Comic Book Collecting

Hello comic collectors,

I haven’t been posting here for awhile as I’ve been busy working on other clients web sites. Yes, in my spare time I help small to mid-sized businesses to improve their sales and follow-up process as well as gain a web presence, or improve their existing web site.

Although I focus as a Internet Marketing Consultant for Lapeer County, I also work with small businesses abroad. Ok, enough about me, let’s get to the good stuff, eh?

Last time, I wrote an article on the “7 Defects To Look For Before Prepping Your Books For Grading“. If you haven’t read that article yet (shame on you!) then please go read that one first.

Now I will be showing you what defects can be “fixed” or “corrected” on a comic book that you would like to have prepped before having it graded. But, I am doing this a little different this time.

…Jeopardy music playing in background…

I run a comic book prepping service and one of my customers (Brian Maton) has allowed me to “Showcase” his comic book here. I will explain to you what things can be corrected along with some pictures. Here we go…

5 Defects That Prepping Can Fix To Increase The Grade Of Your Comic Book

The comic that I prepped for Brian was an Amazing Spiderman #103

This is the back of the comic before prepping.

This is the back of the comic after I prepped it.

Defect # 1. Dirt on the covers.
The most common problem with decent comic books when I prep them is, dirty covers! Dirt can make your comic book look older than it is and can reveal wrinkles and creases more profoundly. Take a look at the above picture. You can see that there is plenty of dirt and wrinkles on the back cover of this comic.

Be careful when determining dirt on your comic book, some of it could be soiling or some type of stain – which in most cases cannot be removed.

Dirt can be easily cleaned up with prepping, making your comic book look fresh from the news stand.

Defect # 2. Wrinkling on spine, cover or inside pages.
Look for shadowy areas on your spines and covers (especially white covers, as shown above). This will let you know that you have wrinkles. They usually are obvious to catch, but some may actually be gouges from a sharp object such as a pen, pencil or something that scraped along the spine. See what you can detect on the back cover above. Are they wrinkles or gouges?

Most wrinkles can be removed with prepping. Deep gouges and even tough wrinkles may not be able to be removed.

Defect # 3. Bumped corners.
A bumped corner often extends to every page in the book, it looks like it was hit against something and the book tried to correct itself. Here is an example (not my customers comic) of a comic with a bumped corner:

Bumped corners can be pressed to original condition, bringing the grade of your comic up significantly.

Defect # 4. Stress along the spine.
Look for areas on the spine that are similar to a wrinkle, but smaller but they don’t break the ink. The bumped corner example to the left has a good example of this.

It’s a deep shadowy area, but does not break the ink.

Stress along the spine can be pressed out making your spine look like new.

Defect # 5. Ragged edges.
Look for this type of defect on the underside of the front and back covers. It can also show up on the internal pages of your comic books. If you open your comic and look straight down the edge of the cover or page, it will look jagged instead of seeing a crisp clean line.

Ragged edges can easily be pressed out to make those covers and pages look crisp and straight.

If you’ve read my first article 7 Defects To Look For Before Prepping Your Books For Grading and determined that the comic books you want to submit for grading are free of those defects listed there, then your next step is to determine if you have any of the defects listed in this article.

Why do you need to do that?

Because you need those defects corrected in order to get the best grade you can once it is submitted to CGC for grading. I’ve had customers send me comics that, at arrival, estimated at 7.0 and found out from them later that it graded out at a 9.4. That’s a huge upgrade!

Here is the finished product after I prepped Brian’s comic book (It’s a beauty!). Your comic books can look the same:

Would you like to improve the grade of your comic books?

I offer a comic book prepping service that improves the grade of your comic books. If you would like to get more information about how this service works, please send me an e-mail using my Contacting Me page. Please let me know if this article was interesting or if you have any other topics you would like me to cover on this site.

Patrick
The Comic Collector

Tags:   prepping comic books6 Comments