Is Today's Pressing Trend Giving People a False Sense of Grading Standards? 2 2

[Qalyar]

As far as grading goes, the biggest problem pressing presents is increasing the divide between technical grade and eye appeal in some books. A comic with several color-breaking creases is still a comic with several color-breaking creases when pressed, but pressing does reduce or eliminate the obvious "ridging" and allows the creased book to lay flat. That makes it look a lot nicer, but doesn't actually change anything from a technical perspective. We regularly extol people to "buy the book, not the grade", but that has to come with a measure of consideration that not all pretty books are sound ones (and that's true regardless of pressing, but it does compound the situation at times).

On the other hand, competent pressing as a means to repair large bends (as commonly inflicted by improper storage) is a fairly universal good.

[Hollywood1892]

30 minutes ago, StreetPreacher said:

Don't worry, I also used plenty of starch, want to make sure it finishes up nice and stiff!  I mean, who wants floppy comics?

Exactly 

[William-James88]

15 minutes ago, Qalyar said:

As far as grading goes, the biggest problem pressing presents is increasing the divide between technical grade and eye appeal in some books.

Thank you so much for succinctly saying what I was trying to say in my first post. This is what I was getting at. So for instance, what we were discussing just now with a press removing water ripples. It will make for a nicer 4.0 but it won't make a water damaged book suddenly become a 7.0 because it falls flat like a 7.0.