RhialtoTheMarvellous

I wouldn't crack it. That area by the staples looks more like color rub rather than color transfer.

That's not NM+ (ie 9.6), it's not even close. You can't remove pen from the cover (at least not without it being detected). It looks like there is color rub around the area where someone tried. That and the tear and chips at the top I'd say knocks it down into 8.0-8.5 territory. At $250 US if the ASM 252 is actually NM, you probably didn't get ripped, but it's not a deal.

Definitely could benefit from a press. It would remove all the waves and non-color breaking creases and dents. Probably a 5.0 without a press and a 6.0 with one.

8.0 Front cover bottom right corner lets it down. Looks like there are some chips coming off the top of the front cover as well, but that could be the lighting or shadows. The back cover on the bottom looks like it might have light moisture staining, but it could just be the lighting. If it is moisture then that knocks it down more.

If those were just dents and didn't have color breaking scrapes in them you could definitely remove them with various pressing techniques, but when the color is broken there is no fixing that. Probably a 7.0.

That big crease on the back really hurts it. Gonna have to go with the 7.0 people.

Production defects are overlooked if all / most of the books of a run have them. If it's not then it gets dinged. Super nice book though.

Darn, I got here late. At first I thought the second was the 9.8 as well, but then I saw the back upper spine corner has a slight chip. I’m betting that’s why they dinged it.

Man, that Gary guy just had to write his name on the cover of all his books.

5.0

2.5

The defects won’t really be helped by pressing. Lots of color breaking spine stress lines and then color breaking creases and then the chipping and tears. It’s not worth restoring. A 9.8 unrestored brings around $2500 and professional restoration services start at $1000.

Like the other guys said, get us a high res set of pics. From the low res pic you posted it looks like water damage which would severely impact the grade. Can’t be sure though without a higher res version.

Lots of color breaking defects so it's unlikely that you can improve it with pressing. I don't think I would try pressing either, because of that top staple. Probably 3.5.

Yep, 0% chance of an upgrade and likely it goes to a lower grade with those corners. Mine got graded recently and the only issue with it is that it has very light spine creases, the kind you have to angle the book in the right lighting to see. It got a 9.4.

Scans are fairly high res, so you can zoom in on them. Details of what you see that brings it down grades would be helpful to me. Not sure I can do anything about that staple push on the rear. Pretty sure the thing had it from the get go. The squarebound books have it all the time.

Thanks folks. About what I expected. For $11 I can't complain too much.

3.0 I feel like people are being really optimistic given that water staining. That's a killer on grade usually.

Scans are fairly high res so you should be able to zoom in a bit on them. Bit of a nostalgia buy as I still have the digest version of this story sitting around. Found at my LCS. Back cover is a bit of a let down with that crease across the bottom.

For my purposes experimenting with this sort of thing those won’t be accounted for, but you could take imagery of the interior of the book and model on that in addition to exterior imagery as long as the inputs are fairly consistent. The machine is just modeling off of what you give it. My initial stab at training the model will probably just be front and back cover images pasted together into one image with a grade attached. This is a fairly well explored category of machine learning starting way back when with facial recognition and the tooling is such that I can pick up a few libraries and

I'm thinking that I could create grading software as a machine learning project. I will need a lot of front and back images of comics that have been CGC graded (need the actual grade number as well) to train the model though.

It's a thumbnail rather than a downsized high res image. He needs to repost that one.

If I were to establish a systematic grading process here is what I would do. Assume that we use the same 10 point scale that is currently used (though IMO it's somewhat absurd and overly complex). Create a master document identifying each possible defect a comic can have and how it affects the grade of the book. Have five different people take the master document and the same exact sampling of books and give them all grades with notes on why they deducted points. This is done individually and in private. Bring all of those people together and see where the differences o

Also, whenever I'm reading this guy's name I'm thinking Dielan. Although, this is probably more appropriate.

I think your earlier suggestions are more pertinent than some sort of rating system. If Overstreet gives out certifications or represents that someone is legit then they should own that and have a database that you can search on their site that shows they approve of them and that way they can also remove them if they get complaints. For the buyer it's always buyer beware overall. Do your due diligence as to what you are getting and take nothing for granted. Make sure that you have options to get out of the deal if you don't get what you expected. If those things don't fall into line then