COMIC DETAILS
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Comic Description:
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Conan the Barbarian 20 Universal
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Grade:
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9.8
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Page Quality:
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WHITE
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Certification #:
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0161652006
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Owner:
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Rune
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SET DETAILS
Owner's Description
Well, I also own a beautiful CGC 9.4 graded copy of this book, but suddenly this book with near-perfect centering and perfect orientation appeared and I could not help myself but buying this beauty.
Just to put this book into perspective, in July 2013 there were 9 Conan the Barbarian #20 CGC 9.8 books and none better. I knew of 6 books with pure "white pages" (WP), 1 book with "off-white to white pages", so 2 books had unknown page quality. Of the 6 WP books, only the Suscha News book (cert number 1027527002), 1129553013 and this current book have close to perfect cover centering and orientation - regarding books 1009863012, 0988462003 and 0051852008 these all have front covers tilted at the left, easily spotted at the top left corner as the small text "CONAN THE BARBARIAN" is almost dragged onto the back of the books. This illustrate the great difficulties of collecting 9.8 Conan books - there are almost none available, and if you have a preference for picture perfect cover orientation and centering you are in serious trouble. So I was unbelievable lucky to find this current book (as the saying "beggars can't be choosers" is so incredible true to collecting Conan 9.8's or better ;-).
Many Conan 20 books seem to be printed with a skewed cover orientation (maybe the cover paper did not pass completely straight into the printer, who knows...), and I have only seen very few of these books with perfect cover orientation and centering like this current book. Strictly, the cover orientation is perfect on this current book, while the centering is near-perfect, since the cover could be moved about 1mm to the left to achieve utterly god-like cover centering perfection :-)
The fellow collector "Doctor Joe" once wrote this amusing illustration of the problem getting perfect cover centering and orientation (=the origin of the angled mis-wrap), which I hope he can forgive me for bringing here:
*****
Every miswrap goes back to one of these
- "Frank, Jeese I gotta pee, man the machine for me, I'll be back in 10"
- "OK, so its pretty straight forward, the covers go in here, all you gotta do is push this button and it lines up straight, you will get the hang of it in no time...yeah...thats it.wait..stop....no..no damn it the other button....oh brother"
- "Lo ayudaré a imprimir estos libros de cómics"
- "what a night, she was great, Im still shakin'..no its fine..Ill load em in..sheesh is it spinning here or what.."
- "Lord Master Satan, what would you have us do today...very good sire..we obey..the angled miswrap it is"
*****
The original and only previous owner, the American chemist Max G. Rodel, described the book in these words:
"I purchased this beautiful comic book in 1972 in Madison, Wisconsin. I am its original owner. I carefully selected the book from the comic stand, bagged it, boxed it, and locked it away. The book has been stored with great care in a dark, dry, smoke-free environment for 38 years.
CGC gave this book a very high grade of "9.8, WHITE pages." Here are my personal notes:
•The book is perfectly flat with no trace of roll. All pages are tight.
•Cover gloss is superbly bright, and colors are brilliant.
•The cover is centered perfectly, and the book has no bindery defects.
•There are no folds, creases, stains, tears or handling marks on the book.
•Edge of spine and edges of pages have NO signs of wear.
•Corners are exceptionally square and sharp, with NO sign of touching.
•With careful examination, I can find NO transverse stress cracks along the front edge of the spine.
•Staples are centered nicely, and are slightly spotted with time.
•Interior pages are beautifully supple and white. Prior to submittal of the book to CGC for grading, my OWL card measured the page whiteness at OWL:9+. CGC assigned a "WHITE Pages" rating to this book.
This is a superb copy of this comic book that is certified to be in NM/MT 9.8 condition, with beautiful white pages. You won't find a nicer copy! [...] The book is sealed inside its CGC Universal Grade plastic holder; the holder is in perfect condition."
Currently (July 2017) there are 9 CGC 9.8 books of Conan the Barbarian #20 (during the last 3 years no new CGC 9.8 book has been found). I know of these 7 books:
1027527002, WP, Suscha News pedigree
1051554005, WP, Suscha News pedigree
0051852008, WP
0161652006, WP
1009863012, WP
1129553013, WP
0988462003, OW-W
(WP = White Pages and OW-W = Off-White to White Pages.)
I have photos/scans of 6 books, and 1027527002 may be considered the book with most perfect cover centering and orientation. You can see the 6 books here:
http://s1270.photobucket.com/user/runesr2/library/Issue20
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