Tony S

I'm not saying it clearly or you misunderstand. Think of the numeric grade being the appearance of the book. Universal, conserved, restored, qualified. If the book has had some conservation work done - and LOOKS like a 6.0 - it gets a conserved label 6.0. If a book has not had anything done to it and looks like a 6.0, it gets a 6.0. If the book looks like a 6.0 and has had restoration work done - it gets a Restored label 6.0. (CGC also "grades" the quality and extent of restoration. A B C and 1 2 3)

"Scuff" mark on Giant Size X-Men 1. No Finger print & smudge on Incredible Hulk 180. The finger print part can likely be improved. It's unlikely to completely go away. But you still will have the big smudge on the Hulk's leg.

Might be overly parsing words here. Restored or conserved, the numeric grade represents what the book would otherwise grade if not restored or conserved. Qualified grade is what the book would otherwise grade except for the one defect (say a signature or cover detached at one staple) that is being ignored. And tear seals and pieces added to a comic book most certainly enhances the books appearance. Your second question is more straightforward. If the work is professionally done, it should be reversible. But what you describe is a fair amount of work. If both the cover and interior are reinforced, it's extremely likely once the reinforcement was removed you would have a book that the cover was detached - and perhaps some loose interior pages as well.

Bill Sarill founded the restoration lab and was the first person to seriously research and apply "professional" techniques to comic book restoration. He founded the Restoration Lab around 1975 - 1976 Susan Cicconi worked with him/apprenticed with him for about five years staring in 1981 before taking over the business follow Bill's retirement. In the 70's, 80's and into the 90's, "pressing" a comic book was usually part of a more involved restoration. In those days the books were typically disassembled and pressed one page at a time, then put back together as the final step. Matt Nelson - and others - received some training from Bill Sarill. Others may have done so as well, but Matt is best known for having adapted pressing into a process that involved no disassembly of the book and only involved pressing. No restoration. One would have to ask Matt when he began doing this. I would guess late 1990's or early 2000's

I appreciate the humor in your post, but I did not say pressing was as complicated as building nuclear bombs and nuclear reactors. I said the principles of building nuclear bombs and nuclear reactors was the same. But produce much different results (city powered versus city destroyed) The comparison was actually what you seem to be speaking to. Oversimplification. Yes. Heat, moisture and pressure. With those, you can get make a comic book look much better. Or much worse. Depends on how you employ/apply those things

A funny post, LOL. . You probably meant it to be funny and not serious. But I will still comment a bit on the serious side. A nuclear explosion destroying a city and a nuclear reactor powering a city are essentially the same process. It's all about control, knowledge and design.

Why hasn't anyone posted pics of the first/original identity crisis story? Hot books for a time.... JLA 166-168

This... CL doesn't report to GPA, so this....

I sometimes wish I had picked a more "comicbook'ish" name". But see no reason to change.

Tell your daughter that a lot of her countrymen and collectors on this message board thank her for her service to the nation There was good money to be made on beanie babies - in the late 1990's. A coworker in the office I managed was a notorious eBay hustler back in the day. His wife was a manager at McDonald's. Roy was carrying bags full of Beanie Babies home weekly and selling them on eBay.

You don't give yourself enough credit. It was some fine detective work on your part.

Less talk and more reporting to eBay might be in order. I have done so. Copyright and trademark Counterfeit item or authenticity disclaimer Counterfeit, fake, or replica items In the text box, note the Hulk 1 is not original - has a reprint cover - and the previous eBay auction listing number 164274645577

What the OP asks is rare, but it does happen. It happened to me (actually a client's book I sent in) just a month ago. Sent in a Marvel Team-Up and it came back 9.8 but with a labeling error. The pizzazz insert not noted on the label. The book did not look 9.8. Contacted customer service, did the "mechanical error" thing and CGC cheerfully agreed to take the book back to fix the labeling error. Shortly after receipt received an email from CGC that said they had made a mistake on grading the book initially and it was now going to be a 9.4. They offered/client accepted a $50 credit for the mistake.

You can only get free grading notes on the books you have submitted for grading under your collector society membership account. If you can log in to your cgc account to create a submission, then just click on invoices. Then click on the invoice you are interested in. It will show the books in that submission. If the books are done (shipped) then you will see a column where it will show if there are grading notes. Click on them and you'll get a pop up with the grading notes. But this only works on books YOU submitted under your account. You cannot view grading notes - for free - of any CGC graded books. I'll try not to be cheeky in my response to your second question. Your question could be interpreted several ways. My first answer will assume you are professionally pressing books, with excellent technical skills and using proper equipment. The CGC graders know nothing about the books when grading them other than what they see in front of them They only have the book. They don't know whose book it is, they don't know if CCS pressed the book. So if your question is "will I get a better grade if CCS pressed the book versus someone else (like yourself) pressing the book?" the answer is no. The graders don't know CCS pressed the book. They don't know it's your book and you maybe pressed it yourself. The graders may be able to tell the book was pressed. They can usually tell if the book was poorly pressed and damaged. The second answer to the question is that a lot of people are squashing books with T-Shirt presses at too high temperatures, too much pressure, too long no humidity introduced and not properly supporting the book during pressing. If there is any question about how well one is pressing books, then it should certainly be left to others - like say CCS.

Graders Notes are free to the the account holder (collector society member, Dealer) that submits the book. So if someone has a paid collector society account and submits books under that account, they will be able to view the graders notes when they log into their account and navigate to that submission/books. If someone submits through a business that has a dealer account (say a comic book store) then the dealer can look up the notes the same way (login, look up) and share. I will say again though. It is not unusual for non-key moderns to have no grading notes, regardless of the grade assigned. And grading notes are not an exhaustive list of every single defect the book has. They are the defects the graders took the time to write down and nothing more. As the years have gone by and I have submitted a LOT of books, I've come to regard grading notes less and less. They are really only useful when they list defects that the slab obscures or hides. And they often fail do that.

Chicago Comiccon 1978. Got signatures by artists on my books inside the book because no one got signatures on the cover front cover!!

A lot of people have suggested asking for/looking up the grading notes. A link below where you can put in the serial number of each comic and see if there are grading notes. The person/business that submitted them can see any the graders notes at no charge, so don't pay. But I have listed the certification look up link below because with moderns it is not unusual for their to be no grading notes. https://www.cgccomics.com/certlookup/

The first answer to your question of "how does it work" was not entirely accurate. I was kinda under the impression nearly everyone paid for their CGC submissions with a credit or debit card. Maybe I'm wrong. Pay with a credit/debit card if you prescreen. Because the way it "works" is CGC cannot charge you until the books are graded. Because they don't know how much to charge you until the books are graded. Back when turn around times were very lengthy (think 5-7 months on the least expensive tiers) it was a thing by those in the know to send in books prescreened at a very low grade. Like say 2.0. Just so CGC would not charge right away for a service they were not going to provide for half a year. Nowadays with TAT's of six weeks or less that isn't a thing.

What you have experienced is why no one pays the 9.8 price for a raw comic book at a LCS. Fact is that NM+ and better books are pretty much the exclusive grading domain of professional grading companies. You have also learned your ability - and your LCS ability - to prescreen at 9.8 is lacking. What you SHOULD have done is sent in two more comic books - a total of 25 - and had CGC prescreen them. Then instead of getting back a bunch of 9.4's in slabs, you'd have only gotten back 9.8's in slabs and everything not a 9.8 would have been returned raw. The rejects would have cost you $5 each. But that's better than the price of slabbing. This is how all the big sellers of hot new comics have lots 9.8's for sale. They are probably only a little better than you or your LCS at identifying 9.8's. But they send their books to CGC prescreened. BUYERS don't know about all the books they get back raw that didn't pass prescreen As for your original question. I'm not sure I remember. There have been a number of times I was off two full points. I treat it as a learning experience. Most recently I've learned a book that looks a solid VG (4.0) might come back a 2.0 if it has much in the way of tape.

Yes, there is a big difference between the two. Quick Press is a once and done pressing. CCS cleans the books if needed and then presses them one time. No inspection is done after this one pressing because even if defects remain, books will not be repressed. Quick Press books cannot be submitted for screening, so it falls on the submitter to not send books in that are weak and could be damaged by pressing. Finally, there is a minimum submission for Quick Press. At least 15 books have to be sent in. The CCS website discusses which books are worthwhile for Quick Press. They suggest modern books that are already high grade with few flaws to begin with or books that are low grade with a large number of pressable defects. Quick Press is a low hanging fruit type of press. Designed to get the easy to fix defects out, but not the harder ones. To me, it doesn't make financial sense to intentionally pay less for a lesser pressing, when the reason to press is to get the best possible grade. But some may have had a good experience and might post up here in response. https://www.cgccomics.com/ccs-pressing/

With Registered Mail, CGC insures the books with USPS for the declared FMV listed on the submission form. Any claim for loss or damage while in transit is USPS's responsibility. Any settlement would come from USPS. Any settlement from USPS resulting from a loss or damage claim is going to be for a maximum of the insured value. And if you can't convince USPS the books are worth what you say, it could be less. Fair Market Value is a bit of quandary. For CGC graded books, we don't actually know the book(s) values until they are graded. But a value has to be declared when submitting. Usually those submissions are raw, ungraded books. As far as bumping up values, keep in mind that CGC has value limits for the different tiers. The difference between $200 and $300 declared value on grading a modern (published 1975 or later( is an almost doubling of the price to get the book graded. Fortunately Registered Mail is pretty secure. Loss or damage is rare. Registered mail is also often very slow. So just try to relax and don't look at tracking half a dozen times a day. It's not unusual for Registered mail to land somewhere and sit for 3-5 days with no updates.

I don't get teased because my friends aren't like that. And because I don't talk much about what I own. If I were to be teased, it might before books like Beagle Boys and Atom Ant.

https://collectinsure.com/ They sell insurance on collectible comic books and that insurance includes private shipping insurance on collectibles shipped to you and collectibles you ship somewhere. Exact terms and details vary by policy type and coverage limit. Mine - and most I believe have a $200 deductible & the package must require a signature on delivery. With the collectors policies, I believe coverage maximums vary based on choice of shipping service and the class of shipping (ground, express, next day, registered, etc) Dealer policies are also sold with expanded benefits and coverage.

This is almost certainly not true. It's actually against the law for the USPS to enter into a shipping contract where they loose money. USPS is loosing money due to the continuing decrease of people using first class mail to send letters and the Congressional mandate to forward -fund their pension system over a 10 year period. A lot of noise is made about the Amazon contract. But Amazon is a unique beast. They have 75 (Edit:over 100 in America) Regional Distribution Centers in North America. So when the USPS gets packages, those packages don't have to travel far. All that said, certainly it's being looked into. The Treasury is loaning USPS enough money to operate for a year. But they wanted to see their sealed contracts with big accounts for this loan. No doubt to see if USPS is in fact charging too little on package delivery and thus loosing money. We are not supposed to get political here and some consider fact checking sites to be political (I do not) But if you Google this you'll fine multiple sites disputing the idea that the USPS looses money on package delivery. Instead it is one of the few bright spots in their financial reports. It's a growing business for them

Sad how things have changed over eight years. Try getting anyone to answer the phone at the actual PO branch today. The only number published is the 1-800 number. And even the people working the call center can't get anyone at the local PO Branches to answer the phone. I've been able to talk to branch staff in the past - including managers. But I do it by going in, asking and telling them I'll wait until the manager comes out to speak to me. I understand mistakes can happen. This Christmas we ordered a rowing machine via Amazon. UPS delivery. We were watching tracking and it said it was out for delivery - then said delivered! We had watched the UPS truck drive down the street. Except we didn't have a big arse six foot tall 100 pound package on our porch. I immediately walked our block and found our package three doors down on a neighbors porch. I grabbed it and dragged back to my house. So yes, mistakes happen. PAY THE INSURANCE CLAIM if that happens. I'm glad you got your book delivered to you....