Before and After of Cleaning and Pressing Services
Cleaning and Pressing used to be taboo topics for years. The art of bringing a book back to life was uttered only in hush whispers across the comic community. Those days are long gone, however, and the art of cleaning and pressing books has evolved into a service that allows a collector to get the most out of his books thought long lost to the effects of time and wear.
We at Fenix Flame Comics want to help you get the most out of your treasured books. Our services are some of the best and trusted in the community and our prices can’t be beaten.
To help you with your decision to use us, we have added a few before and after images below which you can slide across to see the changes that we have made happen for thousands of customer’s books.
Note: Pay attention to the Kazar / Spider-Man especially. That was one of our most challenging books with returning the book’s pages back to their original locations.
Download our Pressing Form HERE
to print out and submit books for pressing.
– How Our Process Works –
Of course we first recommend downloading the SpotOn Grading Systems mobile grading app so you can get a clear picture of the grades of the books you want to have serviced. The download for the app is located here: http://www.spotongrading.com.
Send us photos of the front and back cover of the books you want to have serviced.
- We will video chat and review the books and see what your expectations are for each one. This gives you a chance to “meet” us and also us to “meet” you. As we go over the books, we’ll discuss what grades you are hoping to get and what your plans are for have the books serviced. This is for a number of reasons.
- First off, we can tell you if it’s even possible to service your book(s). Some defects are beyond help and sinking more money into a book that can’t be upgraded just isn’t something we will do. We won’t waste your money. We’ve had a couple potential customers choose a different presser than us because we have refused to accept their books, but we want to feel good about ourselves knowing we aren’t just taking your money for nothing.
- If you are just doing it for sentimental reasons, awesome, we are always happy to preserve memories.
- If you are looking for a short or long term investment, we can review if the book is worth servicing based on cost and time or maybe see if there’s a higher grade book that makes more sense to put the money towards. You make the final call, but we try to give our expert opinion to save you time and money.
- We want to help you make the best financial decision you can. There’s no point in servicing a book that’s not worth it. It’s a waste of your time and money.
- After the video chat and we know what’s what, send us your books and we will do the services you wanted done.
- We will send you an invoice spreadsheet that you can pay via friends and family.
- Once paid, we send your books either back to you or on to CGC or CBCS under our dealer account for that respective third party. Why our account? Well, unfortunately, there’s always one bad apple to ruin everyone else’s fun. Someone tried telling us they never received their books from CGC after we submitted them and we had to jump through hoops to prove we sent them, CGC got them and sent them back. So, just to save the time, headaches and money, we submit under our accounts… period. Plus you get the dealer discount we get so it’s a reward for using our account. 🙂
– Turnaround Times –
We strive for a turnaround time for completion of services of 10 business days (excluding vacation days for us)* of us receiving your books. (It’s really much less, but we want to give a buffer). After that we send your books either back to you or on to CGC. Please reach out to us to see the extent of orders ahead of you. As we won’t touch an order until the one before it is completed to eliminate the risk of mixed books, there may be orders ahead of yours to extend the turnaround time.
*There are exceptions to this based on the extent of work needing to be done to certain books.
– CGC / CBCS Submission Times –
As we want to give our customers the best prices we can, we only submit to CGC / CBCS once a month (typically a week around the end of each month) to accumulate as many books for submission at once as we can. Why? Because that reduces the cost of shipping to you by watering the price of shipping down across the numerous books. If you want your books to ship sooner, please let us know and we can ship them in a separate shipment for the full cost of shipping.
– Prices For Services –
We aren’t like other companies. We want you to be able to get the best results for the best prices. Many companies when they say they press your books, they throw them in the press once and that’s that. We don’t. We will repeatedly press the book and work on it until we feel we can’t get it any better.
That being said, the same thing goes for cleaning. Cost for cleaning is determined by the amount of work needing to be done to the book.
A simple spot cleaning is no charge, whereas a lengthy, full book clean will cost a max of $15.
The prices for both services are as follows and can be mixed and matched as needed:
- Pressing – $10 flat fee per book
- Cleaning (we will determine the level of cleaning once book has been cleaned)
- Easy Spot Cleaning – No Charge
- Low Level Cleaning – $3 per book
- Mid Level Cleaning – $6 per book
- Full Level Cleaning – $10 per book
- Extreme “Bring Back From the Dead” Cleaning – $15 per book
We hope this has helped you make a decision to use our services and we look forward to helping you out any way we can. If you have any more questions outside of this generic services sheet, please let us know.
