What is the lowest page quality acceptable in your collection? 1 1

[action1kid]

.

[Point Five]

Brittle or better. I refuse to go lower.

 

[Ryan.]

With the caveat that it's context and book-dependent, generally speaking, cream is the lowest I'll go for my personal collection. I got rid of all of my brittle and slightly brittle books. I have one light tan in my collection now and it annoys me but the book would be very difficult to replace if I sold it.

[Gotham Kid]

c/ow

[Frisco Larson]

If it's something that I'll want raw, cream to off white is likely the lowest I'd want to go. If it's an expensive book that I'll always leave certified, I might consider slightly brittle, but it'd mostly be all about the book vs. the money .... a situation where I'd almost certainly never be able to afford the book if I turned that particular copy away. 

[jimbo_7071]

I have never bought a c/ow slabbed book, nor would I, but I do own a few slabbed c/ow books that I submitted myself. I have only bought one o/w slab in the past 20 years. I normally stick to ow/w or white.

[AJD]

On 2/9/2024 at 2:29 AM, Point Five said:

Brittle or better. I refuse to go lower.

 

"Dust to off powder" for me

[Professor K]

On 2/10/2024 at 5:47 AM, jimbo_7071 said:

I have never bought a c/ow slabbed book, nor would I, but I do own a few slabbed c/ow books that I submitted myself. I have only bought one o/w slab in the past 20 years. I normally stick to ow/w or white.

That's always been my Silver age philosophy. Never bought a graded Cream SA book and very few OW.  With GA I avoid cream but if it's something that ain't easy to find and the cover looks nice . 

To the OP- Just look at the sales of pretty much any book you find that has been labeled Light Tan or worse and you see the plunge it took. With Cream you see a dip. With LT or SB you see a plunge. Brittle? Forgetaboutit. That's a crash into the side of the mountain. CGC Light Tanned my AF15 and I got destroyed in auction, should have cracked it and sold it raw. I even advertised the book all over and still tanked. Most people just don't want Light Tan. 

 

Edited February 10 by Professor K
Multiple spelling corrections.

[MB1952]

Cream to offwhite. I have couple slabs with slightly brittle/light tan to offwhite- hurts my eyes to see. 

[fifties]

I had gotten rid of the few brittle books I had, but recently I've had to settle for a couple of particularly HTF books in that state, given the extreme dearth of PCH and crime titles, now being the situation.

[path4play]

>brittle

Edited February 10 by path4play

[sfcityduck]

ow, with a preference for at least ow-w.

If I'm going to buy a slabbed book, I want the book to last a long long time.  

I'm not interested in buying a decaying book (or worse yet a page) just so I can feel I can check a box on a list of comics I want. My personal enjoyment derives from enjoying the book not checking a list.

And if I'm going to buy an unslabbed book, I want the book to be robust enough for me to read.

Having said that, if you buy unslabbed books over the internet you are going to end up with some books that are cream and worse.  So I have books below ow in my collection.

And, 

[Cat-Man_America]

C/OW which is a moo point! Prefer the cream crop wise, but OW or better PQ...

Note: This was free stock photo, so I'm milking puns for all they're worth!

[Tri-Color Brian]

Since I collect mainly for the covers, I pay no attention to pg. quality, as long as the book doesn't fall apart in my hands. 

[Kromak]

Any good references that shows these differences between page quality ?

[The Black Hand ®]

[The Black Hand ®]

I've had tan pages that were very supple. Has anyone had white or off white pages that were brittle?

[jimbo_7071]

On 2/15/2024 at 8:51 PM, The Black Hand ® said:

I've had tan pages that were very supple. Has anyone had white or off white pages that were brittle?

I'd like to see some kind of study showing the correlation between page color and suppleness. From what I've seen, the correlation is fairly high.

I've occasionally had books with darker pages than o/w that were supple. What I noticed was that those pages were uniformly dark, suggesting that the paper stock may have been darker to begin with (or that some chemical process was at work other that the typical process that causes tanning). Any time I've had a book with a halo of tanning around the edges, a certain degree of stiffness was noticeable in the tanned area.