Alas.
Chris and I could not coordinate our week and thus could not get together to tape a show. We still plan on getting one in, hopefully for Thursday morning or worst case Friday morning.
At the moment I feel like an opening act that has just been told the headliner didn’t show up… I could try to type in some jokes or I could just write out some random thoughts like:
- Arnold’s kid with the maid should star in a new Conan movie as Conan
- I’ve lost count as to how many comic books have sold for over $1 million but am I right in assuming that Amazing Fantasy #15 is the most modern book in that club?
- Could CGC offer a virtual copy of the book you sent down? One that is opened up by one of those book scanning machines so you end up virtually leafing through the actual copy you hold encapsulated in your hand?
- If the FF were a rock band, the Thing would be the drummer, more Bonham than Moon. Reed Richards on bass, I’m thinking Roger Waters. The Human Torch on lead guitar, all cocky like Frampton maybe (he’s hard to nail down), and Sue would be lead vocals channelling her Stevie Nicks.
- I think I see the umbrella hook coming my wa…..
After that infamous grading video I don’t want CGC spending any more time touching my book before slabbing than is absolutely necessary. But at a more generic level I think a great idea – pay Marvel, DC, etc. so you can access an encrypted soft copy (like a library book) of the issues you had graded. Not “your” book, but at least you could still look at the art and read the story. Instant access via a QR code on the slab. Also grader notes, other issue information, etc.
HOWEVER, I think what people really want from CGC is accurate grades and fast turn-around at a reasonable price. So while the idea above is cool, I would suggest they stick to their knitting until most people agree that this is under control (which will be never).
I have also been thought a record of the interior if the book encapsulated should be part of a package… for a price. But Chri$ Meli has a point about their handling… however I am sure I have no $25000 books that might be down graded to $15000 do to their handling… err and am sure they don’t want to offer up the evidence either!
One of the issues that CGC has is that they are having a hard time back the evolution of grading. When they started grading over twenty years ago they set their own standards and I’ll bet you that as the years past and as the market took to their grading you found price discrepencies with books of the same grade, obvious examples are overbound books, underbound books, books bound tiltes, books that have fading etc. Its hard for CGC to now adjust 9.8s lets say to a tollerance of say 88 degrees on their tilt when there are so many 9.8s out there with more severe tilts, ditto for all the other examples I’ve noted
Chris, what is this infamous grading video of which you speak. Is it online?
I think there this was done live on Facebook or something and some people captured it. This commentary includes portions of the video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ksQN5XhIw28
To Walt’s point – if you had the time, I think a good way to get bargains would be to look for sales of these “bad” 9.8s for relatively thinly traded books. People knows these aren’t “really” 9.8s and will not pay up for them, and the lower price will go into GPA. The next one that comes up might be behind the eight ball, because users of GPA mistake the low price for the market level, when it is really from an overgraded book.
This is not just for 9.8s – an example now near and dear to my heart is a particularly ugly Detective #168 that sold last year. Its low price distorted the price stats for this book somewhat, but unless you follow Detective #168 like a shark, you wouldn’t know this.
Another book that I would point to is Action #242. The purple ink on this cover is unusually susceptible to fading, so just looking at the realized price in a given grade is far from enough.
Oh and hey – while I am at it – is it just me, or are there a lot of Giant Size X-Men #1 coming to market with ugly yellowing on the covers? I believe I am noticing significant price resistance for these, although usually somebody steps up at the last minute and is willing to take one of these at about 80% of market. Is there an interior yellow ad that bleeds on these, maybe when they are pressed?
I got a raw GSX #1 coming in for auction, I’ll have a look at it and try to report back.
And extension on Meli’s observation that we can use weak GPA sales generated by a book assiigned too high a grade is the converse, I’ve had guys bring in books to me asking if they can get the record price recently set for a specific grade, the sale looks out of place amongst the GPA data and more often than not two biddrrs were chasing the potential upgrade of a book that looks undergraded.
The ugly yellowing evident on some old books, especially on white covers is due to those books having been stored too long in non-archival plastic bags. The plastic oils have leached into the book & caused irreparable harm. This is made worse if the books are stored in a warm & humid environment! This is also evident on coins, where those coins were stored in non-archival plastic cases for a long time which have leached oils into them & caused their surfaces to look yellow. Back in the 1970’s & 1980’s, almost all of the plastic bags available to the trade were made of generic plastic which managed to keep dirt & moisture away, but then proceeded to ‘poison’ their treasures with oils & chemicals. As a collector back in the 1980’s, leafing through thousands of old comics at conventions & local stores, finding such chemically yellowed books was a common occurrence. Some yellowing was so bad as to render the cover ‘greasy’ & translucent ! We are lucky to have mylar & polypropylene bags nowadays, but guys like Edgar Church did just fine with no bags at all !!
I think I may have finally figured out where that $7,000+ “No.1” chip came from. It was all that was left after a CGC grader carelessly flipped through a copy of Action #1!
You don’t think he would have ingested that chip as he licked his finger while paging?