VintageComics

Like in the last 2-3 weeks. If so, just answer with a yes in this thread.

Was your post censored and needing to be approved by the mods like they were a few weeks ago before it appeared for everyone to see?

The right answer is choosing which one you like best.

The new CGC slabs are extremely difficult to open. I know this from experience and I've heard this from many people. And the slabs still don't stack properly. I was looking at a stack of books in Heroes two weeks ago and they were sliding all over the place.

You're not a CGC shill but when there was a problem with the CGC case last summer you stuck your head in the sand and said everything was all right. You start a thread about the competition knowing it's frowned upon and then ask the thread not to go poof. You have a sample size of two books to make a comparison and base your argument on one selling cheaper. Am I missing something? This is why we can't have nice things. Pretty much.

Not that I know of.

It has nothing to do with page quality. Some comics just have color variations in their respective print runs. SC #22 has two that I know of.

Oh, I get it Roy. To me they are "comic books" and myself, personally, I don't need the best copy available. Chasing the grade is a very fleeting endevor that rarely turns out well. Besides, I have better things to spend all that extra money on... I understand where you're coming from. But some people making a lifestyle out of chasing nice things. Different strokes and all that.

If you have two 'Mint' books side by side and both are 100% identical except for one or two tiny defects on one copy, and you want the best copy available which are you going to buy? That's the reason for the incremental grades.

The differences in grade, especially in the higher grades is not only the amount of defects but also the size of them. That's often where the mystery is in those highest grades. I agree it's still subjective but after certifying books for nearly 15 years I've come to understand it reasonably well. Once you drop out of high grade it's an entirely different way of grading.

Harley is the hardest working guy in comics. He jumps from continent to continent the way some dealers jump from city to city in a small state. Australia, Asia, Europe, North America. He's there. I think the only ones he hasn't sold comics in are Antarctica, Africa and South America and I actually could be mistaken about Africa and South America.

Of course, the flip side is that people would start paying less for 9.8's because they wouldn't be as special. It's not the fact that it's a 9.8 that makes it so expensive. It's the fact that it's better than a 9.6 (and a 9.4, and a 9.2, etc) that makes it so expensive.

it probably has something to do with the fact that MORE defects are allowed in lower grades. So having more accumulated defects in lower grades makes it necessary to spread out the difference between each lower grade point much more. In the top grades the difference between defects in grade is so tiny - a speck of color, a spine stress, a tiny crease or a bindery tear - that it makes it far easier to distinguish between grades with small increments. It's actually logical once you think it through.

How many ways to split a hair is going to depend on what you're using to split them. OSPG stopped tracking books over 9.2 because there was a lot more price volatility in grades above 9.2 and it wanted to stay relevant. That change happened about 10 years ago.

Too many people who want to buy expensive comics but don't know how to do a little research for common moving books. We need a 'what's it worth forum'.

I pay a tax of 5% for all comics I bring across the border from show purchases. Why would eBay charge 7-15%?

The market is the same in Toronto. It's tough to get any real comic book dealers in. Most of the local stores don't do vintage and the stores that sell new stuff, toys, pops, etc already have a client base. There's no reason for them to go to a show. And US dealers (with the exception of Harley) won't come up. I'm assuming it's the same for getting talent and cars, etc up cheap. They need to come up from the US, pay their brokers and taxes and so that makes everything more expensive for visitors.

We'll see if it's crazy when this one ends. it's not crazy. It's a normal market dynamic that happens if the general public is convinced that there is a new range for the book. If the public is convinced that the recent record prices for a 4.5 ($37K), 5.5 ($57K), 6.5 ($61K), 8.0 ($261K) and 9.0 ($395K) are 'normal' sales then the tide starts to rise as everyone scrambles to find one in their price range. And I said this would happen. If the public pushed to accept those sales as the new range, meaning people didn't want to hear or talk about whether they were upgradeable or about the prices that weren't record sales, then this would pull up prices in all grades. It looks like the general public has started to accept those sales as 'normal' sales and so is setting a new range. It speaks for itself.

Fair points.

If you're items are 'too expensive' and they don't sell eBay doesn't profit. It's an attempt at strong arming weaker minded people into selling cheaper so that they increase revenue. It's that simple.

I got the same warning this past week because my items are not selling fast enough. The email warning was entitled "high fee credits observed on your account" Seriously?

He didn't predict anything new. Other certification companies have been evolving for years and comics simply piggy back on what other industries like coins have done. The evolution of grading has been happening since the 1st grading standard was instated as Good - Fine - Mint (or a 1 - 3 - 5 pricing system) 50 years ago. Since then, they have ever been splitting grades into finer and finer increments. Why? Because when a book cost $1 or $5 it wasn't a big deal. But as prices escalate for collectibles you need finer and finer grade differences to account for the spread in price. It's just simple, logical business. If you have a $50K book and the next grade up is going to cost you $100K for the book it's only natural people to want something in between, and that is how we went from the G / F / M scale to the 25 or 30 step grading scale we have today. Adding another 5 or 10 steps is just another step in the evolution of the process. And like I said, coins have already been doing it for years.

Trying to pigeon hole them because of a phrase that could mean many things is just childish. They do treat every book the same. Just like the Post Office treats every package the same. But you can also pay extra if you want faster shipping.

While they technically charge more to grade more expensive books in my experience they aren't militant about catching people on those bumps. Yes, they do bump your invoice cost if the book ends up being a big book but that just seems to me more when they catch it or if the price difference is huge compared to the tier you've initially chosen. And there is a very good reason for it. Insurance, cost of experience and other costs are involved with handling more expensive books. They take a little longer to grade, they cost more to insure and store and they take a little extra care when handling them or documenting things about them. We used to charge more in the shop for diagnostic work than we did for general service work. Why? Because diagnostic training and experience is more expensive than just regular service experience. You generally get what you pay for in service and if you're paying more it's generally because you're getting more. Is it expensive to pay to get a $50K book graded? Sire, but you're also receiving the benefit of being able to sell it for $50K rather than selling it for less if it's unccertified and people don't have the same confidence in the product. That might go against old school dealers who used to appraise books for free but hey, things change.

I was going to comment about the predictions too. Things like CGC's grading has always been cyclical. They go loose, they go tight. If you say their grading standards are going to loosen up in a few years you'd be right no matter when you said it because they've been swinging between loose and tight for 18 years now. The fact of the matter is that there is no black and white grading standard that everyone will agree on. Even before CGC you'd have discussions about what grade a book should be. Is it a VG+? Is it a VG minus? etc, etc. Yes, some things are going to be black and white but when it comes to some things it's just going to come down to interpretation and subjectivity. One person's VF used to be another person's NM+ As long as we have some sort of centralized standard (which is what CGC has become over the years) then we can choose whether we want a VG+ or a VF+ or whatever. Things need to evolve over time and that includes grading standards. His prediction about 9.5's coming? That's no different than going from a 1-3-5 or Good Fine Mint system to the 25 point system we have now. As comics get more expensive there's a necessity to split the grades and fine tune them. But that's not something new. That's already been handed down to comics from coins.