Met a guy at the flea market who graded comics by smell

I was digging through a bin at the Tinley Park flea market last Saturday and this older guy next to me picked up a beat-up copy of X-Men #115. He sniffed the cover and said, 'This is a 9.0 if the spine was clean, the glue still smells fresh.' I asked him how he could tell and he walked me through how different decades of paper and ink have their own scent. Has anyone else run into collectors who use weird tricks like that?

3 comments

3 Comments

the_brian1mo ago

Hows this for a curveball - what if someone's grading by smell is actually picking up on the specific paper mill chemicals used during production runs? Ive heard that Marvel's switch to cheaper paper in the late 70s gave off a distinct musty sour note vs the earlier stuff. So that guy at the flea market might be smelling the difference between a first print and a later reprint that used different paper stock altogether. Makes you wonder how many "expert graders" are just relying on olfactory memory they never talk about.

the_terry1mo ago

That sniffing trick is actually legit for old paper but here's the thing nobody talks about - fumigation. I had a buddy who collected 60s DCs and after I treated his house for roaches his whole collection smelled like chemicals for months. He had to air them out in the garage for a year. So if you find a book that smells too clean or has a weird chemical undertone, that comic might have been through pest treatment at some point.

reese_lee91mo ago

Yeah but heres what I gotta ask - does THAT kind of chemical smell ever actually go away completely? Like your buddy aired them out for a year but did they ever smell normal again or did that weird undertone just stick around forever? I feel like once paper absorbs that stuff its game over for that "old book smell" people hunt for. And if you're dropping serious cash on a book from that era you want it to smell right too you know? Ive passed on comics that looked perfect on the surface because something felt off about the paper itself and now I wonder if that was fumigation damage.