VintageComics

You keep talking about things in finite terms and not in real life dynamics. I agree with your point about the Promise grades and about their monopoly in the industry. But if you hire too many people, too quickly and they aren't good enough that monopoly can slip into eroding CGCs reputation and their position in the hobby. So you can't just run out and 'find and train' all of these imaginary people without finding the RIGHT people and training them PROPERLY or you run the risk of destroying the very thing you're trying to support. And what you're being told is that it's not that easy to find the right people. train them properly and retain them for the long haul. Anyway, I'm kinda stepping back from this convo. I think most points have been made.

@sfcityduck Ideally, in theory your points make sense but practically in the real world they don't always. Sure, some are too tight and some are too loose but I don't understand how that relates to this discussion. QC on mass production is something entirely different than individual performance.

OK, let's turn this flip this to take it from your perspective. I'm considered a good grader by my peers although I've never been formally trained. Some of my own peers, have told me I might be one of the best (short of anyone who has officially been trained by CGC). Why in the world would I go work for CGC? You seem to have an answer to everything so answer that.

#rockstarlifestyle

It would only be considered political if I posted it.

Employee retention. The main reason I would never hire someone to work for me is because once I teach them everything I know and then they are free to leave and become a competitor. Maybe not everyone has the drive to do that (become self employeed) but enough people would that I would hesitate to teach anyone what has taken me 20 years to learn on my own. It's a very common dynamic in any field, not just comics. Like, for example when people leave government jobs and skip over into the private sector to earn more money. The problem is not finding people to train. The problem is keeping them after you train them.

It's not a matter of training. It's a matter of economics. What he's saying is if someone can grade really well and they can make more money being a dealer, why would they take a job as a grader?

I can only imagine how long I'd be shadow banned from this forum for if I made half the posts in this thread (not picking on anyone in particular except for the boardies who like to notify mods whenever I make too many posts ) I've gotten 3 week bands posting 3 times in a row. You guys are both sort of right. The problem is that CGC had to draw a line somewhere and that is going to make wherever you draw the line an outlier for both sides. For the pre 1975 side of the outlier most of the books closest to the line are going to look too expensive and for those on the post 1975 line they are going to look cheap. That's why I think Capra is right in talking about averages. And CGC won't state which books take longer to grade because that sort of knowledge is inherently proprietary but it's implied through their pricing structure and those of us who know how to grade and have been following CGC read between the lines and understand this.

I loved that cover so much I redrew it as a teenager. Miller still makes my heart melt.

Miller did the story and layouts and David Mazzucchelli did the art in the 'Born Again' story arc in Daredevil #227–231 and it's a great read.

Who are you and what have you done with greggy? That's what she said?

There have been multiple supply chain issues. The pandemic and border crossings is just one aspect of the problem. Another was the lodged ship in the Suez canal earlier this year. It's estimated that this backlog caused billions and billions of dollars worth of losses and apparently roughly 30% of the world's raw materials go through the Suez and that delay in traffic is apparently going to cost the world billions of dollars and create manufacturing delays globally, also increasing prices of goods.

Heck, I'm only 35. I just don't use any kind of social media so I don't understand the layout/interface. It just seems like an endless outpouring of nonsense. I don't get how you actually find anything worth looking at I use it but I think social media is horrid and turning the entire world into a civilization of squirrels.

Responded with less typos then I have in the thread :-) Isn't it 'than'?

Eh, OK. I was just trying to share information or have polite conversation ( ) but now that I know you 'intensely dislike me' (first I'm hearing about it) I'll avoid you like the plague. Now I KNOW you're not MetalPSI

You keep trying to judge intent without any proof which isn't really a part of the discussion or possible to discuss reasonably. I'm out.

Name one company that has zero quality control problems. Even NASA and brain surgeons have them. Car companies definitely have them. That's what warranty is for. It wasn't a discussion about whether mistakes are acceptable or not. Mistakes are not acceptable. That's what warranty is for. It's a discussion about how much QC control errors are expected and every industry has it. There's no perfection to be found among the human race. If you find any, LMK.

If you have to QC a million things a year or every two years hundreds if not 1000's of mistakes will be made even if you have a high degree of success. That doesn't constitute a failure percentage wise. What percentage of 1MIL items is considered a QC failure?

It still is and I happen to know a very good, very honest, very reliable one in the state of Oregon in case he needs one.

I think that there's a tendency to make everything look like a pressing problem by those who don't like pressing and a tendency to try to obfuscate the problems pressing brings by those that don't mind pressing. That bias is human nature. The answer is somewhere in between. I've done far more damage to my own books after downing a gin and tonic or mishandling them, or from shipping than I've seen from all the books I've had pressed and I think that's really the main perspective I'm trying to bring to the discussion IMO.

Twisting my words, I never said it was 'so accepted' For the same reason that people thought slabbing was nuts in 2000 or a $50K AF #15 was nuts and now it's fully accepted. People's perceptions change over time. No, what has been stated ad nauseam is that some people were just a little smarter, had a little more ingenuity who took the old 'placing your comic between encyclopedias or under mom's iron to another level. You might not like it, but it's not a criminal element and you're wrong for calling it so but won't admit you're wrong because of sour grapes. I don't know, are 6 year old kids trying to make their books look flat going to become career criminals? I said nothing about trimming, keep trying to move goal posts to fit your sour grapes. Nobody is rewriting history. Nobody said it was big 20+ years ago. Everything has a starting point and growth over time. Pressing in some shape or form has been around for decades (I was doing it as a kid in the 70's with my mom's iron in her laundry room) and as the proliferation of slabbing and by extension the hobby expanded, by necessity anything associated with the hobby was going to grow and like key issues, the things that made the most money were going to grow the fastest. If it was a secret in early days, it's because it was profitable and people don't share proprietary information easily. No proper business person does. I'm not going to get back into a pressing debate. I'd rather put you on ignore, but you calling people who pressed or press books a criminal cabal is the reason I called you out.

Personally, I think you're taking it a little too far...unless you're trying to be funny using the term 'cabal of crooks' and not succeeding. Pressing is not stealing. There was no cabal of crooks. Books were being pressed before CGC (albeit not in as great numbers or percentages but it was not something that began when CGC began). There were just some people who found a new way to make money and as word spread so did the pressing of books. You want to start a pressing war all over again, go ahead but you're really taking it over the top IMO.

Ah, OK. so you're saying that it's so easy anybody with a pen and paper can do it. Gotcha. I've actually had extensive discussions with George from GPA over the years (and some with Go Collect as well) on some decisions they've made but I don't want to answer for them. They each have their reasons for doing things the way they do things. I guess these are questions for GPA and Go Collect.

People don't use pen and paper anymore. Well, not sites like GPA. They take data submissions through an interface, electronically. Some dealers submit every few weeks or once a month. With eBay and Heritage (the two primary sources for GPA) they scrape it electronically. Go Collect does cite Clink sales so I'm not sure how they get the info specifically but we're far beyond the realm of manual labor anymore when it come to recording stuff of the internet. These days even high school kids can write a -script that does all the work for them from their laptops of phones.

I know there was a lot of talk about selective reporting 10 or maybe even more years ago and Clink got vilified but when I've looked for previous sales from some sites (like Comic Connect or Pedigree) I've noticed for several years now that not all sales I'm trying to locate end up on GPA from those sites either. That's what I meant by GPA policing dealers who don't report everything. GPA just accepts the data that dealers choose to submit to it. I think many dealers who submit, do so selectively. And for the record, I don't submit any data to GPA unless it's something that's sold through my eBay store.