mschmidt

I would have charged more these days

Beautiful page!

I like these - they're cheap and work well: https://collectormount.com/

The inner well of a CGC slab is made from an archival-safe, inert material, so, from a preservation point of view, it's no different than storing the book in a mylar (which is also inert & archival-safe) bag.

Nonsense. I've cracked blue label 9.9's and had them come back as yellow label 9.9s.

Print out a new form to send in the books. You don't actually get charged anything till CGC receives the books, so you can just ignore the old submission.

1) You can submit books as they're being done, but you'll be charged separate invoice & shipping fees for each invoice you close out. I'd suggest holding on to everything till the end of the show and combine your books into as few invoices as possible. 2) Yes 3) You won't be assigned a witness unless you have your paperwork started - unfortunately, you can't do the SS forms online, so you'll have to go to the CGC booth, grab an invoice and fill it out before you ask for a witness. Make sure you know your account number, so you won't have to waste time looking it up on the ipads at the booth. 4) Exactly

CGC witnesses are on a pr. show basis. I, for instance, will be a witness at NYCC, but this doesn't mean I can go witness books being signed at random Store X the following week.

Nope - the private signings at NYCC are solely for people who are actually attending the show. You can, however, mail your books to a CGC facilitator and have them submit the books at the show on your behalf.

Check with comicsketchart.com - they rep Frank Miller (which means they're set up at every show he's at and any artist alley signings with him happens through them).

Some guests will sign after a panel, but there's pretty much no chance you'd be able to get a CGC witness for something like that.

Also, in regards to Frank Miller, even though it hasn't been announced yet, CGC will most likely have a private signing with him during the show. They did that at SDCC this year and the price was $100 pr. signature.

CGC will have 2 booths at NYCC (as usual) - one in the artist alley, one on the main floor. Depending on where the artist is located, you should go to whichever booth is closest & and they will set you up with a witness. Expect to wait a bit before a witness becomes available, but you can use that time to get your paperwork ready (it needs to be started before you leave the booth) and get your books prepped. You will need at least a free account if you want to submit books (which you can set up at the booth), but, like MarkMoon said, if you're doing a bunch of books you should sign up for a paid membership before the show and just make sure you have your account number handy. Once you've been assigned a witness, that witness will walk with you to any creators that are available & signing - if a creator has a giant line, the witness will not be able to wait with you & will hook you up with a phone number you can text/call when you're getting close. You can submit up to 25 SS books pr. invoice, so you can easily add new books throughout the weekend as they're getting signed. There's a new SS system in place where books are no longer held at the CGC booth during the show - they now get put into tamper-proof bags which makes it very easy for you to just hold on to everything and them submit when everything's done.

Does it look like the corner was impacted from hitting the top left corner of the inner well? If you gently tap the side of the slab, does the comic move? It's hard to tell from your photos, but it looks like a simple bindery tear - they're fairly prominent on all copies of Sandman #1 and won't stop a book from being a 9.8.

I've never seen the 7 years mentioned anywhere other than the CGC site - I actually used the "Ask a Librarian"-feature on the Library of Congress website at one point to ask about this and the reply that I got back was that as far as they were concerned there was no rule-of-thumb in regards to when MCP becomes inert. CGC's recommendation never made any sense to me - even if the MCP does become inert, it's not like it's harmful to the book; it's just no longer absorbing any potential off-gassing. Which would be an issue if the CGC slabs are air-tight, but they aren't.