bababooey,
Thanks for giving me some things to think about. As for the rules of the board if I made a mistake it was unintentional. I definitely agree with what you are saying. Let me try to clarify some things though:
As for what $ amounts we talked about, the seller offered vague "a little money", as in no actual cash offer to start. I shot back with asking for $75 total. to cover the reholder and the two way shipping to cgc. I recognize that this number might be a little bit over but I figured it was a good starting point if the seller wanted to actually hit me up with a real number. The way things had been going to this point I didn't want to start at actual and have to haggle even more.
However, getting cash back is out the window now. People here made a lot of good point that I had not considered, as in, what if cgc sees the book and say I have to regrade it, then theres extra charges and the potential for lost value which muddies the waters even more.
I muddied the waters by even considering a partial credit, That was my mistake. Regardless I am just handling with my credit card company right now.
If the seller had been stand up right from the start, accepted that maybe they didn't package the book as well, and actually apologized for the hassle would have gone a long way to making me feel better about this. As for the time factor, being left hanging isn't a good feeling, even if it was something simple like "Hey I see there's an issue, I will get back to you after I look into it with the post office", that was all I needed. Maybe I am oversensitive but if you have the time to log into the forum, you should have the time to respond to your messages, and the seller was online several times between Tuesday and Saturday.
So my plan is to get a refund AND return the book to the seller properly packed. I will likely have to eat return shipping but that isn't a big deal in as much as the learning experience of having dealt with this situation should help me moving forward. I don't want to keep anything that I didn't pay for.