Phill the Governor

On 9/23/2022 at 12:54 PM, Ron C. said:

Driving traffic to what? He has nothing for sale... has about 150 or so really nice pieces (that I never really looked at until now) on his CAF site, plus around 50 or so pictures that would be nice to see on these boards (Events page).

He is a passionate fan and I, for one, love his enthusiasm.

 

I believe that’s the consensus. 

On 9/23/2022 at 11:31 AM, Ron C. said:

What actually was the controversial objection to Marcus and his postings? I find it hard to find fault someone for liking or commenting on other's pieces. Marcus has always had fun takes on most of my postings and sometimes it is just nice for someone to just give a word or two of approval.

My takeaway was that Marcus admitted to commenting heavily on newly listed pieces in order to drive traffic and new comments to his gallery. There was a minority (really just one individual) who said some percentage of his comments felt contrived because of the admitted self-promotion. Based on this thread though that’s why it’s the minority opinion.  

On 9/21/2022 at 1:51 PM, Travaran said:

What if the cover is detached but it still has the staples? Does that count as incomplete as well?

No.

As far as I’ve seen, detached covers top out at around 3.5/4.0 if the book is otherwise a 9.0+ candidate.
 

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On 9/3/2022 at 9:27 AM, Schelfsj said:

Hello All. I finally received books 2 and 3 from my submission to CGC of four books on 15 October 2021. One of the books (Invincible Iron Man #7 2016) has a grade of 8.5 that I think is way too low for it. There are grader notes for it but these are for minor issues (light creasing to cover, light fingerprints on cover, light spine street lines to cover) in my opinion, as the book was bought off the rack, read once, bagged and boarded, then submitted to CGC five years later after being stored in a long box. I understand that the comic issue may have some imperfections from the printing/shipping and displaying it that typically prevent it from being a 9.8 but it was a NM book with no visible imperfections when I submitted it. I was expecting to get a grade of 9.6 or 9.4 for the book. I just don't know what recourse I have to request a regrade of the book. Thanks!

 

Schelfsh19

Virtually none.

I am a long time collector of over 25 years and I still don't trust my own eye submitting Modern books, I'd rather buy them already graded than rolling the dice. Submitting older books that shouldn't be "near mint" anyways is one thing. Submitting modern books playing the game of "what's the grade" between a 8.5 and 9.6-9.8 is just that, a game I don't want to play.

If you didn't have the book pressed first that is almost certainly why the grade came back the way it did. However, even if so.....

Easiest scenario if you are unhappy with the copy, sell the book and put the money towards a higher grade copy.

Early Marvel canon has been of interest to me lately and I've been reading quite a few early issues from all the main A B & C level characters. I've also been reading through various websites that talk about them. On one website (link below) there was a comment on Journey into Mystery #86 that mentioned it was the first alternate future in the Marvel universe. So if I'm reading correctly it's the introduction of the Marvel Multiverse?

As timing would have it, I just saw the title splash from that story is up at Heritage and ends in a week.  Reading the description, Heritage isn't listing the issue as the beginning of the Multiverse. Well.. to be fair there doesn't seem to be much of a description at all.. (one would think for an early Thor splash they would be trying to list all the attributes about the art they could instead of just a few sentences but maybe I'm wrong.) Anyways.... was it another book that officially introduced the Multiverse concept? Considering Tomorrow Man showed up more than a year before Kang I think it really is JIM #86. Any Marvel experts that can lend an opinion?  If so, any thoughts about this affecting final price or is the fact that it's one of the earliest Thor splashes enough?

This was the site, link here

The splash at HA: link here

Looks like a 6.0 +/-, could go either way.

I'm in!

Hey everyone,

Have one that I'm pretty sure about, but wanted to get feedback about.

Nice cover overall, especially for a single staple book. Tears, some light staining, small chip lower right front cover. Defects that can't be seen just from looking at the front and back is a detached centerfold, and also, (unfortunately) a piece missing from the first page. It affects story dialogue one panel on pg 2.

I've had other similar era books with similar pieces missing get a few grade subtraction, so in this case I was wagering it could come back a 2.5 Universal with graders notes stating "small piece missing from first page, slightly affects story". Does this sound about right?

Thanks in advance for any feedback!

On 8/23/2022 at 1:02 PM, manetteska said:

Dude, calm down; they did not get rid of the joined dates. As someone else stated, if you hover over the user's image it shows the date.

For now it's harder to find, but it's still available, however one wishes to use that information.

Appreciate the clarifying comment, it had me go back and see Mike's initial response now that I had missed:

On 8/22/2022 at 9:05 PM, CGC Mike said:

Custom titles still exist.  You have not received one (yet)    The rankings are gone.  On a side note, I see we all just lost our join date.  I have alerted web help to try and fix this asap.

Somehow missed this response Mike. Apologies.

On 8/23/2022 at 1:04 PM, CGC Mike said:

We will be fixing the join dates.  I have sent an e-mail to web help, and asked them to prioritize this.

Makes sense, sounds good.

On 8/23/2022 at 9:36 AM, Phill the Governor said:

So this has nothing to do with removing the main qualifier that creates a hierarchy on the boards, huh?

No more "hey look, they've been here 10, 15 years, they likely have "some" knowledge or contributing input. Now there's no way to tell if the three people having the conversation are shill accounts created in the last 6 months.

Seems the decision was made because ultimately it helps CGC maintain conversations here, not helping users determine information.

On 8/23/2022 at 12:17 PM, CGC Mike said:

Hello

You are wrong on all accounts.  I gave a reason why.  As far as maintaining conversations here, that is my job.  

On 8/23/2022 at 12:24 PM, Phill the Governor said:

That doesn't mean the reason is valid.

On 8/23/2022 at 12:26 PM, CGC Mike said:

If it pleases you to call me a liar, that is fine.  I have been called worse.  

The really odd thing is that removing joined dates does remove the main qualifier that creates a hierarchy here.

CGC has more to gain by removing the info because it eliminates objective perception of who long time boardies with esteemed opinions are. Now we all "got here at the same time" so we're all equal and it's easier for CGC to moderate the conversation- which conveniently comes at a time where they have the most amount of bad publicity going on with the C2E2 drama, the decreased quality control issues, grading issues, and other problems.

Getting defensive only makes it more suspicious.

On 8/23/2022 at 12:17 PM, CGC Mike said:

Hello

You are wrong on all accounts.  I gave a reason why.  As far as maintaining conversations here, that is my job.  

That doesn't mean the reason is valid.

On 8/23/2022 at 12:05 PM, delekkerste said:

For a close-up shot of 3 characters, I think the 9 x 11.5" image size works fine. It didn't and still doesn't strike me as being small or sparse; there's just a little extra space up top which could easily be filled up with word balloons if one felt so inclined, as I've seen @Phill the Governor do with some of the pages he owns.

 I would have guessed low $1000s (like $1100-1300) on this one. No, it's not great and is not going to be everyone's cup of tea given the gun-in-the-face theme and lack of zombies*, but $780 seems like it slipped through the cracks for a Rick splash from the first 10 issues of the run.  

 

 

* That said, I think there are plenty of great zombie-less pages in the run.

Totally agree Gene.

Especially that last part. The zombie pages/scenes are gravy as far as I'm concerned since the success of the story and franchise has always been about the characters and their trials and tribulations. That's what got me hooked in the first place.

On 8/23/2022 at 11:42 AM, comix4fun said:

Has anyone mentioned it's only roughly 9"x11" in image size? 

35%-50% smaller than the image size or page size of other pages from that part of the run (before all of Adlards pages shrunk). 

Tiny, Zombie-less, Weekly Auction, lots of reasons. 
 

The larger TWD Adlard pgs from issues 7-35 were on 11x17" image boards, Adlard switched to the drawing smaller/ with smaller boards with issue 35/36 until 115. Not that it makes too much of a distinction but now that you mention it Heritage inaccurately described the measurements of the art area since is actually about 9" x 13.5".

On 8/22/2022 at 8:50 PM, CGC Mike said:

Dena and I had a meeting about 3 months ago, and racked our brains over this.  The rankings were not changing with the post count like they used to.  As it turns out, I believe they turned into achievements instead of post counts, and we don't use achievements.  So, we did away with the rankings, and now everyone is listed as a member.  @dena might be able to explain it better but, that is the way I (my old brain)  remembers it.

So this has nothing to do with removing the main qualifier that creates a hierarchy on the boards, huh?

No more "hey look, they've been here 10, 15 years, they likely have "some" knowledge or contributing input. Now there's no way to tell if the three people having the conversation are shill accounts created in the last 6 months.

Seems the decision was made because ultimately it helps CGC maintain conversations here, not helping users determine information.

On 8/22/2022 at 9:10 AM, Sideshow Bob said:

The Walking Dead is all about zombies. This had no zombies, just a not-great Rick pointing a gun in someone's mouth. Along with that, it's early Adlard art before he found his trademark style later in the series.

Just because it's a splash doesn't make it worth more. Those recent sales of later panel pages all had zombies getting taken apart by Rick or Michonne. Those pages, if you chose to display them, would look good on a wall. This one? Not so much. Maybe what you're seeing in the price isn't weakness in the market, it's just a really weak page. At $780, it's worth buying to flip later for $1k? Not for me, but obviously someone saw value in it.

This definitely has some truth in it.

I think even on an off day, it would have done much better had it had the word balloon. An unfortunate feature of modern OA...

On 8/22/2022 at 6:22 PM, Garf said:

Yeah. I would have bid too had I noticed happy the new owner is excited to have it. Guess that happens sometimes, but I do wonder if Heritage and other auction houses lose out when it comes to more frugal collectors who could raise the floor on smaller pieces.

 

I think the splash would have fared much better on ebay.

More people have ebay accounts that would be available to and would bid on something like this.

On 8/22/2022 at 10:17 AM, delekkerste said:

I think there has been a lot of Walking Dead fatigue the past several years...many stopped watching the show when the quality declined 4-5 seasons ago (it has arguably rebounded, but, many people never came back), the show's spin-offs added to zombie fatigue, there was just so much supply of the art available at all times, and the comic series ended. 

That said, I believe in the fullness of time, people will eventually miss it and look back on the franchise very fondly. It was, after all, one of the very biggest pop culture phenomenons of the past decade.

Also this.

Also, Heritage did a terrible job of publicizing the last several auction cycles. I would not be happy as the consignor. No images of the art on CAF showing it's coming up for sale, and worse some of the scans for the pieces weren't even uploaded on HA until the day before/of the auction starting.

A nice early page from issue 12, nothing crazy, but having a panel with some zombie kills got it to about 2k on ebay today. So TWD isn't soft for the right pieces marketed in the right venues.

On 8/22/2022 at 10:24 AM, KirbyCollector said:

As a former law enforcement officer (and 20+ year gun owner), images like this make me grit my teeth. In light of recent violent events, I suspect I'm not the only one who feels turned off by art like this -- another factor which may have contributed to the lower price.

Personally I think it's a badass Rick Grimes splash and I was stoked to bid, hopefully win, and intended to put an overlay on it with the word balloon bc the dialogue is what makes the splash. I know the person who won it and is very excited to have such an early splash with Rick from the series.

It ended low because I lost power in my building and was preoccupied not being able to bid. I would have gone much higher myself.

On 8/13/2022 at 1:21 PM, FFB said:

How about you name names and provide particulars?  This is a huge grenade to throw out without specifics.  

I'm hardly a single purveyor of this type of knowledge. Just lending a comment from the peanut gallery.

On 8/12/2022 at 1:11 PM, Phill the Governor said:

At a previous job I had in the industry (for one of the auction houses/online retailers mind you) etc I saw with my own eyes high-end walkthrough books with post it notes included on the submission form stating things like "book is a 8.0, give me a call if there are any issues". Funny enough, the books always came back with the "requested" grade. This has been going on for a long time.

@Tedsaid Not sure what there is to be confused by here.

@CGC Mike This thread needs a response from CGC.