fantastic_four

What high-grade examples have you seen where CGC gave one of these "safe" grades to a book with a tear? I haven't seen many at all myself. I did a search yesterday in the forums on the word "tear" and found dozens of threads asking this same question, how do you downgrade for a tear, and found zero examples of CGC slabs with tears other than the ones posted here. Giving out "safe" lowball grades is far, FAR more common in this forum than it is in Sarasota...it's easy to bolster a reputation as a tight grader when you don't have paying customers. Every time I see somebody CLEARLY lowball a grade in this forum so that they can just think to themselves "I'm a tighter grader than CGC!" (and I'm not implying that's what's happened in this thread, downgrading for tears is tough), it makes me want to smack the mess out of them.

Yes, I believe it is. Given that I've seen 9.2s with both staples rusted, I presumed this was just allowable at this grade level, but it could definitely disqualify it for the 9.4 I alluded to earlier. I rarely see books with only one discolored staple...not sure what kind of storage would even cause that. I would imagine that impacted the grade more than the pre-marvel chipping. Disagree due to what I stated in the post you just responded to. I personally own a White Mountain book with two rusted staples that also has migration to the paper around the staples that looks like a 9.4 but is assigned a 9.0 grade, and as I said, I've seen books with two rusted staples get a 9.2. If I can find a scan example, I'll post it.

What makes you say it isn't a 9.0 without the tear? It looks as if it could go as high as 9.2 without it, unless I'm missing some defects. All I can see so far is three very slight 1/32" color-breaking spine stresses and a fourth spine stress near the bottom that's slightly more significant at 1/8", all of that is 9.2 material. The edges and corners are exceptionate on that copy! I'd say it's somewhere between the 7.5 minimum and 8.5 maximum you've heard people put forth in the thread...8.0 seems viable to me, and 8.5 still wouldn't surprise me given what's visible in the scan.

Which grades have you seen that led to that observation? I've heard that hypothesis since CGC started but haven't been able to find enough high-dollar overgrades over the years to correlate it. It's possible that we just notice overgrades on high-dollar books more because we look at and remember them longer.

Yes, I believe it is. Given that I've seen 9.2s with both staples rusted, I presumed this was just allowable at this grade level, but it could definitely disqualify it for the 9.4 I alluded to earlier. I rarely see books with only one discolored staple...not sure what kind of storage would even cause that.

Here's the worst book I've seen at the 8.0 level or above with pre-Marvel tearing...if this book can get an 8.0, an otherwise-9.0 with a 1/2" handling tear deserves it as well. This AF15 doesn't deserve the break it got! Amazing Fantasy 15 CGC 8.0 with multiple lengthy pre-Marvel tears down the right side I can't say enough how much I hate giving defects breaks because they were caused during manufacturing. A defect is a defect is a defect...however it got caused, they all look just as bad!

I was in that exact same boat for about five years. Spidey #1 is kind of a thorn in my side...not a huge key like AF15, yet carries a price far heftier than any other #2 around because it happens to be labelled as a first issue.

How is the tear on that FF #4 not 1/2" long and going to the edge of the cover? That's EXACTLY what it's doing. I also offer up this FF #4 as an example of a book where CGC absolutely hammered it due to chipping. However, I agree with you that I've also seen books where they clearly forgave the grade due to manufacturing-caused chipping. This FF #4 was graded very early in CGC's life, sometime in 2000, and they may not have been differentiating manufacturing tears from handling tears at that point, and if that's the case, then it's a decent example. If we presume that they forgave the tear on the FF #4 since it's a manufacturing defect, then we'd also have to presume that it would fall even farther if it were a handling tear, but when I later saw the Northland FF #1 I described in my previous post and saw they'd allow a 3/4" jagged tear at the 8.0 level, it led me to believe my 8.5 got hammered specifically due to the tear.

Once you get below 9.0 that 1/2" tear doesn't matter as much though, it's a defect severity that's more allowable in the grade, which is why my call is 8.0 or 8.5. Another similar example I've seen but don't have a scan of is the Northland Fantastic Four #1. It's an 8.0 that has a piece that's barely still hanging on located midway up the right edge...the piece looks like somebody's thumb ripped it off. It's a semicircle that's about the size of half of a person's thumbnail and it raggedly torn along about 3/4 of the semicircle for a total tear length of somewhere between 1/2" to 3/4" of an inch. I saw the book in person and looked at it at length because I had never seen an 8.0 or higher book with that large and noticable a tear before. Other than that hanging piece, the book looked to be 9.0 or higher. The tear reminded me of the 8.5 FF #4 I posted a scan of above only longer and much more noticable.

My guess is that it'd drop it to an 8.0 or 8.5. I have a somewhat similar example here--an FF #4 that I'd grade as an easy 9.4 that has a 1/2" tear (some people refer to these as "pre-chips") on the right edge next to the Thing's knee:

Yea, my entire collecting mode is just constant upgrading...I need to start selling off my upgraded copies to better afford the AF15, I think my current #92 is a 9.0 or 9.2.

I've got #1 up to the latest newsstand issue all in VF or better. Amazing Fantasy 15 is the only one I'm missing.

Got some nice stuff in this week from ComicLink!

It's the opposite, you should be holding out for 9.9s.

Yea, they have banned it publicly--you can't list PayPal personal as an option at all in the sales forums. Privately, they obviously have no control over anything you do.

Thanks! I read through that...makes very little sense. Easily worked around, but retarded. Not that I'm convinced that there isn't some reason for CGC to prevent people from publicly requesting PayPal personal payments, but I haven't seen evidence that anyone knows one of those concrete reasons. For example, if CGC allows customers to pay for slabbing fees or Collector's Society membership fees via PayPal, then they'd want to avoid risking their PayPal account by dissuading people from evading PayPal's rules on their forums. That's the kind of reasoning I expected to read somewhere, but didn't.

What issues?

WHAT legal risk? The only legal risk I've seen pointed out so far is people assuming that the PayPal terms of service somehow apply to CGC, which they don't. And even if they did, it doesn't matter, because it's the seller whose PayPal account would get shut down. Anybody know where the explanation Architect gave for this move is? Link, thread title, or which forum it was in would help find it. I did a 3-month search for the phrase "paypal" in messages by Architecht and found nothing.

CGC shouldn't care one way or the other. The potential for fraud with PayPal personal is exactly the same as it is with check or money order.

Still don't see the point of explicitly banning PayPal personal payments. It's not to ensure credit card chargebacks since there's no requirement for sellers to allow credit card payments in the first place.

How? PayPal affords no protection to off-ebay purchases other than the lame complaint system, which at worst would only end up with the same penalty that asking people to pay with the personal option would--suspension of the seller's PayPal account. Scam artists have the same capacity to scam whether they offer any flavor of PayPal payment or not.

Unauthorized payment practices? That only applies if you accepted the PayPal terms of service, it doesn't apply to everyone everywhere in the world, and all it means is they'll cancel your PayPal account if you violate the terms. PayPal doesn't set market rules for everyone living anywhere on the planet. How are the CGC forums affected by the PayPal terms of service? Isn't everyone required to accept the terms of service if they want to use paypal? Yes...but that's all on the buyer and seller. I don't see how it affects CGC enough to motivate them to care one way or the other, it's the seller who's at risk and only to his own PayPal account. The buyer would only be incurring the exact same risk they'd already incur by paying with check or money order, which is that the seller could choose to not give them their item.

Unauthorized payment practices? That only applies if you accepted the PayPal terms of service, it doesn't apply to everyone everywhere in the world, and all it means is they'll cancel your PayPal account if you violate the terms. PayPal doesn't set market rules for everyone living anywhere on the planet. How are the CGC forums affected by the PayPal terms of service?

They charge the 1% when it comes from a bank account as well? Yes, but as stated, it is for the cross border fee that US sellers are subject to when they received payments from other countries. So US to US or Canada to Canada from a bank account is free then...kewl.

They charge the 1% when it comes from a bank account as well?