lou_fine

Well, from the clamorous response here, does it mean that this particular show turned out to be pretty much of a non-event on this go-round?

Setting a max bid would tend to work only if you have a very limited number of books that you want to win in an auction. After all, if you have a large number of books you want in an auction, not everybody is like you with deep pockets who would be able to bid to the max on all of the books they were interested in. Perfect case in mind was the Jon Berk Auction from last year where I had many books that I would have like to win, but at the same time, none of them was an absolute requirement. This gave me the luxury of using CC's 3-minute extended bidding time to do some on the spot analysis to determine if I should toss in another bid or not, depending upon what the current price on the book was at the time. Ended up with 1 book that I had targeted from the get go and 3 books that I had not even thought about until the auction had hit the final bell and gone into the extended bidding time. Really glad that I picked up the 3 books because every time I look at them, it still seems like such a nice surprise to me.

You're probably right about that, but I don't think CGC would put pressed books in PLODs at this late date. It would cause a huge commotion. +1 There is absolutely no way that CGC would ever put pressed books into any type of non-universal slab if it was up to their own volition even if there was a way to detect it, due to the simple fact that it would invalidate all of their previously graded books. As I had stated way back when this whole pressing controversy first came to light, the only way this would occur is if ANOTHER grading company with serious and deep connections in the hobby were able to use new technology to come up with a simple and cost effective scientific method to detect artificial pressing. Strongly doubt this would ever happen, but if it ever did, you can bet that books that passed the "non-pressed" test would be going for more money than the artificially pressed ones in the same grade. This would be the only way that CGC would ever tagged pressed books with a non-universal label because they would have to do it if they wanted to remain relevant and survive in the grading business. Although they would definitely be going there begrudgingly and only in response to what a new competitor was doing in terms of upping the grading game, it sure would encourage a lot of resubs for non-pressed books.

No, definitely not for the same reason and really all to do with the entire pressing controversy after it was outed on the boards here that CGC had been giving the green light to standalone pressing. This was clearly evident from the Overstreet definition of restoration in his Glossary from the 2005 guide before this whole pressing fiasco came to light. In the 2005 Overstreet Guide, restoration was defined as "Any attempt, whether professional or amateur, to enhance the appearance of an aging or damaged comic book. These procedures may include any or all of the following techniques: recoloring, adding missing paper, stain, ink, dirt, or tape removal, whitening, pressing out wrinkles, staple replacement, trimming, re-glossing, etc." Looks to me like pressing was clearly defined to be restoration by Overstreet as the procedure really has no conservation value and its only real purpose is to enhance the visual appearance of the book. Needless to say, this was also the accepted standard by collectors within the hobby at the time, prior to CGC's undisclosed and non-communicated revision of what constituted restoration once collectors saw what was happening in the marketplace. Definitely not a level playing field for the first 5 years of CGC's existence. I also don't believe that Overstreet is now saying that pressing is NOT considered to be restoration, as he appears to be leaving this up to the individual collectors to decide for themselves. Although he has removed pressing (amongst other procedures ) from his initial sentences under his definition of restoration, he has now added a couple of additional sentences to close off his revised definition of restoration. His last 2 sentences also states: "There is no consensus on the inclusion of pressing, non-aqueous cleaning, tape removal, and in some cases staple replacement in this definition. Until such time as there is consensus, we encourage continued debate and interaction among all interested parties and reflection upon the standards in other hobbies and art forms." Interesting to note that there are now quite a few more former restorative procedures that are now no longer considered to be restoration. Almost makes me wonder what else will be removed from under the umbrella of restoration as the marketplace moves forward? And if this is indeed the case, will they let us know proactively or will we simply have to deduce this after the fact, as what happened with the rest of these former restorative procedures.

As I stated at the time when the whole pressing fiasco came to light on these boards here back in 2005 or thereabouts, I don't really buy the whole theory that if they can't detect it, then they can't note it. Okay, I do buy it literally, but they still could have done something about it IF they had really wanted to. After all, as was discovered around the same time with Jason Ewert's micro-trimming, this was another "improvement" being done to books at the time that could not be detected with certainty (unless you had before and after scans of the same book) if the micro-trimming had been done properly. It's just that CGC came out very strongly against micro-trimming with Borock calling it "destruction of a comic book" (even though it could not be detected in all cases ) which I assume most collectors brought onto and hence did not partake in this rather nefarious activity. And oh, I don't really buy the story that micro-trimming if done properly on a non-flagged book (i.e. not submitted proactively as an Ewert book) can indeed be detected with certainty by the boys at CGC. Any bets that if they had made the same strong, bold, and aggressive declaration about pressing which they had made with respect to micro-trmming, stand-alone pressing would not be the cottage industry it is today and very few collectors would actually dare or even think about partaking in this "maximization of potential" activity. Oh, my bad.........forgot about CCG's "hidden" business model.

Because as we all know, this is definitely not a perfect world and as you have already stated, thing will change over time. As such, consistency is not a reality even though they might try their best to achieve it. Of some concern here and a conspiracy theory no doubt, is that inconsistency might just have been built into their business model for the sole purpose of generating additional streams of revenues. This would certainly also explained the oft repeated terms of "loose grading time periods" and "tight grading time periods" that we seem to see here on the boards.

I've never quite understood this line of thinking, especially since I've seen it expressed so many times on the boards here. So, are you saying that if Company X grades as book as a 8.5 and CGC grades it as a CGC 8.0, but then we have Company P grades it as only a 7.5, then Company P must be the best grading service and the one that deserves to be supported since it gives out the tightest grade. So, imagine a scenario where Company X and CGC realizes what is happening to their lost business and decide to do Company P one better by now grading the books out even lower than Company P's 7.5 so that they can then be seen as the superior grading company. Sounds as though it's a race to the bottom then from my point of view. I would much rather prefer to support and back the grading service that can grade both accurately and consistently over an extended period of time.

I heard that you need to have a certified and authorized letter from your bank stating that you have free cash of $100K in order to get through the front doors for one of their Live Auctions. Seriously though, I am quite sure that it is open to anybody who wants to attend, even though you might not be bidding on anything. Don't actually believe that many people attends one of these actual live auctions. Especially when they apparently had one down in San Diego about 10 years ago to coincide right with the SD Con and there were more Heritage people there than attendees for the auction. Totally surprising considering that there is over 100,000 people down there for the con itself, and yet they only managed to get 20 to 30 of them to attend the live auction. If I was down there that year, I would have gone there simply for all of the free food and refreshments, especially considering how much it cost down there for the restaurants and the long line-ups during the convention.

Alright. Now you’re just showing off! Robots. Most definitely a real toughie to find in grade and the 2nd robot cover to boot.

Absolutely love the blue colors on this gorgeous HTF issue here!!!

Page quality has in my opinion is very important and would disqualify my purchase if not up to acceptable levels..I agree The only problem with this is that based upon scans of resubs that have been posted here, the determination of PQ is far more inconsistent than the actual grading itself.

Well, from what I am looking at, it looks like the keyboard must have gotten jammed and he added on not just 1 extra zero, but 3 extra zeros for sure and possibly even 4 if that spine is as bad as it appears to be.

Well, maybe it's got something to do with the cover, as the cover image for SS 44 is far more striking than the one for SS 34. Although both of them are infinitely better than that rather lacklustre Thanos cover on the Hero Edition of this year's Overstreet Price Guide.

You can never go wrong with one of the first and longest recognized classic GGA covers of all time.

Not sure about the iron and board theory, but I am quite sure that Danny Boy went low tech when it came to trimming his books. Instead of using something like a laser guided micro-trimmer, it clearly looked like he went cheap and simply used a garden hedge cutter to macro-trimmed away the rough edges of his books.

Unless it’s a bad press is it even possible to detect without the person submitting the book making full disclosure? Pressing has always been a standard procedure used to finished off a restoration job depending upon the type of restoration work done on the book, especially if it had to be taken apart. Although it was common to used it in combination with other restoration activities, it was not that common prior to the days of CGC to have standalone pressing performed just by itself. This thinking obviously changed when the whole pressing (and micro-trimming) fiasco came to light a few years after CGC first opened its doors and board members here (including Red Hook, Masterchief [really miss some of his amazing posts], and even Danny Boy himself, amongst others) presented before and after image scans that made it quite clear that CGC was significantly bumping up grades on books that had been pressed by favored or possibly astute customers (surprisingly not Metro) who were in on the know as to what was happening. Unfortunately, before you knew it, standalone pressing had become a cottage industry and now even to the point whereby it has become almost standard procedure or a prerequisite to have a book pressed before it gets submitted in for grading. Of course, my conspiracy theory at the time and one which I stated many times back then was that this whole pressing shenanigan was part of the whole game plan or business model right from the get go and already baked up in the minds of the CCG owners even before CGC ever first opened its doors. They were just clever and sneaky enough to quietly implement an unpublished grading system whereby the established one at the time could be tweaked just enough without anybody knowing at first, so that certain defects would be hit harder than others in order to generate additional streams of revenue into their coffers once it did come to light. Of course, they knew that once the barn doors were opened, nobody would ever be able to close them again, based upon their prior less than upfront experience with coin grading. Based upon what I seen has taken place in this marketplace during the past decade, I believe it's probably less of a conspiracy theory now and probably more of a theoretical fact at this point of the game.

I certainly hope it continues to move upwards or else we'll never be able to recoup our original cover purchase cost. Well, at least far enough upwards to make it worthwhile to take a chance on slabbing it and making some reasonable money after factoring in grading fees, shipping fees, CGC's grading margin of error, and what have you.

I got 10 books from his auction, but have since resold a couple. I really hate that I didn't get a catalog. Well, having the real books themselves is better than having the auction catalogue. The only reason I got one is that I contacted them and they Fed Ex one to me immediately. I never even knew they had catalogues for their auctions until I saw boardies here talking about wanting a copy of the Berk catalogue. The last catalogue I ever got from Metro was when they had the #1 Catalogue from way back in the 90's. That was probably also around the last time I ever really purchased anything from them until the Berk Auction.

I was the buyer. I am real. Are you sure you are real or did you just hacked october's account here? Congrats on being alert and picking up a classic cover book at what amounts to a bargain basement price. Especially considering that it is supposedly a pedigree copy to boot. Is it close to being a 9.4 NM copy from what you can see?

'Unlikely venue to find the Rangers Comics #26 Rockford Copy listed(?)' 'Such a highly sought after 'key' book only had one bid(?)' 'That final bid price was a bargain!(?)' Hard to say as it's easy for potential buyers to miss these low profile eBay auctions. Seller might not have understood the exact extent of what he had. Of course, it's also possible that he is just an eBay seller and has never dealt with any of the auction houses before, especially based upon the other stuff he has sold. Looks like the buyer (assuming he is real which is most likely) left the seller with positive feedback.

No apologies necessary as I consider this type of good discussion to be healthy and part of the learning curve for collectors like me who don't really sen books in for grading. Based upon what I am reading here, I also don't see why the book would have graded as low as a CGC 7.5. Unless they didn't bother to list all of the defects which I am not sure is common or not with respect to their notes. Maybe it's quite possible that the other company's 9.0 grade might actually be closer to the actual real grade of the book, as opposed to CGC's 7.5 grade. Is it a requirement for them to list all of the defects they identify on a book because I heard that in cases like a CGC 9.6 or CGC 9.8, they sometimes don't have anything in their notes at all?

Well, I am quite sure that we also have some long time dealers like Fishler and the likes who probably have scads of these "common" books just sitting around. Just like his well documented attempt back in the day at trying to corner the market on the much rarer Fantastic 3. But these types of collectors would generally be one-offs and the definite exception(s) to the regular collectors like you, me and probably 99.99% of the other board members here.

Or possibly NOT since many here are saying that 9.6 is the new 9.8 as CGC has apparently really tightened up their grading on the uber HG books.

Of course not as I am sure that he sees this as a nice break from some of the more boring and mundane parts of his workday and might actually even help to re-energize himself.

+1 I was lucky enough to have picked up 4 books from Jon's collection, namely 3 really early HTF Centaurs along with 1 later mid-grade, but still highest graded Fox book that apparently has no other pedigree copies in existence. All this talk made me a bit nostalgic and flipping through the Jon Berk catalogue reminds me that I really should have bidded higher on some of the books since they were really an once in a lifetime opportunity.