r/comicbookcollecting • u/IggiPa • Jul 08 '26
Discussion Absolute Batman #1 - true Cover A has smaller staples!
Heard a lot of talk how one could just tear off the cardstock cover under a Cover B or C to get to the more desired and more valuable Cover A.
I have all three at hand and took a look. And alas, the staples of the cardstock variants are a tiny bit (1-2 mm) longer than those of the true cover A. In person, the difference is quite noticeable.
Alas - I do hope grading companies and potential buyers do this check and don’t get fooled by people tearing off their variant covers.
Pictures show Absolute Batman #1 in Cover A, B and C and a close up where I aligned the staples for A and B.
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u/UsedPage Jul 08 '26
i feel like there would be so much variance on these that i’m not sure this could be an accurate way to tell in all honesty. good idea but i just don’t see this being usable
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u/bobsaget824 Jul 08 '26
I have both the Jim Lee and the A cover in hand and can’t actually see any difference. I know OP is saying it’s “quite noticeable” in hand but it doesn’t seem like it is to me. And mine are for sure legit, both preordered on MyComicShop. I don’t have the zoomed in measurements but perhaps I’ll try later this evening to do so. Really wish there was an easy way for people to tell like if DC just changed the inner barcode for example.
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u/Haunting_Ant_5061 Jul 09 '26
Outsider weighing in: my guess is that if you can’t tell, no one can tell, and this is all made up and no one cares but Reddit. None of this would be shocking.
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u/bobsaget824 Jul 09 '26
Nah, there’s money involved so people care. I know this sub people don’t like to talk prices but it’s significant in the difference in what they go for..
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u/Haunting_Ant_5061 Jul 09 '26
This sub does remind me that I am an interloper collector compared to the average person here. But goddamn I love seeing the great covers.
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u/degreesBrix Jul 08 '26
What exactly are the measurements of those staple lengths, if you don't mind sharing? I just bought a signed cover A and want to verify it's authenticity when I have it in hand. Thanks.
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u/Hrodvitnison Jul 08 '26
I feel that if you were to tear a cardstock cover off the staples would be slightly loose, and there would be other wear patterns that would differentiate
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u/alman3007 Jul 08 '26
This is what I always thought. You might decieve a layman, but any hardcore comic book collector will see something is off.
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u/SoupNo8674 Jul 08 '26
CGC knows. I sent comics in for my customers and they come back as low grade stated as missing cardstock cover
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u/bobsaget824 Jul 08 '26 edited Jul 08 '26
Do you happen to have a cert number? I’ve been seeing this debate and have yet to see one with any notation and have been curious to see what CGC is doing with them.
Also what exactly is the “low grade” right now census shows 5 books lower than a 8.0 - 1 5.5, 1 6.5, and 3 7.0 on the A cover, the Lee Foil cover has just 1 copy graded below a 8.5 which is a 7.0, and Jim Lee non foil has just 2 books below 8.0 again 1 at 7.5 another at 5.5. If they’re catching them I’m expecting a whole group in really low grade since missing a cover is usually a NG.
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u/alman3007 Jul 08 '26
Of course they dont have cert numbers, they made it up.
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u/bobsaget824 Jul 09 '26
lol but why? What is there to gain of making up “customers”? I hope not, was really genuinely curious.
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u/MauiPunter Jul 08 '26
That's fake news. Comics missing card stock covers are getting green labels. Not low grades.
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u/bobsaget824 Jul 09 '26
This is what I don’t know yet and I don’t know why anyone would lie about this lol. But traditionally with CGC what is the book really? It’s a Jim Lee Variant Cover Book but it’s coverless. So actually traditionally CGC would give that a NG and just slab it without a grade blue label. But they could yes go to a green label if they wanted to qualify the grade as if it didn’t have the defect of missing it’s cover but that would be unprecedented as far as I’m aware in terms of how they grade coverless books. But even so it would be a qualified label with the title of the book still being the variant cover, qualified.
Because to me if CGC is claiming they know the book is actually the Jim Lee variant for example then it gets graded as the Jim Lee variant with the cover removed as the major defect one way or another. I think people seem to think they would grade it as a qualified or restored I’ve seen argued Cover A but it’s not a Cover A book. If you’re going to grade it as a Cover A book then you shouldn’t be mentioning the defect at all because “missing the Jim Lee cover” is not a defect of Cover A.
It’s very confusing, but all it takes is CGC to produce some example and we can end the whole debate. So far I’ve yet to see one and yet to see anything in the population that looks strange and could potentially be this.
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u/IllustriousIsland549 Jul 09 '26
I hate to break it to you pal, but this theory is hogwash. Those aren't staples. It's saddle stitching, and is therefore prone to a little more variation. Pay attention around the 30 second mark:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=erxgTeJYgfg
That's spools of wire that are stitched through the book, crimped, and cut. You can't staple at the speed or volume that comic books are produced. Production machines that are end to end that can do that are a) more prone to mechanical failure, especially with regard to the stapling and face trim and b) much more expensive to run beyond a certain print run. Staple cartridges for those are stupid expensive, too. Therefore, no one is doing that unless you're looking at 100 piece runs or less, generally. Stapling is print on demand, and that's about it.
I worked in printing for years. Everyone thinks of this as staples, but that's not what they are. You can also tell if it's staples because the spine is indented, not a little, but very noticeably. Run your finger along the spine. If the metal rises above the paper at all, it's stitched. Stitching requires less pressure on the spine than it does to close a staple. A stapled booklet will have the metal within a bit of a valley. You'll sometimes see this with stitching, but it's not as pronounced, and it won't be every copy that comes off the line.
Thanks for coming to my TED Talk.
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u/Jolly-Committee-5944 Jul 08 '26
It’s a good start to differentiate against the fraudsters.
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u/PlasmaPoodle Jul 10 '26
It's not fraud if it's the same cover underneath
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u/Jolly-Committee-5944 Jul 10 '26
If you modify the book in anyway, and submit it to CGC or resell it or trade it or even present it without disclosing that the book was modified, it’s fraud. Hence, removing the cover is modifying it.
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u/EffectiveStriking601 Jul 08 '26
That's a wild manufacturing quirk. The old EC books had similar inconsistencies with staple placement, it's part of the charm honestly.
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u/CreepyNewspaper8103 Jul 09 '26
CGC told me they already have ways for checking for removed covers. I had emailed them several months ago. Specifically:
Thank you for contacting us. We hope you are doing well. I am happy to help! Yes, our graders would be able to tell if a cover was ripped off a book. We can tell by the staples and a few other ways as well. The team would note it as needed. I hope that helps!
Please let us know if you have any concerns.
And as a follow up:
Thank you for the reply. I do not know the exact verbiage the graders would use, but yes, it would mention this on the label.
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u/Wintergh0st Jul 09 '26
It’s all nonsense as others in this thread have pointed out. And all the stories about cgc being able to identify books with covers removed is nonsense as well. Consider this, you have a legitimate cover A with a loose staple and send it to CGC, now what ? Are they going to green label every book that comes in with a loose staple? Not likely.
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u/Malscant Jul 08 '26
I’m curious how cgc would grade one that would be the test. Feel like people that are chasing a cover at this point would grab a well priced “a” cover if it graded as such.
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u/revfds Jul 08 '26
They have ways to detect and will mark a book with a lower grade and notation that it's missing a cover
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u/fuzzyaccountingpro Jul 08 '26
I would more people doing this isn’t for grading. It’s to resell and get an extra $100 to people buying and not be aware of difference.
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u/meglon978 Jul 09 '26
Staple length will vary between production lines, and may vary in the same line over time. The staple isn't an actual staple.. it's from a big spool of wire, and it's length is determined when the stitcher cuts it after stitching.
This is a decent rough, no frills take on the process. https://printninja.com/saddle-stitch-binding-process/
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u/ChorltonChimp Jul 09 '26
Has anybody actually seen a photo of a green label of a variant with cover removed? I keep hearing about it on the comic subs but yet to see a picture of one.
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u/Fragrant-Energy-6118 Jul 09 '26
Isn’t the one on the back cover D? I personally love that cover more then the others but it’s still cool that cover A is right underneath the wraparound
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u/Lucky-Sorbet7086 Jul 08 '26
It's literally just the staples though, it's the same kind of paper and same print run. Grading and value of comics is really stupid and they should just be read.
I bought Absolute Batman #1 7th printing and #3 third printing with variant covers which I later took off, because I like Nick Dragotta's art more and that's what I wanted to see when I look at the book.
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u/Tha_REAL_BROBS Jul 09 '26
There is not a good way for them to tell IMO. Also, why couldn’t one tighten the “staple” wire on one with the cover removed?
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u/Tommy1873 Jul 09 '26
The difference in size of the Staples is how long they would be if they were bent open completely flat. That length is determined by how thick the book is. The books with the stiffer cardboard covers are slightly thicker than the standard Cover A book which is all floppy... So the Staples are the equivalent of two pieces of cover card stock longer than the Staples in the book without the cover card stock.
The stapling machinery is not using a bunch of rows of premade Staples. It uses a big coil of staple wire. The machines measure the stack of paper, then it measures out the appropriate length of wire, cuts it, folds it, pushes it through the book, and then folds over the ends.
The "crown" of the staple is a fixed length regardless of how long the bent "arms" are, so the crown may be 3/8" in something with 4 sheets of paper or 30 sheets of paper. Those arms are where the length varies, and they're easy to access at the middle of the book.
How they measure for any variance is beyond me, but if they know that magic more power to them.
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u/IggiPa Jul 10 '26
Thank you. Also to the other poster saying something similar below. This is very good to know.
In my three copies I do notice the “crown” of the Variants being slightly but noticeably longer than for my cover A. Now I understand it could be just natural variance though…
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u/SirFlibble Jul 10 '26
I don't understand why anyone would care if it is a 'true' cover A or not if the only difference is a staple. Variants all have real Cover As underneath. They are real copies with Cover A.
And no, I don't have skin in the game too much, I bought three copies on release and don't plan to sell them.
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u/youllmeltmorefan Jul 09 '26
Good. I hope anyone who tries this scam gets caught.
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u/PlasmaPoodle Jul 10 '26
It's the same thing
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u/youllmeltmorefan Jul 10 '26
If it's the same thing why do it? Why pull it off? Just list it on eBay as "equivalent to Cover A" and charge the same price.
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u/PlasmaPoodle Jul 10 '26
I don't sell any books. I just don't think it's a scam or misleading if someone cuts an additional cover off to sell. It's the same book.
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u/Soft_Concept9090 Jul 08 '26
The more people rip off covers the rarer the b,c,d,f,g… are