techtre2003

No, if you said everyone likes ice cream more than getting punched in the face and I said "I don't" that would make your statement wrong.

Nope. Show me the raw book that sells for more than the CGC equivalent. (thumbs u Here is what I bolded and was referring to: Everyone would still prefer a slabbed book to a raw book of the same apparent condition. Nothing was said about price. I said Nope because I personally would rather have the raw book. So people would pay more for something they want less? And the word 'people' means you? Are you seriously not understanding what I am saying? Well if you can not understand what I am saying it's only fair.... I am saying slabbed books are more desired and the price differential with raw books reflects this. I don't think that's open for debate. In general, yes CGC books are more desired. That's not what you said before. You said EVERYONE would prefer to own CGC books over raw in the same condition. I am saying I would rather own the raw equivalent.

Nope. Show me the raw book that sells for more than the CGC equivalent. (thumbs u Here is what I bolded and was referring to: Everyone would still prefer a slabbed book to a raw book of the same apparent condition. Nothing was said about price. I said Nope because I personally would rather have the raw book. So people would pay more for something they want less? And the word 'people' means you? Are you seriously not understanding what I am saying?

Nope. Weird cause they sure seem to pay a lot more for 'em on ebay! Not me. Should I have not included myself in "everyone"?

Nope. Show me the raw book that sells for more than the CGC equivalent. (thumbs u Here is what I bolded and was referring to: "Everyone would still prefer a slabbed book to a raw book of the same apparent condition." Nothing was said about price. I said Nope because I personally would rather have the raw book.

Nope.

Point taken there, I don't know what it was like since in the early 90s I was a kid buying comics off the spinner rack at the gas station.

I agree The difference is in how large the variable is, and is it worth their time and effort to a) prevent graders from attending shows (I'm sure that CGC didn't pay for their head graders to fly off to Seattle without good reason) b) hire and train more graders c) pay them more d) have them spend more time grading each separate book 3) charge more per book The flip side of the coin is that you can ask the consumer the question: "Would you be willing to pay more for a better product?" The answer is usually a consistent "No." It's the way of the modern world. We want it all and we want it cheap and we want it now. This can be shown by the outrage when CGC did change there prices a few years ago for the first time in nearly a decade. I personally would pay more for a better service if it meant better service but then I'm usually in the minority. Maybe it's because the prices being charged are *more than* the value that price provides to the average CGC consumer. Example: a single 1976 Marvel comic book worth $100 in the slab costs $35 (before discount) while a single 1980 comic book worth $100 costs $18 (before discount.) There is functionally no difference between that 1976 Marvel and that 1980 Marvel. It takes exactly the same amount of effort and cost to grade...but it's (almost) twice the price. CGC has clearly demonstrated that they *can* grade that book for $18...so why do they charge almost double? This isn't the only example, there are many such inconsistencies in the fee structure. Uh, you do realize they are a monopoly, right? Actually, they're not - a monopoly would imply they're the only game in town. They are not. PGX is still making enough money to stay in business and their books are at every show and all over eBay. They suck professionally, but they still command a small portion of the market. A quick Google search on the definition: "the exclusive possession or control of the supply or trade in a commodity or service." Sorry, I know it's a nitpicky thing to point out, but I think we're giving CGC a little too much credit here. That being said, I don't think PGX and CGC are on the same level. PGX is shady, shady, shady. That might be the literal definition, but that's not how it's used in business. Microsoft was found to have a "monopoly" on operating systems while there were plenty of alternatives around.

This is the key. There is no way, imho, that prices would have taken off without CGC. There was too much monkey business going on with dealers "working" on high-dollar books for the market to have developed without an impartial third-party grader. A return to the good old days of relying on supposedly trustworthy dealers selling raw books would lead to an implosion of prices, which is why there is no chance of its happening. CGC provides a product most of us are happy to pay for ... given the alternatives. One can only dream

Not even close to enough people for the volume they do. They need to get their act together and stop being a mom&pop shop with everything they do. They have more than enough income to do much much better. No excuses. Which one of those is you? My solve involvement with CGC is working for the Signature Series program at various shows throughout the year. Wow, that was just a joke, I really didn't know you worked with CGC. That explains some of your comments. And that's really not said to bash you, I'd be sticking up for them too in your case.

Not even close to enough people for the volume they do. They need to get their act together and stop being a mom&pop shop with everything they do. They have more than enough income to do much much better. No excuses. Which one of those is you?

Just change the page number in your own URL at the to of your browser and then it will work, no? I just posted the link to show everyone page number 67 at the end - not to use my link. I was just using your link as an example, but I've had it happen before. If I click on the link you posted it tries to take me to "page 67 of 27" which just gives me a blank page.

Only thing I don't like about using a different preference though is that when someone posts a link like VintageComics just did it doesn't work.

This. Or just show more posts per page. I only have 27 pages for the entire thread.

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.

I can post scans in the Please Grade My section and get the same service; except there I'll have my answer within the hour. You are mostly correct - it's not the same service because you only get to evaluate the front and back covers of the books, ignoring interior covers, pages, feel of the book, smell, et al. That being said, you're STILL only requesting opinions, so if you prefer that service, use that instead of CGC. True, but really isn't the cover the major part of the grade. I can count the pages, feel if they are brittle, see if there is an off smell (I thought only Vault did that one ) etc.. I'm not a high dollar/high grade collector so I actually do just prefer to get other non-professional opinions. I lucked into a really nice silver age book a while back and that has been my one and only CGC submission. And that was because I was selling it and I knew people would pay 3 times as much for it because CGC said my nice looking book looked nice

From someone who should know better, I found this to be one of the more ridiculous things I've seen in this thread. Why is this ridiculous? Aren't you in a sense buying a persons reputation when you deal with them? If your answer is yes, then why would buying from a dealer with a reputation to "consistently" grade accurately over a company that demonstrates a fact pattern of inconsistency be a ridiculous notion? I'd personally love to see the data on walk-thru and submissions timed around major shows to get a real sense of how wide and far back this exploit has been used by submitters to cheat the system. Any way you slice and dice it, this thread's existence impacts the perception of economic advantages to CGC grading, and to some extent, raises many more questions on the limitations and validity of its opinion. The reason why Nick's quote isn't absolutely true to me is because a single dealer can have good and bad days as well. I had a very long winded conversation with a long time dealer and he said something along these lines: "Dealers buy and profit from other dealer's mistakes." He's absolutely right. You buy some dealer's SA books because he grades them as VF's and you can sell them as proper NM-'s. Or a dealer under prices his books not realizing that prices have changed. Or a dealer doesn't realize what he has in his inventory. Dealers get busy, tired and distracted the way a grader might. I can't even remember how many dealers have told me they'll grade a box of books sitting at their feet while watching a ball game or a TV show. And these are well respected, tight graders on the con circuit. At least with more than one set of eyes looking at a book, there is more than one opportunity to catch something that the first person misses. The bottom line is that you can't remove humanity from the equation. You can only try to. You're right, you can't remove humanity (yet), but you are still removing a variable by having a constant grader. Anytime you can remove a variable you are going to get more consistent results.

I can post scans in the Please Grade My section and get the same service; except there I'll have my answer within the hour.

So between the 3 submissions of this one book (that we know of) and the graders notes purchased for the book; how much $$$ did CGC make? After those 3 submissions it was determined: -The book may be trimmed it may not - who knows?* -The book is somewhere between a 6.0 and 7.0* -The pages are either OW or OW/W* *This is in no way a guarantee it is just our opinion based on factors we won't tell you about. And we do make plenty of mistakes but it's ok because we are human. We will however guarantee you a nice plastic case so you never have to be bothered to read your comic again AND a pretty label... And after all this people still throw money at the company so fast that they are perpetually backed up with submissions. Even the OP who seems completely disgusted with what happened said he will keep going on business as usual. So guess what, this is absolutely no skin off of CGC's back. It's nice to think this will open up their eyes and will make them feel compelled to become more transparent but it won't. Whoever said it earlier in this thread hit the nail on the head: these kinds of things happens because we (as a collective group) let them happen. We scream and yell for a few days and then everyone goes back to posting about how much kav posts and making silly memes. Personally, I think I'll stick with evaluating my own books and paying a fraction of the cost of the CGC equivalent to get them.

Without reading the next 100 pages of responses and helping sway my decision, my first initial reaction to this is good job for addressing it, but I don't see how the process of buying a book to take it off the market helps anything. The real problem lies in the fact that trimming cannot be detected 100% of the time so what are you going to do to address that issue going forward Some suggestions: How about taking trimming away from getting a purple lablel and just making it a note on a blue label? How about making graders notes FREE for books with resto at least? How about including proof of your findings for the owners of the book with trimmed/resto books with pictures FREE of charge. How about if you buy a CGC membership you get some of the above included free with membership? I can understand mistakes being made, but what just happened with the JIM 83 is a real eye opener for a lot of people on these boards (people who really drive the CGC market). CGC needs to start being held accountable better with restoration detection from this debacle that just happened. And if it's a huge trim green label it. And if it's like this JIM 83 put it in an orange label that simply reads: ? hell if I know

Per the suggestion of Shadroch I am opening the official retirement home for CGC books. It will be called Techtre's Retired Ink Museum (TRIM for short). Someone at CGC please PM me for the mailing address when you get ahold of that JIM 83. Thank you.

They concluded that when everyone who was qualified looked at it when Spider-Dan had them re-evaluate it.

you want to burn a JIM 83? ROFL okeeeeeeeeeeeeee.... yes.....burn it. That 100% guarantees it can never create the same problem again. that's upside down face. You'd be better off to burn CGC headquarters and every slabbed container everywhere in the world. Comics matter, CGC does not. So explain to me what good it does keeping a scarlet letter book in circulation? And if CGC purchases it, then why does it matter what they do to it?? A scarlet letter book to a VERY small number of collectors. Heck, crack it out and put a black dot with a sharpie on the bottom of every page and sell it to me. I'd even promise to keep it in my collection and have it buried with me when I die if you want. Hey, CGC, Over here!

They made a decent movie about it. Disturbing because it was true! Thats the dude-havent seen the movie did he do the drink thing in it? Classic sociopath BTW. Ps sociopath does not necessarily mean criminal. You could be living with a sociopath and not know it. Here's a test-ask them: A woman goes to her father's funeral and meets the man of her dreams her soul mate. But he leaves before she can get his number. A week later she murders her sister. Why do you think she did that? Does that fact that I don't know the answer to this question mean I am relatively normal or that I am a sociopath? I"m guessing the options are either to murder the sister to get the guy to show up to another family funeral, or maybe the non-sociopath thing to do would be to check the guest book and see if any single men signed and approach it that way... You would be diagnosed as a sociopath as anyone else wouldn't even be able to conceive the answer to get him to show up at another funeral....but it is not necessarily a bad thing. The emotional detachment of a sociopath can make the greatest heroes....or villains.... I think you did that wrong. I think you say she forgot to get the number and ask how she would go about getting it. If the person then answers kill another family member then they would be a sociopath.

I honestly didn't know there was the ability to have a trading thread in the marketplace. I've never seen one in there. The closest thing I've seen is someone selling books and mentioning they might be open to trades. edowens71, sure, eliminate the trading threads in general marketplace and make a specific area for trades. Sounds good to me!