VintageComics

You're starting to sound like me.

My point is the mods and company men in the thread(on their real accounts) trying to attack the seller and the buyer, when CGC is at fault. If PGX or any other company had this happen to them, people would be paying to host sites, and linking to it. Again I am not defending PGX or advocating, just talking about the hypocrisy that the attack dogs spew when they are fighting to protect their lunch. Transparency and Accountability is what CGC needs to increase in spades. Gotcha! I agree with you that transparency and accountability would benefit public relations but that only changes when any company internally is compelled to do so. I think that the continuing mob chant has been that competition will change things.

That was a good thread. Thanks, but you'd have to leave the comforts of the Romper Room to read it. Some people don't get out enough. The GA forum is a dangerous place. I don't go there too often as it's a quick way to expand the want list. I thought it was dangerous because of all the canes and walkers in the room. I originally had written something about broken hips, but it was edited out of respect for my elders. I'm your elder and I thank you for that.

That was a good thread. Thanks, but you'd have to leave the comforts of the Romper Room to read it. Some people don't get out enough. The GA forum is a dangerous place. I don't go there too often as it's a quick way to expand the want list. I thought it was dangerous because of all the canes and walkers in the room.

Most large volume dealers (and I would now say board members who frequent many shows) both know each other and know CGC employees personally. It's a small world. That still doesn't change the fact that the majority of books are impartially graded. What is your point?

A single person's dealings with any given dealer of choice vs. their own subjective idea of consistency and the entirely different position of the masses raking CGC over the coals over their consistency are two very different things. There are some significant variables that in my opinion do NOT make for easy comparison. a) sample size - we're looking at nearly 3 Million books from CGC compared to several dozen or several hundred books from even the largest dealers. b) the lack of internal audit with a dealer - does anyone go back and check with dealer's grading standards over a period of time? I know I don't. Most 'consistent grading' dealers are really dealers who undergrade IMO. Those are the guys that you come to realize you need to buy your books from because they're leaving coin on the table. Whether they grade a book a VF or a VF+ or a VF/NM, nobody really cares that they are inconsistent if it's going to grade out a NM. So we're really talking about several things (yet again) and bunching up our panties over slightly different things.

I don't think we're really disagreeing on much. We're just fleshing out the discussion. Both systems have their pluses and minuses. Can one person catch resto better than 2 or 3 sets of eyes? And Nick's consistency is not a mystery to me. I've been dealing with (or at least known about) Nick for about 12 years now between eBay and here. The bottom line though is that no matter how consistent Bob Storms, or Nick Beckett or anyone else is (and I'd say I'm a pretty consistent grader myself although I wouldn't put myself in their league), nobody is going to put a 7.5 grade on a raw AF #15 or an Action #1 if they think CGC will give it an 8.0. I personally think it's an unrealistic expectation to have that we can only 'win' with a graded book and never lose. Life is not that perfect.

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.

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.

Grades, packages and communicates well. Thanks for some terrific books, Eric!

People used to say that about me. Compared to him, you're a Tibetan monk. Now you're making me sound like Park. Park is a table dancer. Park is a table dancer kind of like that crazy aunt who kind of used to be a belly dancer at family functions back in the 1970's but nobody has the heart to ask her to hang up the zills.

People used to say that about me. Compared to him, you're a Tibetan monk. Now you're making me sound like Park. You mean out and out awesome? Your Kung Fu always was better. Trimming, shrimming. Get over here. I'm now officially Parkophobic.

Don't ever touch me again.

People used to say that about me. Compared to him, you're a Tibetan monk. Now you're making me sound like Park. You mean out and out awesome? Your Kung Fu always was better.

People used to say that about me. Compared to him, you're a Tibetan monk. Now you're making me sound like Park.

No, just 300 posts a day bias.

People used to say that about me.

If they had that kind of optical recognition software then they most likely wouldn't need "professional graders"? How does optical recognition equate to grading? Simply recognizing unique points on a book is a separate matter from then also assigning a grade to that book. Optical recognition will never work for grading. There is more to comics than juts 2 dimensional flaws. There is smell, feel, gloss, etc.

I'm curious how long some posters think CGC graders spend on a book. 12 seconds? 20? Some of the posts seem like they imagine Graders do extensive CSI type investigative exams. I'd think it depends on the book. I'd venture a guess and say 30-60 seconds. Some more, some less depending on era, grade, resto, etc. I hope they are well paid for that one minutes work. I don't understand your point. Do you think it should take more than a minute to count the pages and grade a comic? Could you see them spending 5 minutes per book and charging everyone $500 a moderm? How long does the average dealer take to grade a comic? It takes me about a minute give or take. Anybody else take less or more time?

I'm curious how long some posters think CGC graders spend on a book. 12 seconds? 20? Some of the posts seem like they imagine Graders do extensive CSI type investigative exams. I'd think it depends on the book. I'd venture a guess and say 30-60 seconds. Some more, some less depending on era, grade, resto, etc.

Ok....if you've identified a problem, propose a solution?? And apparently you can as the marketplace has accepted this since 1998 or whenever CGC was founded. I like grading too and it does add an unbiased element to the business/hobby; but I also realize there are inherent flaws within the same business/hobby. Most likely the biggest flaw it has is that it's not unbiased. Hard to believe that preferred customers don't get softer grading, which probably happened in this case. You do not want to anger your base. happy customer means repeat customer While that makes sense, I cannot prove that anymore than you can. If it were to be proven, the entire House of Cards would collapse. Very true. But it's standard practice in most businesses to give pref treatment to your best customers, I know I do it. I slab between 100 and 500 books a year, the majority of them using Walkthrough tier mainly because I prefer not to wait a month or two for my grade. I'd love to know who these big submitters are getting preferential treatment because all of my disagrements with a CGC grade have generally ended in a dead end. There might be a few smoking guns but sweeping statements that generalize stuff like this are very damaging. As most who have seen the scans I post and recieved books that I sell, I don't have long runs of overgraded books. I've even talked to graders a few days or a few weeks after grading a book and they have no idea which book I'm talking about. I'd liken it to working in a grocery store and trying to remember what all the people looked like last week. The odd person might jog your memory if they looked like an Action #1 but for the most part, it's a blur. CGC are human, they make mistakes and nobody is saying mistakes are OK, but mistakes as unfortunate as they are, are reality. Because we are all human, it's not the mistakes that define us (except to those who are perfect) but rather how we recover from those mistakes. The comments of how upsetting this is are well founded (especially for Dan) but it's important in my opinion to balance the perspective with the fact that we are focusing on the exception rather than the rule with a big honking magnifying glass right now.

I have an absolutely stunning copy of Exciting Comics #64 available in the GA/SA/BA selling forum. The book shows like a CGC 9.6 and is bright, fresh and white but has a very light, invisible sub crease keeping the grade down. It's absolutely killer. There's also a very nice Batman #22 CGC 7.0 available. (Those fingerprints on the top left are on the scanner glass and not on the books ) Drop me a PM if interested in either book.

You should share! My original plan was to horde as many copies as possible. But I'll likely start selling my under copies to finance the purchase of a 9.6 or 9.8 if they ever become available for sale. Which Is a rare occurrence to be sure. I just sold a 9.6 to a boardie but I guess he'll share if he is in the mood to.