lou_fine

Well, if this is the case, then does it mean that Spidey 238 is finally starting to do a big time catch up to Spidey 300: https://comics.ha.com/itm/modern-age-1980-present-/the-amazing-spider-man-238-with-tattooz-marvel-1983-cgc-nm-94-white-pages/a/122127-11137.s?ic4=ListView-ShortDescription-071515# Sold for $1,320 in Heritage Sunday Auction last night which definitely appears to be substantially higher than recent sales for this book in CGC 9.4.

Definitely a very good example here, although I do believe Police Comics 1 with the first appearance of both Plastic Man and Phantom Lady has been moving up on the pricing charts quite nicely the past couple of years. I also assume the rather astounding auction succes of the Promise Collection copy of PL 17 along with the other issues just might also give Police Comics 1 another long awaited and much deserved push, even though her earlier Quality appearances clearly takes a back seat to her later Fox appearances with the classic artwork by Baker.

Would you by any chance be referring to Ducks books such as this one here which sold for a rather astounding and totally unexpected $90K: https://comics.ha.com/itm/golden-age-1938-1955-/four-color-178-donald-duck-rockford-pedigree-dell-1947-cgc-nm-96-off-white-to-white-pages/a/7244-94042.s?ic4=ListView-ShortDescription-071515

Mitch; Either you really need to read your press releases much more carefully or you simply still do not understand that there's a big huge difference between CCG and CGC. What Blackstone acquired was a majority stake in CCG which is the parent umbrella company that CGC falls under. It should be noted that CGC is only a small fractional portion of CCG since they have already graded more than 62 million collectible items, with the CGC comic book side of the business accounting for only some odd 6.3 million or only roughly 10% of the total. As West has already stated, the overwhelming majority of these graded items to date would be from the numismatic side of the CCG operations since that is where the former founder/owner came from. If you are talking about upcoming expansion and accelerating growth for CCG, my bet is that they are targeting the sports related side of the business which they have just recently moved into. Especially when you consider that the brand new additional minority investors they have brought in at the same time as Blackstone are ALL from the sports industry (i.e. Michael Rubin, S.C. Holdings, Rudy Cline-Thomas, Andre Iguodala, Daryl Morey, and Main Street Advisors) and basketball in particular. So, I highly doubt they are bringing in these news investors with their heavy sports related backgrounds to focus in on trying to grow the small fractional CGC comic book side of their CCG operations, but rather to try to acquire a share of the burgeoning and rapidly growing global sports related collectibles marketplace.

Like I've stated here many times before........what the consumer or buying public (i.e. collectors/submittors in our case here) sees as potential conflicts of interest, the companies or corporations (i.e. CCG/now Blackstone in our case here) see as the successful realization of business synergies.

Of course I do as do so many of us here as these apparent conflicts of inteest have been voiced many times before in the past here already. Not only apparent conflicts of interest bewtween a grading company and an auction house, but also with their other services such as when CCG brout out Matt's Classics Incorporated business and turned it into CCS. Definite conflict of interest when CGC graded Jon Berk's collection for a competing auction house, and yet at the time, some boardies stated that it only made business sense for CGC to have undergraded Jon's books. I giess that's also the same rationale for making business sense for CGC to overgrade the Promise Colletion of books as they are all being consigned through their indirect linked Heritage Auction house. Yeah, conflicts of interest all over the place, but as long as you are aware of the game being played on you and be sure to place your bids accordingly.

Yeah, but isn't this the same guy who forgot to proactively inform the collecting base for the first 5 years of CGC's operations about this rather significant change in terms of their restoration definition and grading standards, especially since everybody within both the hobby and industry had viewed standalone pressing as restoration back then. Actually, not sure if he was involved with this cabal of crooks from the get go that foisted as lot of what would then be considered to be restored books into the marketplace as Universal unrestored books. Interesting to note when the whole fiasco came to light on the boards here, one of these crooks (i.e. Jason) had apparently broken the "crook's agreement" that this cabal had in place at the time by taking their misdeeds one step further (i.e. micro-trimming of books) , and was then summarily booted out not only from the group, but blackballed from ever submitting books ever again.

I think the odds are heavily in favor of them not being pressed. Of course books were much less likely to have been pressed prior to 2005 when CGC legitimitmized the whole process when it was declared by Borock as nothing more than "maximization of potential" for a book after pressing was outed here on the boards, and even more so if graded prior to 2002 before Heritage arrived on the scene. Especially if you think back to those long ago days back then in the first few years of CGC's operations, pressing was considered by absolutely everybody within the hobby as restoration beyind a shadow of doubt. Of course, that did not stop of cabal of nefarious quasi-dealers and money hungry scammers and crooks to hide out in their darkened dungeons and apply their trade to work on their books and then to foist them into an unsuspecting marketplace as HG universal unrestored books in order to line their personal bank accounts with untold gobs of money. I don't recall a single ad back in those days offering standalone pressing services to the collecting marketplace because it was something that was simply not being done in the general marketplace, except by a bunch of crooks trying to steal money from everybody else. So, it only makes sense that the chance of having pressed books in those old slabs are definitely far lower as compared to slabs from today where the undisclosed grading standards have been changed in such a way as to now punish your book if they have NCB spine ticks and haven't gone through the whole pressing process.

Although we've all seen examples of books with impacted staples similar to the ones which @buttock was good enough to take the time to post for us, I guess the real question for me and some of the other boardies here is: Did CGC appear to take them into consideration in the determination of their final grade or did they also simply assume that these impacted staples were production related and gave them a free pass like what took place with a lot of the Promise Collection books? From looking at some of the scans which we have seen and the defects on the promise Collection books, it appears the default for the CGC grader was to assume production related issues for any visible default resulting in a minimal impact on the grade of the book. Unfortuantely, it would appear that the default for submittors of regular non-Promise GA books would be that they are true defects and not production related resulting in a much bigger hit on the grade of the book. The most important thing for a supposedly 3rd party independent certification company is to ensure CONSISTENT application of their grading standards (albeit undisclosed standards ) for all books submitted to them from all of their submittors, which clearly does not seem to be the case here with the Promise Collection of books as evident from some of the scans and associated grades that we have seen so far.

This goes only further to prove my point that it's really so much more to do with the huge potential they see in terms of growing the sports card side of CCG's operations, as opposed to the CCS and CGC side of the operations. I find the Genamint side of the business which they are working on to be rather interesting going forward and wonder if this scenario for the AI or artificial intelligence grading and detection of pressing for trading cards could ever shift over to comic books if found to be successfully workable and accurate?

I have no doubt about your time at CGC for 7 years. However, I respectfully disagree with your CGC asset priority or valuation contribution . It is no longer Steve and Marks show, but Blackstone. This company takes every single asset and exploits their value to the maximum. They will throw any money necessary to make more money and I ask to look at this $500 million dollar investment and the new Blackstone sheriff in town. Hey Mitch; Definitely interesting to read everybody's take on this buyout of CCG as it sounds like a lot of boardies seem to be over reacting to this whole business transaction and see it as ranging from an almost doomsday scenario right through to the dawning of a great new age money wise for the world of collectible comic books. Personally, I see it really more from West's point of view and think it's just going to be more of the same old, same old than anything earth shattering to the comic book side of this business transaction. Especially when you take a look art the names of the other 4 investors who have joined in on this purchase here and it would appear that their background is all related to the sports industry. Now, if you saw names like Geppi, Fishler, etc. or some of the other big or former big players in the comic book industry, then I might feel different here. That's why I believe the focus here will really be much more on the sports card side of the business which CCG is just starting up on and as West stated, the comics side of the business is basically just going to be an afterthought FOR NOW, as they got much bigger fish to fry. Being passionate comic book collectors that we all are on the boards here, I totally understand why you feel that the comic books are the big dog here and the be all and end all of this transaction here. Yet in reality, the comic book portions of the whole CCG operation which they purchased (i.e. CCS and CGC) are probably really more like the tail on a English Bulldog and we know that it's really never ever the tail that wags the dog.

Yeah, I imagine all of your single highest graded CGC 9.8 books will freak out and curl right up in their slabs from fright once I move my boxes of CGC 1.8 slab worthy books right next to them.

Plus HK doesn't tax dividends or interest. Okay, future roomie to be............you've convinced me, although I don't know how your lovely family's going to feel about me moving in. I've already booked my flight and expect you to pick me up when I arrive at the Hong Kong Int'l Airport. I can't wait and just imagine that................no taxes of any kind to worry about at all and living right in Stanley, the exclusive ritzy quiet seaside coastal town of Hong Kong where all of the wealthy ex-pats live.

Exactly what grading standards would these be that you are referring to, as I believe all of CGC's grading standards are undisclosed due to what they claim are for proprietary business reasons? Of course, this also rather kind of conviently allows then to shift all over the place with their grading and never ever really be wrong as clearly evident by some of the grades we've seen from the Promise Collection books?

So, are you hinting to us that Blackstone will be bringing in Jason Ewert to up CGC as soon as they can squeeze as much potential out of Matt as they possibly can?

Just inflated.. Well, I guess that would be anybody who was "lucky" enough to have have won any of those so-called "production defect" laced books with those highly suspect and rather inflated graded labels on the top left hand corner of their Promise Collection slab.

This Promise Collection pedigree is really starting to build a name for itself with some of the collectors in the know who don't drink the CGC juice on a regular basis, and unfortunately for the hobby place, it's not the one that @Mmehdy and all of the hype meisters at Heritage would want to have us believe. When I first heard about this Promise Collection pedigree, I thought it would certainly be nice to add one of these books into my still work in progress collection of at least one sample book from each one of the major GA pedigrees. Although I am certain that it's really a case of to each, their own, as I am sure that many collectors will indeed still want to add a book or two from this Promise pedigree into their personal collection, it would appear that I've pretty much lost interest in this pedigree for now. Although I am sure that the high grades assigned to some of these books have certainly enhanced the reputation of this pedigree in the eyes of some as clearly evident by the aggressive biddding that we are seeing for these books here. For me personally though, the blatant inconsistent and biased grading in terms of seeing the various visual flaws as so-called "production related defects" and hence to be given a free pass and then also wholeheartedly rationalized as such by many of the boardies here has certainly damaged the reputation of what could have been a great GA pedigree and one to avoid for now. With what CGC has done to the Promise Collection books, from my own POV, it's really much safer to be going after the established long term pedigrees like the Church, Allentown's, and the Reilly books if you really want a true quality pedigree book in your personal collection.

Yes, that really Depends on how much you Pamper it and the amount of little Huggies you give to your book.

Yes, that's why it's known as a duty free port. Anyways, even with this tax advantage, I've won bupkus the last few years because items aren't being overpriced by a mere 5-10%. Yeah, gotta find some way to move my tax residency to Hong Kong since it looks like they don't even have any capital gains tax at all, which really works out for big time collectors like @tth2 when they can sell hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of comic books totally tax free. the tax free duty port, that is.

Ummm............................any truth to the rumours that Lon has been given some time off (without pay of course ) to allow him to ponder his rather misguided and trigger happy decision to post pictures of a few raw books from the Promicse Collection back in the first handful pages of thei very thread here?

Well, nothing to see here then as didn't we already find this out back in 2005 when the collecting base found out it was really all about the top and bottom lines for the ownership group at CCG. Especially since everything they've put in place to date has serve only to reinforce this point here. Not so sure about the comic book hobby itself, but most definitely better for the comic book marketplace that CGC is here.

Is CGC the same entity as CCG? CCG is the parent company for CGC (Comics), NGC (Coins), PMG (Paper Money), ASG (Stamps), CSG (Sports Cards), CCS(Comics Conservation), etc., etc. Or to put it in more simplified non-business terms...........CGC is like a grain of sand, while CCG is the sandbox which CGC's grain of sand resides in, and the Blackstone Group is the the entire beach which CCG's sandbox resides in. From the report, it sounds as though this transaction places a value on CCG of more than $500M, while the market cap of the Blackstone Group itself which trades on the NYSE is approaching $120B.

If you are referring to the one and only single highest graded copy of Hulk 181, it looks like you;ve answered your own question here. There is asolutely zero zero zero chance that book will ever get regraded or even reholdered, because if the story about that book is indeed true, there is no way that book would be even close to getting a CGC 9.9 grade ever again. Not sure about the story in terms of possible SCS damage that's been inflicted on the book here. For sure though, this CGC 9.9 copy of Hulk 181 was graded way back in the first year of CGC opening their doors and as such, were most likely graded according to the hobby standards in place at the time before Heritage "fine-tune" them as part of their grading game and also before Heritage arrive on the scene in 2002 to help "guide" them going forward. With the kind of defects (i.e. tiny spine ticks and creases) that were evident on the front cover scan of the book, these exact types of additional revenue generating defects have now moved right up to the top of CGC's hit parade with a bullet when it comes to grading.

Since I don't pay sales tax, I hope every bidder out there will start factoring in sales tax into their max bids! Are you saying that all imports into Hong Kong, including comic books, are both Customs duty free and tax free? Certainly not the same here for us as everything gets checked into Customs upon arrival into the country.

A nice concise summary on the first batch of the Promise Collection books and I certainly hope they do a much better and balanced unbiased job on the grading for the rest of the batches going forward. The problem that I had with grading for this first batch of Promise Collection books was the complete inconsistency with respect to the grading of books, with some scans indeed indicating some serious overgrading, while others appear to be within reason. This inconsistency then raises the question of possible defects inside the books which cannot be seen by a scanned image making it rather difficult to place a bid that's in line with the grade as assigned by CGC. As Cat had mentioned above, since some of the books were seemingly off by two full grading levels, I ended up placing bids on the books which I wanted that were at least two levels downs from their assigned grades. Needless to say, came nowhere close to winning any of the bids, as it looks like most of the bidders didn't get the same message and ended up biiding art least 2 full grading increments higher than what the assigned CGC grades were. I guess they must have been working on the assumption that CGC had undergraded all of the books in this Promise Collection here.