lou_fine

Although there's been some comments from the non-pedigree crowd with respect to coded markings on the book and dust shadows which I personally don't have that much concern with, it's really more about the damaged corners, edge tears, and impacted staple areas and tears that the graders seem to be giving a free pass to relative to the assigned grades (for some of the books) which I am much more concerned about. Although I am sure the majority of the collection should HOPEFULLY be graded within the bottom portion of their acceptable grading range, it's just the really obvious and blatant overgrades that now puts the overall grading of this whole collection into question. Heck, I would love to bid on some of these books here, but now it's up to ME to be really taking a much much closer look than normal at these books, which is not the easiest thing to do since we have only the cover scans to work from, and not the actual book in hand.

As far as I am aware, I believe that color strike and gloss are considered to be more like non-technical factors of the book and as such, are not taken into consideration as much as the technical and structural factors when it comes to the final grade determination of the book. If you are concerned more about color strike and gloss, this is really where the CVA and QES stickers are in theory supposed to come into play.

Now this did make me upset. Not having a cap on the fee makes it awfully tempting to bump up a high priced book half a grade or more which can add tens of thousands of dollars to a value. Yes, I am kind of surprised that there's not a lot more fuss about the removal of the cap on the fee which they used to have in place prior to this latest change at the end of last month. Then again, I guess it's not really that many boardies with books that would have been hitting their old cap that was in place, whatever it was? The whole part of this fee structure that I really can't understand is how do they expect the submittors to come up with the estimated market value of the book in the first place. Especially since in today's hyper red hot marketplace, it's relatively easy for a book to go over $3K depending upon the grade, and isn't that the exact reason why we are sending the darned thing into CGC in first place? And are we really expected to know if the book has restoration or not which would really crush the value of the book? Oh heck, maybe they should really be giving us a huge discount on these egregious fees of theirs if they expect us to do their job for them in the first place before we can even submit the books into them.

I always have a good laugh as I always found it rather ironic and totally contradictory whenever I think about this.

Well, if it's not yet past the Statute of Limiations and depending upon the state where this supposed transaction took place, I could definitely see a lawsuit coming up, especially considering how legal-centric things are when it comes to matters like this. If rumours are indeed true, it sounds as though even Chuckles was involved in a lawsuit with the Church family which he won simply because they never asked him for his "expert" opinion on the value of the collection or for an offer on the books. Apparently, the Church family asked Chuck for a certain amount of money to remove the books from the house (i.e. estimated 20,000 X 10 cents full brand new cover price to this know nothing hippie kid who we can hose for these old used books here = $2,000 ) and Chuckles simply accepted their offer even though he initially didn't even have that much money in the first place. In your above scenario, if it was the LCS owner that had come up with the "top dollar offer price", my bet is that the family would end up winning the lawsuit if this case was still within its legal rights to go to court. I highly doubt this would be the scenario here since I am quite sure that both Heritage and CCG would need to know the full background story on this collection to ensure that they do not get themselves entangled in a twisted legal web, and one that would hurt their business reputation going forward. Then again, you never really know for sure when its big big money involved like this.

All-What????? WTF.........are you one of these Grumpy Old Men hiding down in your basement with those old smelly books from way back in the Stone Ages? Get with it, old man.............it's now the 21st century and the crypto generation where it's all about treasures like Transformers, Shogun Warriors, Rom, TMNT's, Adolescent Radioactive Black Belt Hamsters, Geriactric Gangrene Jujitsu Gerbils, Kung-Fu Kangaroos, etc. All.....WTF was it again...........oh yes...........All Losers #21.

Definitely looks like a pretty useful tool to use for the CGC label chasers. Is there a way to do an Edit Find if you want to check on a particular book or do we have to scroll through the whole list looking for the book?

Well, I believe his hands are washed clean by N.P. Gresham, although it seems that nobody can find him, including the Federal Trade Commission.

Not speculating or accusing. Just saying when the folks at the auction house have a financial interest in the grading house, that's a conflict of interest. Have you not been paying attemtion to the other thread as this type of terminology is considered to be sacrilege on these boards here? In the Corporate business world, and especially in one where there is vertical integration like what we have here with CCG, it's simply called the unlocking of business syngeries.

Is this really nothing more than a case of the kettle calling the pot black, except the pot in this case is much much bigger and blacker? These current shenanigans are nothing new in the sense that back in those days, those types of activities were seen as ADDING VALUE to a book as even clearly stated in the Overstreet guide at the time, and not so much as destroying the value of a book. Yet decades later, knowing full well has has taken place in the past and that we should all know better by now, shenanigans and manipulations not only continue to this point in time, but are instead encouraged and institutionalized to the point that you and your book are actually severely penalized in terms of having your book graded if you choose not to partake in these manipulative games of theirs.

From my own personal point of view, I think if I have a HG copy of a GA book from this later time period, this would probably be the absolute worst time to be sending it in for grading. I believe this lowered grading standard that you are seemingly seeing is probably part of an undisclosed business agenda that is limited solely to the Promise Collection. As a result, if you submit your HG GA book into CGC for grading right now, they will probably be taking you and your book behind the woodshed and applying some heavy punishment grading to it. Although it might not be necessary by now, but I will repeat my advice or word of warning to you here anyways. Based upon what was sent to me last night, it is never a good idea to try to jump on board the CGC grading train when it is already loaded up to the hilt with the Promise Collection books and also barreling down the tracks at full maximum speed. The chances of you and your HG GA books from this same time period being able to successfully maneuver this leap is probably slim to none and you and your books will sadly simply get crushed to smithereens under the wheels of the oncoming CGC grading train.

Are you implying this is likely due to pressing and therefore avoidable? Are you also implying that the book might still also be overgraded in the end, given all of the issues along the edges and corners of the book? If so, please take into account that spines, corners, and edges are above the pay grade of the CGC graders for this Promise Collection here, as the "suits" in the corner suite of the penthouse are responsible for those unimportant parts of the book.

Hey Mitch; Looks like you made out like a rabbit here and nothing compared to the boardie who PM'ed me last night after one of my posts to show me scans of a CGC graded book that he had resubbed (sadly without performing his due diligence of CPR) for a potential upgrade and ended up being burned by a 3 full CGC condition grading levels instead. Really felt sorry for the boardie as it was also most likely a case of real bad timing as the book was regraded not quite 3 weeks ago and right during the midst of all of these Promise Collection books going through at the same time. The real sad thing is that from the scan, although the book might have been off by one grade point if graded tightly, it certainly presented better than some of the scans of books that we have seen posted here earlier in this thread and that by some grading miracle are now somehow the highest graded copies on the CGC Census Population Report. This is why I find that although CGC and certified grading has most definitely been a net benefit to the collecting base, grading at times is also a matter of luck and timing because as seen in the past, if CGC is hell bent on grading to fit a certain business agenda of the day, you best hope that your book is not hitting their grading table during that time period. A perfect reminder to all of us here how NOT so great CGC truly is on that level.

Are you talking about then or now with the current pandemic still in place and record high unemployment with many businesses still shut down? And yet we have stock markets at record highs, housing prices going through the roof, and people throwing millions at NFT's, sports cards, and not too far behind are our much loved and treasured comic books.

Ah, the backstory finally. And as we suspected, someone didn’t come back from war. Definitely a touching and sentimental story that will pull at the heartstrings of some, but for us comic book collectors, sort of a repeat of the Tom Reilly story with the San Francisco pedigree collection of GA books. As for Junie's name, when I read it in the attached article, the first thing that came to my mind was this comic book here:

No idea why you would be asking me since I am a collector who prefers to keep all of my books raw and don't participate in this whole grading fiasco and CPR game that's taking place. Better to ask the parties that's actually involved such as the gang over at Heritage, the boys over at CGC and CCS, and possibly the consignors although I suspect they (sad to say) just might not know what's being done to Junie's much loved and treasured books that he had asked his brother and family to take care of and which they very obviously and lovingly did for the past 75 years.

Are you referring to the new “I PROMISE You This Will Be The Most Overgraded Comic Book Collection Of All Time” pedigree that is currently being “graded” (if we can call it that) by the boys at CGC and then being hawked by the gang over at Heritage?

Well, you can always fill in the details for us then since you seem to be in the know about the background of this Promise Collection here.

Ummm...................that's only because the writing was on that top corner piece that came off during the CCS pressing process.

Maybe somebody pointed it out to them and it's now gone back in to be upgraded. To be totally fair though, since nobody has yet to post a seemingly undergraded book so far as per my post from the other day: I think I may have found one although I am not sure about the spine, and it might just also be the one that you was looking at and couldn't find anymore: https://comics.ha.com/itm/golden-age-1938-1955-/superhero/scoop-comics-8-the-promise-collection-pedigree-chesler-1944-cgc-fn-55-off-white-to-white-pages/p/7244-175199.s?ic16=ViewItem-BrowseTabs-Auction-Preview-ThisAuction-120115# Heck, the back cover here appears to be even nicer than the front cover from what I am looking at, but probably need to check the Graders Notes:

Hey Mitch; Since we seen so many examples of the former to date so far, I was wondering if you could please do a public service to all the collectors here by posting us some examples of the latter that we can go after.

From my own personal point of view, I think if I have a HG copy of a GA book from this later time period, this would probably be the absolute worst time to be sending it in for grading. I believe this lowered grading standard that you are seemingly seeing is probably part of an undisclosed business agenda that is limited solely to the Promise Collection. As a result, if you submit your HG GA book into CGC for grading right now, they will probably be taking you and your book behind the woodshed and applying some heavy punishment grading to it. Most likely necessary to offset the soft grades they are giving out right now and therefore facilitate averaging everything out in order to show that they are still tough graders during this time period.

Ummmmm..................it would appear that you probably got off on the wrong floor of the CGC building here. If it was Modern graders from the dungeon level being brought in to help with the grading of these books here, I highly doubt you would be seeing so many CGC 9.8's and CGC 9.6's because they are used to grading only newer books and would be nit picking these older GA books to death for every single tiny and seemingly insignificant defect. Especially because this is exactly what they have to do in order to differentiate between the uber high grade newer books, simply because that's all they see all the time in their work every single day. If anything, they are most likely getting help from the "suits" in the corner office of the penthouse level who's in the grading room (either physically or "in spirit" ) helping out by providing the graders with guidance and direction here.

CGC does not have to answer for these grades (whether deservedly for most or not for some) because bidders will be agressively and passionately bidding hands over fists to acquire these books, and they (i.e. the buyers) will be the ones paying for the grades regardless of what has been assigned to them by CGC. I am sure that both CGC and HA know that the loudest complaints about grades are usually short term and tends to fade over time, while the grades on the books will remain in the long term because they are what they are and nothing will change that when it comes seemingly overgraded books which no rational purchaser would ever even dare try to resubmit for a potential upgrade. It's almost like the Peter Principle of comic book grading.....................in a comic book certification world where maximization of potential is not only encouraged, but seemingly necessary in this grading game of ours with the rules as currently set by CGC, all books will eventually rise to a level of either being clearly overgraded or at an artificially manipulated seemingly close enough to accurate grade where the owner will not be willing to risk the chance of a further resubmit.

kinda looks like CBCS grading actually Actually, I believe the grading from CBCS is a lot more consistent as compared to what we are seeing here. With the seeming inconsistency and seeming lowered grading standards being applied to the Promise Collection, it's probably actually approaching PGX grading standards.