lou_fine

I concur with you there. If you're putting two covers back together than I imagine you're leafcasting, which is restoration. So not sure how that would come back conserved Yes, I would definitely agree with you here is that from the original 2 pieces of fugly looking separated pices of the cover to the final beautiful finished cover, it sure looks like a lot of invasive work and a large quantity of additional material has been added back into the cover to join it back together. And yet, if you look at CGC's Restoration Grading Scale breakdown in my previous post above and restated here again: Conservation Repairs Tear seals Spine split seals Reinforcement Piece reattachment Some cover or interior cleaning (water or solvent) Staples cleaned or replaced Some leaf casting It would appear that leafcasting falls under the Conservation umbrella here according to their definition. So, from what I am seeing here, is leafcasting really nothing more than CGC's spin on taking something that was once deemed as a big bad thing (i.e. pieces added) done by those nasty comic book doctors in their darkened dungeons and now simply renaming it as leafcasting done by their partner company and really nothing more than another form of maximizing the potential of a book and of course at the same time, adding another additional revenue stream for their CCG ownership?

Oh yes, that's the part which I forgot to mentioned in my rather long-winded previous post about CGC's sometimes convoluted grading system. I thought a book that has a detached centerfold or a detached cover simply receives the regular label (i.e. not a Qualified label) with a note that states the centerfold or cover is detached and I assume this defect is then simply factored into the final grade of the book. A perfect example of this would be the Cap 3 in the upcoming Heritage Auction here: Doesn't receive the Qualified label, but gets the Pedigree Label with the note on the label stating that the centerfold is detached. Totally confusing to me how CGC seems to go all over the place sometimes with their definitions and label colors.

Wow, that looks like Kenny has done an absolutely fantastic job on your book and turned it into a stunning and beautiful front and back cover. The part I don't understand is how they can piece back together 2 already separated halves of a cover and still not consider that to be Restoration, whereas if you have a tiny drop of black where the villian is, it would then be considered to be color touch and hence given the much dreaded Restored PLOD label.

So it’s my understanding married is defined in two separate ways. if you have pages from another copy that are attached to the book then yes that’s restoration, because you’ve physically altered the book. However and as was the case here, simply placing pages from another book inside and not physically attaching them results in a green qualified label. I used to have a Batman 1 (attached a photo of it) that was qualified, because I combined a complete interior from one copy and added a front cover to it from another copy by simply placing the cover on top. Wasn’t resto because I didn’t have CCS reattach the cover thus changing the book all together. As far as I know, this is how CGC has always treated married pages/covers and what is purple resto and green qualified. Edited Saturday at 10:14 PM by LDarkseid1 Well, from my old fashion and very conservative point of view, if you are alreadly MARRIED, it's assumed that you've already done the nasty deed and have attached yourself. Maybe if you are just together and haven't done the nasty deed yet, it should just be called an ENGAGED cover. On a serious note though, I believe the Qualified aspect of this label is due to the fact that the back cover is missing and the book is considered to be Incomplete. I see this Qualified label (GLOD) being used normally on higher graded copies of books in the VF or thereabouts and up range that would otherwise be blue Universal copies except for the fact that they are missing a coupon or a page and hence considered to be Incomplete. Giving these higher graded copies of books a Qualified label imparts a lot more information about the actual condition of the book, as opposed to simply giving them a Universal blue label with a Poor 0.5 grade which they would underwise fall into since this grade level allows missing pages and/or missing coupons. So, if there was no Restoration or Conservation work done on the book, the missing back cover should really have resulted in this copy receiving a Universal blue label with a grade of 0.5 as far as I understand their grading system which I clearly do not. Yes, I believe I am starting to see books with married covers and married pages being slabbed with the Conserved labels nowadays. If this is the case, then CGC really needs to update their own website that details the breakdown of what consitutes Restoration and what constitutes Conservation. Especially since their very own website still has Married Pages and Married covers falling under the Restoration umbrella, as follows: https://www.cgccomics.com/news/article/4083/ As noted in an earlier article, CGC has expanded its restoration scale to help collectors understand what was done to their book. The following is a list of conservation and restoration repairs, materials used for these repairs, and the new CGC restoration scale: Conservation Repairs Tear seals Spine split seals Reinforcement Piece reattachment Some cover or interior cleaning (water or solvent) Staples cleaned or replaced Some leaf casting Restoration Repairs Color touch Piece replacement Re-glossing Paper bleaching Married pages or cover So, based upon their breakdown as currently posted on their own website, this type of work should be consider as Restoration, although I believe it has probably slid over into the Conservation bucket and CGC has simply not gotten around to updating their Restoration Grading Scale whenever they decided to make this change which was probably a few years ago.

Hmmmm...........................I thoughtthat CGC serial number looked a bit familiar. Well, since I would assume the CC sale didn't take place after the HA $90K result, my guess is that the CC sale took place in late 2018 or early 2019. Don't really like the fact that CC doesn't have a date for their non-auction sales, but still a whole ton better than CL which has no auction archives of any kind. Not sure if Heritage includes their Buy Now sales items in their auction archives or not. If you are planning to call CC about their TMNT 1 $59K, can you please ask them to add in the date field for their non-auction sales at the same time? I would tend to agree with this and see the record $90K sale as really more of an outlier at this current point in time.

It's all good and in fun when you speak the truth and toss in a bit of humorous scarasm at the same time.

So was qualified because of the married centerfold. As far as the grade bump, it’s as the label shows. CCS did some tear seals and reinforcement and boom, conserved 4.0. Well, if this is indeed the reason for the Qualified label in the first place, it would certainly seem that CGC themselves are confused with what constitutes Restoration as their updated Restoration Grading Scale clearly defines Married Pages or Cover as falling under the umbrella of Restoration Repair: https://www.cgccomics.com/pdf/restoration-grading-scale-handout.pdf Restoration Repairs • Color touch • Piece replacement • Re-glossing • Paper bleaching • Married pages or cover

Better yet, how about BTF3 "Clint Eastwood and the Empty Chair"?

Looks like consignors are trying to tread carefully here by starting to put Reserves on some of their books in this current environment, as I also notice the same thing with the CGC 9.8 graded copy of TMNT #1 which is another high dollar value book.

It was previously a qualified CGC 1.8 owned by Danielle at Nerdygirl Comics. A buddy of mine bought it from her and had CCS work on it, thus coming back the current grade of a conserved 4.0. He sold it on C'link a year or two ago. It presents very nice for the grade! When my friend had the work done we honestly thought it would come back a 5.0-5.5. Well, you certainly came out ahead as that's a huge jump to go from a CGC 1.8 Qalified all the way up to a CGC 4.0 Conserved. Why was the book Qualified in the first place when it was initially graded at the 1.8 condition level? Any truth to what some are saying that it is now possible for a former Slight Professional PLOD book with spine splits sealed and cover cleaned and reinforced to now receive a Conserved blue/grey label at the same grade through a simple reholder, now that CGC has their new Restoration Grading Scale in place?

my understanding is yes but that book looks a bit on the weak side to get a grade bump from a "tuck job" Well, how can any of us forget all about the Church copy of Boy Comics 17 which went from a grade of CGC 4.0 up to CGC 7.5 and then finally up to CGC 9.0, all while residing in a blue Universal unrestored label. Especially when Borock explained the upgrade was due to pages that were not attached properly through his statement that "disassembly and reassembly of a comic book, in and of itself, does not constitute restoration". So Peter, from the grading changes seen on the Church copy of Boy Comics 17, I imagine CGC does indeed downgrade (or did, but not anymore???) rather severly for detached pages.

Was taking an initial look at the upcoming Heritage Signature Auction and was wondering if a book with a detached centerfold should really grade as high as CGC 7.0: Makes me kind of wonder how high the book would have graded if the centerfold had been attached to the rest of the book.

Well, I just messaged Jason and per CL the December sale at $50K is legitimate. The buyer is now selling the same comic at auction. So, in the past year there were 3 confirmed sales: 90K,52.8K & 50K. Hmmmm.......................well, that's definitely interesting and food for some thought then. Looks like it's got a Reserve Price on it for this go round though which has still not been met yet at this $42K price point which it is still currently sitting at, which makes me kind of wonder what the reserve has been set at and whether it will even be met. I guess only time will tell if the bidding goes high enough to activate it or not. Well, maybe there were actually 4 confirmed sales as I don't actually know when this sale took place since it was not part of their usual auction format sale: https://www.comicconnect.com/item/877988?tzf=1 It would appear that this copy here sold for $59,000 in a non-auction formatted sale.

Well, I think the focus on variants speaks for itself. You only have to run an Ebay search on certain Spider-Man, Star Wars, Thanos etc. issues to see that. I have also noted many CGC 9.8's of old titles not moving. These days it really has to be a key issue - and usually in a good grade - to move. I believe you are referring to "published collectibles" which are really nothing more than the current "flavor of the month" which publishers are trying their best to hawk onto you to buy before they become forgotten as their newest issue and latest hot "flavor of the month" comes out the following month. Rinse and repeat over and over again as we all know aht happens to flavors of the month when the month comes to an end. With respect to the CGC 9.8's, I believe you are referring to the "pressed manipulated and graded collectibles" which the CCG group of companies are trying to get you to happily drain your wallet by spending good money for costly ancillary services on relatively common and easy to find books which have less value than a roll of toilet paper in this Coronavirus environment if slaabbed in CGC 9.4 or below. Well, the way to resolve this problem is simply to eliminate the BIN "not so auction" like format whereby hopeful consignors are putting books on eBay at stratospheric prices hoping to snag some sucker who doesn't know anything at all. If these consignors had theactual balls to put all of their books into a true open auction format, they would have no problem having a 100% sell though on their books, but most likely at a much more realistic market price which is probably at a huge discount of what they was hoping for.

Can you provide some evidence to your opinion? Well, perfect case in point being the first time that I was down in one of the SD Con's way back in 1991. This was at a time when all the rage was about the latest hot books to hit the shelves of the LCS's and artists like McFarlane and Liefeld was where it was all at. Nothing hotter at the time than the so-called "rare" Platinum Retailer Edition of Spider-man 1 which most of the dealers had on their walls at the bargain basment asking price of only $1,000. Kept wandering around the convention floor until I came across Jon Warren's tiny table (then Overstreet Editor and future Wizard Price Guide Editor) way back in the last row who had a small box of nice GA books. Went through the box and pulled out a couple of nice uber HG copies of CAP 29 & Cap 31 which I asked him to hold onto for me while I gave it some much needed further thought. Especially since he was asking $500 a pop for each of them which was around top of guide at the time when the market was nowhere close to being hot on vintage books like these. Did some more wandering around and asked a few dealers for their opinions and their advice was that the McFarlane book with the combination of Spidey and McFarlane was a slam dunk winner going forward and would never see $1,000 again. Especially in comparison to a couple of nearly dead books that would soon be forgotten (if not already) when the old fogies depart for that big comic shop in the sky. Being the contrarian that I am, picked up the 2 Cap books in the end and when I showed it to a couple of the dealers they couldn't believe that I was such a fool to actually take those 2 books over the "rare" Spidey 1 by McFarlane. Fast forward to today and it looks like the Platinum Edition of McFarlane's Spidey 1 sits at only $200 in top of guide and collectors would probably be lucky to get condition guide for the book. In comparison, the 2 Cap books combined are now sitting at $15,900 in top of guide with these types of GA books always going for a healthy premium to condition guide across the entire condition spectrum. I guess the dealers were right in one sense though in that the Spidey 1 would not see $1,000 again. Well, that's my evidence to prove your point here. Wait, wait a second...............I just reread your original post again and my bad as I might just have disproven your point here.

I like to spread my wealth of knowledge and charming personality to all of the areas. General is most active so I like it. I like the modern just to hear what lame book people are paying crazy $ for. Newb forum gets like 3 hits a day. Restoration is pretty dead and usually is just can this huge color breaking crease book benefit from a press? Copper dead. Bronze silver do so so. Gold I never see much that catches my interest but it's my favorite age. I think the general just has click bait to get me. Yeah, I am definitely more into the GA books and find that I can just learn so much more when I am on the boards over there and has definitely sent me chasing after certain books that I never would have thought about before. Mist of the GA boardies don't seem to venture or seemingly almost scared to go into General because they just deem it to be the cesspool of the boards here where all of the bad actors and controversial topics are. Personally, I don't mind it at all and rather enjoy it at times as you can obviously tell since I guess that I don't mind getting down and dirty and rolling around in the muck myself sometimes. When I first started here about 15 years ago, it was the SA books that were definitely the hottest time period for collecting and yet they were never able to keep up with the GA boards in terms of the numbers of posts. Good to see that the GA boards continues to have the longest serving time members and a steady strong post count while other like Comics General and the other hot one in third place (i.e. Modern) are usually dominated by board members who arrive like a flash and then gone just like that after a few years.

Or maybe that is just the sound of his tiny feet, trying to open a bazillion pouches, or...... breathing in when you have the chest size of a mastodon... Can you please elucidate as I am a bit confused since I am not sure who you are talking about here:

No doubt everybody is making a whole whack of money on this whole manufactured collectible signature scheme which they are running here to drain as much money out of your pocket as possible. The only question which I have is that if CGC refuses to authenticate signatures unless they are there to witness them in person, why should they then expect us as submittors to simply take their word that the signatures are authentic since we aren't there to witness the books being signed. Especially when they could simply have some Joe Schmo guy sitting in the corner of the office forging all of these things at much bigger margins. Much better for these creators to get a smaller cut instead of risking their lives by flying around in airtight planes during a pandemic crisis to go into one of the real hot spots of the country to attend an actual in-house signing.

If this was anywhere close to being the case or even a tiny fraction of it, the ownership of CCG would have gone running to the buyers suckers as fast as their little feet could take them and kowtowing to them like there was no tomorrow.

I most certainly would when it comes to this totally convoluted Search function on these very boards here. You may already know this, but for those who don't... Go to Google... Search for: site:cgccomics.com Whatever You're Looking For The Google results will all be from cgccomics.com Well, it's definitely a sad commentary on the inadequate woefulness of your own Search function if you have to go all the way back out to Google in order to conduct a search on your own website.

I most certainly would when it comes to this totally convoluted Search function on these very boards here.

As I had alluded to in a previous post up above, is there any chance that the December CL sale might have actually been completed and the buyer is simply putting the book back out their in either an attempted flip for profit or to recoup some of his money back in this pandemic crunch? Personally, I don't think so since this December TMNT 1 auction result is no longer showing up in any of their CL highlights which is something they definitely would be promoting the heck out of if it had actually gone through successfully.

I was looking at a thread that was old, but not that old 2012 2014 or so and good information, went through 20 pages of it. Only 2 member names that I recognized. Look at a 2017 2018 one and majority of people I never seen. Late night early morning threads will have last post 5 hours ago, 9 hours. Well, if you are mostly hanging around the Comics General Forum, it's usually the hangout spot for the speculators and flippers and these kinds of boardies usually come in with a big flash (i.e. lots of posts), but usually they are gone within a couple years, if that. They seem to either lose interest or lose money and they usually move on to something else and never heard from again. Now, if you go over to the Golden Age boards, that's the home of the long term collectors and most of them have been around for years. Even here though, they definitely still don't post as oftem as they used to in the old days. I guess there is only so much you can say after awhile when it comes to these funny books.

Just my observation. How it seems to me. All depends on ones view point and definition of word dead. Of course I been popping in every day so not much is new to me. If you would take a peek at some threads even just a few years back I don't see many of those around. I could also say it is fairly active but a nice chunk of that activity comes from the same dozen or so folks. Well, I would say it's all pretty much relative, but if you compare it to the good old days of yesteryear, yeah it's pretty much dead. I still remember the first few years after I first joined up and this place was rocking and rolling with tons of action and new posts every few minutes from different boardies. I still remember they used to have a real time counter for the number of active unique users on the boards and it would hit triple digits at times. My bet is that you would be lucky to have 10 unique users on the boards nowadays at non-peak hours, as clearly evident by the fact that entire forums can go for hours on end without a new post being added. Definitely like Grand Central Station during rush hour back then and much more like an almost empty airport terminal during a pandemic lockdown nowadays.

I do believe this as I have many friends at the post office that routinely tell me of packages going to China. While it's true that the Chinese do spend serious money on real estate and fine wines, many have begun collecting AF15s as Spiderman is the #1 hero there. Reminds me of the early 90's when the younger new generation of Oriental collectors in this city really had the hots for the latest Valiant and Image books being hyped by Wizard and were chasing after them like no there was no tomorrow. Definitely not so much for the more expensive vintage SA and GA books though, or even the BA books for that matter. They figured all of those kind of books were for the old timers or nearly deads and would have only declining value in the future as more and more of them go to that big old comic shop in the sky. If you haven't looked into those packages going to China, my bet is that they are most probably CGC 9.8 graded copies of the latest hot book or variant that just arrived at the LCS's the previous week. If they were actually copies of AF 15's, they would most likely be shipped via TNT or DHL (and not the regular post office) which seems to be the courier of choice for most residents of China.