy thing is both books have nice looking pages that you might guess are good enough to be  white, but both have interior cover pages that have clearly lost some of their original whiteness.

It's always nice to see vintage comics with exceptional page quality...