Axe Elf

Nor is my bank account.

Yeah, that's kind of to be expected. But it moves from expected variance to highly amusing when a book that has a 2 inch square torn off the back cover is listed as "Near Mint." Plus the place that "professionally bagged and boarded" their little gem. Ya just gotta laugh.

"NEAR MINT" #56! Yeah, right--check out that back cover! At least it's only $5... Who was it said collecting was more fun one issue at a time...?

This CREEPY #41 is Awfully Tempting. Ignore for the moment that it's Near Mint up there and Mint down here (at least they admit it's uncertified). Just the fact that it was professionally bagged and boarded as soon as they received it, as opposed to all those slapdab amateur bag/board jobs you see these days, makes it worth the $170 price tag alone--but wait, there's more! How many sellers take the time to actually wipe down your Mint, Near Mint (whatev) books with some kind of disinfecting alcohol solution before sealing them off in the mail to you! That's the kind of service that's worth paying for!

This guy again.

Eh. It's fair. Of course there is, or they probly WOULD adhere to first in first out, based on submitted tiers. I'm speaking as an outside, uninvested and unbiased observer to the complaints and policies surrounding CGC services as presented on these boards, and it seems obvious that the reason is they cannot--and they should not attempt to do any better. Can you imagine what kind of bureaucratic quality controls would have to be instituted (and ultimately paid for by you, the customers) to absolutely 100% guarantee that a submission was never, EVER processed out of order? It would be a completely disproportional response to a relatively minor problem--and it would be likely to slow the whole process down even more while every inventory list is checked and double-checked for time-stamp accuracy. Sometimes humans make mistakes. Sometimes a box gets put on top of another box when it should have been put under the box. Or in a different pile. Or maybe in a different room. It happens. And in the grand scheme of things, it's really not important enough to even try to fix--sometimes somebody gets their order in a month instead of ten. Oops. Expect it's going to take a while, and don't complain that it does. If you're lucky and it doesn't, then praise your lord and skip on down the path. Again, as an outsider, a little application of reason here reveals the obvious answer--if they didn't, there'd be ten complaints a day about not publishing estimated TATs, and everyone who sent their books in more than two weeks ago would be ringing their phones off the hook. Again--Hofstadter's Law--it always takes longer than you think, even when you take Hofstadter's Law into account. Take the TAT. Add 20%. If it takes longer, Hofstadter's Law. If you get them back faster than that, Merry Christmas. And once more as an objective observer, I'd say that's basically what they ARE saying. And y'all are still shoveling them more business than they can handle because you turn up your snoots at any competition that would make it a competitive market. That said, it does appear that CGC is the worldwide gold standard in comic certification services--despite their faults, they seem to be the best that there is--but until a serious competitor comes along, being the best that there is comes with the downside of a monopoly--it doesn't have to be all that and a bag of chips, as long as it's the only brand of chips in town.