Set Description:
A collection of Conan the Barbarian issues 1 to 24 plus Annual 1.
As a personal note I find it regrettable that a few collectors have obscured their collections. Some of these books in high grade are so rare that quoting Mr. Indiana Jones seems to be in order:
"This should be in a museum!"
And what better way is there to display rare books than using scans at Collectors Society - without exposing the books to light, oxygen or changes to humidity or temperature?
So I do feel some responsibility to share such rare books with others - this is not just a hobby, but small projects trying to preserve comic book history.
Furthermore, there were a few guidelines I tried to implement in the construction of this set.
Inclusion criteria:
1. Grade should be 9.8 (or as high as possible).
2. Page quality must be pure white, unless the book has other significant merits (pedigree status or extreme scarcity).
3. Cover centering and/or cover orientation must be near-perfect (especially orientation, straight miswraps are acceptable).
Exclusion criteria:
1. Date stamps.
2. Angled miswraps* (pedigree status may override this condition).
3. Miscuts.
4. Damaged or distorted staples (off-centered staples are acceptable, if both staples are equally off-centered).
5. "Dog ears". (Fantastic name :-)
6. Handwriting on the book.
Of course no book is perfect, but these guidelines should keep the quality to high levels (but is subject to my preferences). So a perfect book would be at the highest known grade (typically 9.8 or better), have pure white pages, have perfect cover centering (no miswrap), have perfect cover orientation (making horizontal lines or text appear correctly, not going up or down across the cover), have perfectly centered and undamaged staples, no date stamp and be part of a pedigree collection – and be the only book in its grade.
As part of this nice "Conan the Barbarian #1 to #24"-obsessive-compulsive disorder ;-) I have a library containing photos and scans of most of the current Conan the Barbarian #1 to #24 9.8 and 9.9 books. You can see them all here:
http://s1270.photobucket.com/user/runesr2/library/
*An "angled miswrap" is typically explained by an off-centered cover lacking correct horizontal orientation - see this example:
http://www.hardwaretidende.dk/hard/artikelimages/30072013-1.jpg
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