mschmidt

Stop buying mystery boxes

Just call CGC and ask

Most artists will not sign blank pieces of paper for you - those signatures look totally fake.

These weren't witnessed (that I don't trust neither the PGX or Voldemort witnessing service is a different matter altogether), but rather came through the "verified authenticated" service where the sketches/sigs are "authenticated" after the fact. Voldemort uses CSA Comics for their authentication - a company that used to be the exclusive authenticator for PGX, then switched to working with Voldemort (and subsequently scrubbed all mentions of them working with PGX previously). They've only been around for 4 years or so, appeared out of nowhere and started claiming to be experts - even though they were (and are) complete unknowns within the comic book world.

Their defense would probably be that they out-source their "authentication" to a 3rd party company and that they don't actually guarantee anything with this authentication - it's the same with Voldemort, if you actually look at their Terms & Conditions you'll find this little gem: Yet another reason the whole signature authentication thing is a joke.

Some amazing books in this thread recently - a couple more of my new arrivals:

Which would be a complete waste of money - it's not pressable defects that are keeping this book from a higher grade, it's the staining & tape pull.

The declared value is basically what your books are insured for while they're in CGC's possession. All tiers have a different maximum declared value you can put on each book - for the modern tier, it's $200/book. I've never seen any reason to *not* max out the declared value of whatever book I'm sending in - if I submit modern books, each book gets a $200 declared value. Even if you're having CGC ship back your books USPS registered & insured (which is the only CGC shipping option where the price changes based on the declared value of all books on the invoice), you're only talking a couple of $$ to have your books insured to their maximum value. It always blows my mind when I see people filling out forms where they do values like $5 or $10 for modern books - yes, that may be what you actually paid for the book, but if something happens to a book with a $5 declared value, you're only getting $5 back (even though the CGC grading cost more than that & isn't reimbursed). In regards to date on the form - no, it doesn't matter when you actually ship the books to CGC.

That Malcolm McDowell book is killer - congrats!

+1 Keep as is - it's a waste of money to reholder for this.

I cracked a couple myself that I wanted to keep raw anyway - I let them sit overnight and the paper relaxed back to being flat. Hope that'll be the case for yours too

At this point, I've had about 40 books reholdered that were in 1st generation new slabs - all were suffering from the creep engine issue. Some were only in the case for a month before a reholder, the oldest ones were in there for over a year - not a single one needed to be pressed when it was reholdered. CGC is still reholdering these books for free, so just send it in & they'll take care of it.

The difference is that you aren't forcing other people to collect comics in the specific Logan510-approved manner.

I don't think it's a money issue with Byrne - I'm pretty sure it's him being under the misapprehension that the only people who get books slabbed are resellers & flippers, eg. not "real" fans.

Completely depends on the size of the show and how many books CGC estimate they will take in. At this years WW Chicago, for instance, CGC had 3 witnesses at the booth - at NYCC, it was more than 15 people spread across two booths.

I get what you're saying - and I think I made it pretty clear in a different thread that it pisses me off to no end that a creator feels they have the right to decide what I do with my books after they've been signed - but, ultimately, if a creator categorically states that any books they sign during a specific event cannot be slabbed, it's shady as hell for a 3rd party grading company to ignore this. It may benefit the company itself in the short run, but it hurts the hobby as a whole over the long term.

IDW made it 100% clear at the show that Byrne would not sign books going to any 3rd party grading company - I'm hoping that Voldemort will honor this, but based on how they run their SS program I'm not so sure.

Stargate SG-1: Fall of Rome #1 CGC 9.9 SS $500 Great classic photo cover variant, signed by Richard Dean Anderson and Michael Shanks. Doesn't hurt that it's a mint copy either!

A simple one-book thread this time ... Rules: - As usual, paypal, checks & money orders are happily accepted. - Not interested in dealing with people in the PL or the HOS. - US shipping is free and I'll pay half the international shipping charges. - 14 day no-hassle returns accepted on anything I sell. I'd rather have a satisfied customer than try to stick someone with an item they don't want. - first gets the book, based on time stamp, either through PM or in the thread

Not really. You can make money on it if it has a yellow label and the grade is high enough and it's a book that people actually pay a premium for when it's signed. Automatically equating SS label with big $$ profits is one of the biggest myths we face when it comes to slabbing signed books - it's mind-blowingly frustrating that CGC hasn't done more to educate & inform creators that this simply isn't the case. When I work shows for CGC, I'd venture a guess and say that the majority of the books submitted for SS by non-dealers are, technically, not worth it - with slabbing & signing fees, a sale would result in a loss. And in the vast majority of those cases the person submitting the book simply doesn't care - they're slabbing for any of the other multitude of reasons that people get book CGC'ed. Heck, I have a sneaking suspicion that if I looked critically at the 1000+ CGC books I have in my own collection, I'd find a ton of slabs that I personally love, but that were never cost-effective to actually do. And I'm totally fine with that.

Holy *spoon*, Chris - that WD multi-sig magazine is ridiculously cool!

I personally think distinguishing between books that are going to CGC and books that are staying raw when setting signature fees is ridiculous. So, to me, this is doubly so. Creators are free to charge whatever they want for their signature - just like I'm free to avoid getting books signed by creators whose fees I find to be silly. What I do with my books after they've been signed, however, is none of their damn business.

I'd be more upset about them stickering your book - ouch.

It is - and it's yellow as well.