sborock

"I would not trade for any amount of money the unlikely and wonderful relationships I've built up over the years in my pursuing the hobby, whenever and wherever and however."

 

Love this quote!

 

I would trade two or three for some magic beans.

I would trade you for non-magic beans

"I would not trade for any amount of money the unlikely and wonderful relationships I've built up over the years in my pursuing the hobby, whenever and wherever and however."

Love this quote!

Restoration can't be detected reliably. Accept it and move along. Nothing to see here....

Most restoration can be detected reliably by people who have studied restoration. Reliably does not mean 100% as there is a human factor involved.

I can sometimes tell if a book is restored from 4 feet away. Sometimes I need a loop to confirm what I think might have been done to a book. Once in awhile I miss something.

If you are looking for perfection, then, yes, move along. The only place it exists is Fantasy Land.

Many collectors learn from reading the boards, so there is always something to see here......

Just picked up this Wrightson HOM 204 splash at ECCC this past weekend

 

Everyday I write my daughter a note that I put in her lunch bag, and on it I always write a quote before I write "Have a great day! I Love you!". One of those quotes I write quite often is "We learn and grow by our own mistakes." It just stinks when those mistakes in life cost us money or the enjoyment of something we love. I just want to enjoy our hobby.

End of

 

Peace,

-Steve

 

That's what I miss most about you being at CGC, when you were there every shipment of CGC slabs at my door contained a handwritten note telling me to have a great day & a sandwich with the crust cut off, just how you knew I liked it.

Those crusts we not cut off, I chewed them off

And, BTW, I can't understand why you love those gerbil meat & head cheese with ranch dressing sandwiches so much

Because it's not a "screw up."

 

It's an opinion, of *this* book, at *this* time, on *this* day.

 

And yes, you're perfectly right: a 9.6 and 9.8 can often be interchangeable.

There are books that are definitive 9.6 and 9.8.

The problem is that there is no 9.7 grade. I have seen thousands of books that "in my mind" I call a 9.7 and decide if I should give it a 9.6 or 9.8 depending on certain factors, one factor being "Will this book look like a 9.6 or a 9.8 in a holder".

You also can't have a 9.1, 9.3, 9.5 or 9.7 grade in the scale, as it would make it even more difficult to be a consistent grader.

PQ can change depending on the lighting. I had more trouble with PQ at onsite grading than I did sitting at my grading desk in an office.

The first time I heard of CGC or anything like it was in an ad in the CBG looking to hire graders and other workers. At the time I thought it was a non-starter as fans wouldn't want their books encapsulated in plastic, but a few shop owners convinced me that the end result would be that I could call up a store in California and have them ship me a FF #1 sight unseen because it was in a plastic slab that stated it was a 6.0.

The whole idea behind CGC was to gain the ability to buy sight unseen, with confidence.

That seems a long time ago, these days.

 

Bingo! This is the ONLY reason I can see for CGC to exist. When it becomes: might be a 6.0 might be a 7.0, might be trimmed, might not that's where I fail to see the purpose.

The purpose of certification was to make it safer to buy and sell books. So, let's be clear here: I did not say "make it perfect", I said make it "safer", which it has. No one can question this if you were collecting high end books in the 70's, 80's, or 90's. (Unless you are in the anti-pressing group, but let's not start a pressing thread and take away from my points.)

I just read through all of this thread. Some of what I am going to write here, with some edits, was written in another thread a while back (shrunken covers) because it is faster for me to cut, paste and edit than having to write this "rant" from scratch.

First off, It's scary to me that collectors will now think that any book that looks/is miscut in a holder is now trimmed. I am in amazement at some of the things I have read on these boards.

I can tell when a book is trimmed most of the time. (A perfect micro trimming is almost impossible to detect without before and after scans, I don't care what anyone says, it's a 50/50 guess. I (we) will have to live with that, if we want to keep buying books from most dealers and collectors, certified or not). BTW....I also made sure I wrote "most of the time", because no one catches these things 100% of the time. No one.

Yes, this thread is about a bad mistake that happened. And guess what, if you are doing any job that involves going through many items, something will be missed (It also seems that the mistake seems to be in the process of being resolved. Very important!). For all we know, that book might have got through when it was me, Haspel, and Friesen grading the book early on. We caught so much restoration back then and, yes, a few books might have slipped through with good trimming. Hell, the micro trimmed books got past us and would have gotten past every dealer and collector I know. All that said, I really believe that the hobby is much better off now, with certification and these boards, then it was before. But, because when I was younger, I got screwed over a bunch of times, it made me study "collectible" comics to the point that I make very, very few mistakes these days. Sometimes, as John Hiatt would say, "That's how you learn, you just get burned". Which sucks, but it either makes you leave the hobby or gets you off your butt and learn, Every veteran hobbyist on these boards, has been burned.

Everyday I write my daughter a note that I put in her lunch bag, and on it I always write a quote before I write "Have a great day! I Love you!". One of those quotes I write quite often is "We learn and grow by our own mistakes." It just stinks when those mistakes in life cost us money or the enjoyment of something we love. I just want to enjoy our hobby.

End of

Peace,

-Steve

All I can say is WOW!

+1

Peter Gross: Dazzler

Here's one I got at the VA Comic Con a couple of years ago.

Always love Budd Root's stuff! Love the BB tat!

Very cool!

Awesome stuff Steve.

Thanks

Here's another:

Spider-Man's Tangled Web #13 by Sean Phillips

Another of my favorites:

Civil War: Front Line #5 by John Watson

Lots of great stuff in this thread!

It has inspired me to post a bit of my collection here. Alas, most pieces I have bought in the last few years are not framed due to space limitation in my home. (....and the cost of raising a teen )

Starman #7 by Tony Harris

I should have probably made my earlier post a little clearer.

I do biz with Brian and Sparkle City all the time with no problems. Brian and I are friends. It's only Greg that I will never deal with, not Sparkle City.

I don't do business with him.

 

I don't care who he works for

+1

I'm friends with Brian at Sparkle City, but I would never deal with Greg Jortner. The guy is bad news.

I just started watching it on Neflix and I am up to episode 7(I think).

So far, so good (thumbs u

thanks! the only ones left are the g.a. ones on the cusp, that are going to be tough---crippen, church, aurora. there may even be a cosmic aeroplane, but i doubt it. not convinced there are any slabbed s.a. "don and maggie's," either.

The Don and Maggie pedigree will be much larger soon. I just got back from Maggie's in Wisconson and picked up about 25 short boxes of super high grade books. Heritage will begin selling the big ticket items (Hulk #1, TOS 39, Avengers 1, ect) in our November Signature Auction. The others will be sold over the next year in our later Signature and Sunday night auctions.

Had a blast going through these super high grade books and, of course, spending a bunch of days with my pal Maggie!

somewhere in NY danny boy/robojo33 is getting jealous from the lack of scumbag attention.

Just got a call from Gerry asking me if I bought comics.

 

I told him "No".

 

His reply was "Isn't that a waste of a Overstreet ad".

 

My reply "No, I don't buy from 1 Million Comics".

 

Have a nice day Gerry.

 

Bob

Man, Bob, I love you!

Gerry ripped me off many, many years ago. what a piece of

Great post! Thanks for doing all that work!

"Were a warehouse find of an issue to appear, it would not cause

any change in my thankfulness for your help."

What drives you to collect?

Love this hobby and have a compulsive personality.

Do you love the medium and just can't get enough of comic art originals?

Love the medium!!!! Can't get enough of comic art I love and comics I love to read!

Are you a "Prestige" collector and only looking to pick up some top pieces?

No, but it would be nice to have that kind of $ to spend on art.

Are you really just a comic book collector that ran out of stuff to get and this seems the next logical step?

Got into it because I was starting CGC and, because I was letting go of my comic collection, so that people would know I was being impartial when grading books, I still wanted to collect something in our medium. Ruben, you were there, at the begining, and helped me quite a bit. I still love comic books (can't go a day with out reading one!), but I love framing great looking pieces and being able to see them around the house and on CAF.

Are you interested because of the money aspect and if you're going to invest money, it might as well be something fun you're interested in.

I always hope that what I buy will be worth the same or more than I paid for it, but $ does not drive my collecting habit.

Are you a full time collector just dabbling?

Full time, but I can only buy a couple of pieces a year.

What category would you put yourself in? Do you think it's the same category others would put you in?

Don't know and don't much care what others think. Probably small collector.

He was an amazing artist and a nice guy. Gone too soon

I am lucky enough, thanks to some friends, to own a really cool, very detailed, prelim of three hot woman that he did.

Tonight or tomorrow...............

Sig Series: From my personal collection, movie/TV stars (Jeff Bridges, Val Kilmer, etc), important creators (Frazetta! and more).

Sketch Covers: Also from my personal collection. Fallen Son, Secret Invasion, and maybe others. All by cool artists.

A couple of OA pieces from my collection.

Rachel and I will be doing this so I can pay for a couple of books and art I want, and she wants to earn money for Barnes and Noble (The kid won't stop reading, it's a great thing, but the hard cover books she wants are too darn expensive!

See ya there!

-Steve