THE AMAZING FANTASY #15 CLUB 39 39

[VintageComics]

18 minutes ago, namisgr said:

Because for a large proportion of early Silver Age Marvels, after pressing the pages stick out (or stick out more) beyond the covers where they didn't before being pressed.  Many also carry other stigmata of pressing, including 'starched collar' top cover edges, counterclockwise twists in cover registration, impacted staples, and fuzzy paper around the staples.

We've been through this so many times and for someone who keeps harping at me about the folly of alternative medicine and how scientific facts should dictate decision making, you seem to throw these examples out wrongly a lot.

Incorrectly pressed books may have defects introduced into them but incorrectly pressed books are not the norm.

I get it. You sold a bunch of SA Marvels years ago and the majority pressed up by someone else. Some even ended up on the Costanza parade. 

Nobody would even have noticed it if it wasn't for that extreme example because nobody had ever talked about it before.

You're just spreading a myth and stigmatizing something unnecessarily when in fact every single one of these traits happens in unpressed books too.

Covers and interiors change size naturally. It's a fact based on the lignin / pulp used in newsprint. Most SA book show pages peeking out to one degree or another and the storage conditions determine how a book ages.

Spine rolls happen due to staple placement and storage conditions.

Impacted staples are generally a part of the printing process because they happen on specific issues consistently and pressing (or any handling will weaken them)

Fuzzy paper around the staple? I have no idea how pressing a book can create that. It's simply a product of wear over time.

So no, any of these traits is NOT evidence that a book has been pressed because unpressed books exhibit these traits any more than someone carrying a gun is not evidence that they are a murderer.

 

 

 

[VintageComics]

2 hours ago, Krismusic said:

 

I thought pressing existed before CGC but not as popular as it is now? so wouldn't those books still have a chance to have been pressed and cleaned?

Correct.

[VintageComics]

46 minutes ago, namisgr said:

On 2/23/2020 at 1:29 PM, mysterio said:

Miswraps are common on AF #15, front to back with the A and 12 cent circle wrapping around the spine. 

 

So you've handpicked a bunch of examples that aren't miswrapped from the Silver Age.

I've bought and sold dozens of AF #15 in all grade ranges and many are miswrapped. I know because I had a customer looking for a copy that was perfectly centered and I never did find him a copy in his grade range.

[namisgr]

You've got your own self-interests to protect, but being dishonest about what pressing does to early SA Marvels and claiming that the problems are extreme examples rather than common and easy to find doesn't do the hobby any good, in my opinion.

[namisgr]

3 minutes ago, VintageComics said:

So you've handpicked a bunch of examples that aren't miswrapped from the Silver Age.

I've bought and sold dozens of AF #15 in all grade ranges and many are miswrapped. I know because I had a customer looking for a copy that was perfectly centered and I never did find him a copy in his grade range.

You're wrong that the examples I showed were handpicked.  It took three minutes for me to find and post them.  

Go into an archive with a bunch of copies of AF15 and you'll see.  Two that I'd recommend are the Heritage auction archives and the AF15 club here on the boards.  They show that the majority of copies aren't miswrapped front to back, and many that are still don't have the pages sticking out of the covers if they're either unslabbed or sport old CGC serial numbers.

Edited February 26, 2020 by namisgr

[mysterio]

1 minute ago, VintageComics said:

So you've handpicked a bunch of examples that aren't miswrapped from the Silver Age.

I've bought and sold dozens of AF #15 in all grade ranges and many are miswrapped. I know because I had a customer looking for a copy that was perfectly centered and I never did find him a copy in his grade range.

I don’t have a dog in the hunt on the pressing issue. 

As a huge Spidey fan, I noticed long ago that this book is commonly miswrapped. I was on the lookout for years and have seen hundreds of copies both online and in person. Finding a copy with no part of the A or 12 cent circle wrapped onto the spine is quite uncommon. 

[VintageComics]

1 minute ago, namisgr said:

You've got your own self-interests to protect, but being dishonest about what pressing does to early SA Marvels and claiming that the problems are extreme examples rather than common and easy to find doesn't do the hobby any good, in my opinion.

Or you can walk a show floor and find 1000's of examples exhibit these traits that have never been pressed (or would want to be pressed because they are worthless).

What you're doing is stigmatizing something that you don't personally like and drawing attention to examples and making it sound like it's the rule when it definitely isn't.

It's called bias and the examples you post are called confirmation bias.

I learned that from you.

[namisgr]

1 minute ago, VintageComics said:

What you're doing is stigmatizing something that you don't personally like and drawing attention to examples and making it sound like it's the rule

1.  The notion that I'm responsible for stigmatizing pressing for early SA Marvels, rather than the thousands of results that pressing of early SA Marvels has generated is absurd.

2.  Please find my quote that states flaws introduced by pressing are 'the rule'.  Good luck with that.

[VintageComics]

11 minutes ago, namisgr said:

You're wrong that the examples I showed were handpicked.  It took three minutes for me to find and post them.  

Go into an archive with a bunch of copies of AF15 and you'll see.  Two that I'd recommend are the Heritage auction archives and the AF15 club here on the boards.

 

10 minutes ago, mysterio said:

I don’t have a dog in the hunt on the pressing issue. 

As a huge Spidey fan, I noticed long ago that this book is commonly miswrapped. I was on the lookout for years and have seen hundreds of copies both online and in person. Finding a copy with no part of the A or 12 cent circle wrapped onto the spine is quite uncommon. 

Yes. I've noticed this as well.

And as an interesting side note, I have a theory as to why.

Years ago I picked up an original owner Marvel SA collection from off continent and all of the issues that were notorious for off center miswraps were perfectly centered.

I attributed it to those issue being early off the presses (because they had to travel further to reach the newsstand) and therefore have stronger production quality.

I just went back to look at the AF #15 from this batch, and you guessed it, it was nearly perfectly centered with only the tip of the A touching the spine, the circle fully present on the left and the comics code fully present on the right.

As was the FF #48 and all other issues that are normally poorly centered.

 

 

Edited February 26, 2020 by VintageComics

[VintageComics]

1 minute ago, namisgr said:

5 minutes ago, VintageComics said:

What you're doing is stigmatizing something that you don't personally like and drawing attention to examples and making it sound like it's the rule

1.  The notion that I'm responsible for stigmatizing pressing for early SA Marvels, rather than the thousands of results that pressing of early SA Marvels has generated is absurd.

2.  Please find my quote that states flaws introduced by pressing are 'the rule'.  Good luck with that.

You're drawing attention to defects THAT EXIST ON  UNPRESSED BOOKS and stating that they are because of pressing.

It's ridiculous.

And the only reason we're having this discussion is because your attention was brought to these sorts of things through an extreme example where a batch of books that used to be yours were pressed improperly and we had a discussion about them here.

It's like when I bought a white Dodge Caravan thinking it was a cool looking car and then after I purchased it, I noticed that there were White Caravans everywhere but hadn't before.

So you are making it sound like all of your listed traits are the norm for pressed books when in fact, they are the norm for Silver Age books in general, which were just throwaway newsprints books with low production quality.

[namisgr]

7 minutes ago, mysterio said:

I don’t have a dog in the hunt on the pressing issue. 

As a huge Spidey fan, I noticed long ago that this book is commonly miswrapped. I was on the lookout for years and have seen hundreds of copies both online and in person. Finding a copy with no part of the A or 12 cent circle wrapped onto the spine is quite uncommon. 

I just went through the first 25 slabbed copies in the Heritage archive: https://www.ha.com/c/search-results.zx?N=0+790+231&Ntk=SI_Titles-Desc&Nty=1&Ntt=Amazing+Fantasy+%2315&limitTo=all

Nine have the title A and the 12 cent circle wrapped partially onto the back cover.  Sixteen do not.  So in that small sample size, its roughly two-thirds that lack the miswrap, which I wouldn't characterize as quite uncommon.

[VintageComics]

Here is the book from the old, off continent collection I wrote about earlier.

Noticed that the pages are showing all down the right side of the book. This book was not pressed.

It was an original owner book, stored in a stack along with the rest of the collection.

[namisgr]

1 minute ago, VintageComics said:

You're drawing attention to defects THAT EXIST ON  UNPRESSED BOOKS and stating that they are because of pressing.

It's ridiculous.

I realize you lack the perspective of a long-time collector familiar with early SA Marvels in the days before CGC existed and years before pressing became so commonplace.  So I'll forgive your shortsightedness.

Of the Pacific Coast, Curator, Massachusetts, White Mountain, Boston, Winnipeg, and Northland pedigree comics that came to market as unslabbed books, which collections had bunches of early SA Marvels with the pages sticking out from the length of the front cover?  My experience is none of the collections.  Zero.  

Bottom line? Just because a very small proportion of early SA Marvels had their pages sticking out before they were ever pressed doesn't change the fact that pressing has caused the pages to stick out of a large number of slabbed copies of this era and publisher.  On top of that, many show other common stigmata of having been pressed.

So as not to divert the thread any further from the subject of the AF15 club, I'll refrain from posting here any more, and cede the floor to Roy.

[VintageComics]

9 minutes ago, namisgr said:

I realize you lack the perspective of a long-time collector familiar with early SA Marvels in the days before CGC existed and years before pressing became so commonplace.  So I'll forgive your shortsightedness.

 

9 minutes ago, namisgr said:

and cede the floor to Roy.

For a scientist, you sure to use personal attacks and lack facts a lot.

Let me show you how you are lacking facts:

9 minutes ago, namisgr said:

Of the Pacific Coast, Curator, Massachusetts, White Mountain, Boston, Winnipeg, and Northland pedigree comics that came to market as unslabbed books, which collections had bunches of early SA Marvels with the pages sticking out from the length of the front cover?  My experience is none of the collections.  Zero.  

Do you have pictures of books from these collections? They would be starting points. My guess is that they would still how varying degress of the defects we're talking about.

Why?

BECAUSE THE PAPER AGES OVER TIME! That is the point all along.

So a collection that was brought to market 30 years ago, depending on the storage conditions may or may not have that attributes but still eventually could as the paper ages.

9 minutes ago, namisgr said:

On top of that, many show other common stigmata of having been pressed.

All of which are occurring anyways in comics that weren't pressed. Got it.

9 minutes ago, namisgr said:

So as not to divert the thread any further from the subject of the AF15 club,

There's NOTHING wrong with having a discussion like this in the AF #15 thread.

BTW, did you see the OO AF #15 I posed with the pages peeking out?

Just to bring the conversation full circle, I also have a picture of the torpedo 9.4 copy when it was raw (the picture was taken before the collection was even purchased) and the book looks EXACTLY THE SAME RAW AS IT DOES IN THE SLAB NOW.

 

Edited February 26, 2020 by VintageComics

[namisgr]

15 minutes ago, VintageComics said:

Do you have pictures of books from these collections? They would be starting points. My guess is that they would still show varying degrees of the defects we're talking about.

So you ask me questions while simultaneously chastising me for bringing up that I didn't like the 9.4 copy of AF15 under discussion because of how much the pages stuck out from the cover, without ever offering an opinion on why the pages got that way.  Right.

It took me all of two minutes to find an example of an early SA Marvel being discussed elsewhere on the Boards that was just auctioned a few months ago, and despite being a 56 year old early SA Marvel doesn't have any of the defects I've raised as stigmata of pressing.  So there goes that argument of yours.

Edited February 26, 2020 by namisgr

[mysterio]

32 minutes ago, namisgr said:

I just went through the first 25 slabbed copies in the Heritage archive: https://www.ha.com/c/search-results.zx?N=0+790+231&Ntk=SI_Titles-Desc&Nty=1&Ntt=Amazing+Fantasy+%2315&limitTo=all

Nine have the title A and the 12 cent circle wrapped partially onto the back cover.  Sixteen do not.  So in that small sample size, its roughly two-thirds that lack the miswrap, which I wouldn't characterize as quite uncommon.

25 is not a lot of books, and the sample is skewed to those books auctioned through one (typically higher end) house. I’d be interested to see the ratio on eBay or ComicLink (who also auctions a boatload of AF #15s. 

[VintageComics]

1 minute ago, namisgr said:

So you ask me questions while simultaneously chastising me for bringing up that I didn't like the 9.4 copy of AF15 under discussion because of how much the pages stuck out from the cover.  Right.

No, you used the 9.4 book as a soapbox to go on and explain how it was caused by pressing when that is not the case.

2 minutes ago, namisgr said:

It took me all of two minutes to find an example of an early SA Marvel being discussed elsewhere on the Boards that was just auctioned a few months ago, and despite being an early SA Marvel doesn't have any of the defects I've raised as stigmata of pressing.  So there goes that argument of yours.

You're so childish it's impossible to have a rational discussion with you.

1st, the chances that the Pacific Coast ASM #11 CGC 9.6 WASN'T PRESSED is slim. I don't know if Schmell owned it or not, but I'd just expect the majority of high grade SA Marvels to be pressed.

2nd, there ARE SA Marvels that don't exhibit pages peeking out. I never said there weren't. Not all SA Marvels look the same, but pressing is not the reason why they look different.

IT ALL DEPENDS ON HOW THE BOOKS WERE STORED AND HOW THEY AGED OVER TIME.

Some books that don't have pages peeking out get stigmatized as being trimmed because people aren't used to seeing them that way when in fact they aren't trimmed.

So your single picture of a book that may or may not be pressed, that is a one off example and not indicative of the majority is really just that. A single picture of a book.

 

[namisgr]

4 minutes ago, mysterio said:

25 is not a lot of books, and the sample is skewed to those books auctioned through one (typically higher end) house. I’d be interested to see the ratio on eBay or ComicLink (who also auctions a boatload of AF #15s. 

Heritage has auctioned a lot more than 25 examples - I just stopped at the first page of the archive from a lack of interest in going through the whole lot of them.  And I completely agree that a sampling of 25 examples is small.  But I don't see how the identity of the auction house may have skewed the numbers.

Edited February 26, 2020 by namisgr

[VintageComics]

Just now, namisgr said:

Better guess again.  A look at the first page of AF15s in the Heritage auction archives shows that 16 of the 25 copies don't have the title A and the price circle wrapped onto the back cover.  That shows roughly two thirds of the copies of AF15 lack the front to back miswrap and the book is more common without it.

Or better said that a 3rd ARE miswrapped then.

And that's a very high percentage.

And you are probably going back as far as two decades in looking at the Heritage examples whereas over time, the better wrapped copies may be kept longer leaving more miswrapped copies on the open market.

 

[VintageComics]

Here's the long and short of it:

Whether a book has pages peeking OR NOT, whether a book has impacted staples OR NOT, whether a book has a twisted spine OR NOT and whether a book has fuzz around the staples OR NOT, none of these are 'tells' that a book was pressed because both pressed and unpressed books exhibit these qualities.

And if I was auctioning a million dollar book and some randoms on the internet were posting misinformation that my book looked improperly pressed (when in fact the book looked the same raw before it was pressed) I wouldn't be happy.