Damaged Steelbooks. What do you put up with?

[inglourious]

Originally Posted by Psychoscot

Doubt it, I take OCD to new heights! I don't even handle them without silk gloves on. Amazon sent me one with a faint line in the paint that 99% of people wouldn't even spot, they ended up sending me 5 till I was happy.

How about glossy steels from Kimchi or Blufans? Have yet to see any without small scratches or blemishes. And do you open them? Most steels look great with the shrinkwrap + jcard still on.

Originally Posted by guidofistpimp

I bet you couldn't
I keep mine sealed , bagged and locked in a plastic security case.

But if they're sealed, you can't see what's hidden underneath the j-card Or even smaller scratches/chips that are impossible to see with the shrinkwrap still on. So throwing a plastic security case on something that might have a scratch on it won't really do much.



It just might be extremely bad luck, but out of a few hundred, I'd say 10% can be deemed as perfect (probably less). I don't use silk gloves, but I do inspect them right after receiving them and then throw them in a shell.

Most steels have at least a few of these (the rest is just dust). Really noticeable in the bad photo I took, but in person, not really at a first glance:

Also noticed the tops near the openings almost usually have a chip. If there's no chips or scratches, then there's probably a slight discolouration on the paintjob somewhere on the steel. I've received/purchased at least a few dozen steels from on here, eBay, and on HDN (including staff members) that all claimed mint and shipped the steels in a few layers of bubblewrap and there were defects on all of them. It is subjective though, so what might be mint to you, may not be mint to me. I'm still skeptical about anyone claiming all of their steels (or most of them) in a collection of hundreds are all truly mint... but I guess most people use that term a little loosely or just don't inspect their steels close enough or open them to find out

And some pics of discolourations (heavily prevalent/noticeable with MoC steels!):