VintageComics

X-men #107 is generally a tougher book in ultra high CGC grade than surrounding issues. The reason being that the book often has production issues that surrounding issues don't have. CGC is generally a bit more lenient on these production issues because they appear on many if not most copies of this issue. This is probably the reason the buyer thinks the book is over graded. There's no way that book is a 7.0 sitting in a 9.6 holder but it might look like a 9.4 in a 9.6 holder to some hence his opinion, although everyone is always a strict grader when it suits them better and people like this you can never please.

You have mental sharpness?

You have wit?

It's you that decided to respond to my response with a quip.

I had several threads about the effects of social media on society in the WC. They were incredibly good discussions that lasted years. The woke mob in the WC managed to get the main thread locked. The irony was not lost on me.

I agree that the above sentence was pretty bad.

You're so antagonistic.

Translation: I'm almost always right.

Reality is your friend.

These thefts are horrible things happening to people we know but I believe we are seeing an unravelling of society and this is just the tip of the iceberg. The West has lived high on the hog for a very long time and got used to it, but it doesn't take a lot of unravelling for it to all fall apart. Homelessness, crime, theft, attacks, addiction, suicide, killings. Everything is through the roof. This is a systemic problem. Worst of all, much of it was likely preventable but people pursued ideologies that were short serving and doomed to fail. I wish for nothing but better times but I don't think it's getting better any time soon.

This info agrees with my post a few weeks ago where I stated that dealers were seeing a strengthening of prices in their sales.

Exactly.

I agree with this. I think it's a bad move to censor them and they should have been left, not as a sign of disrespect to Bob but to give an unvarnished view of some people's personalities. It goes without saying that I hope justice is served in Bob's case and that hopefully the books are recovered.

Taking pics in sunlight works best (but not always practical). Sunlight give your camera lense the most saturation. Sunlight off to the side seems to work best but can be made to work with a sun directly overhead as well. Then you can work angles for glare. But bottom light is the more light you use the better the pic will turn out. Also, classic things like TAKING YOUR BOOK OUT OF THE BAG helps. I can't believe how many people think it's a good idea to snap a picture of a CGC book while still in the protective bag.

This is quite the duo! Congrats to both!

Apparently Fox, Twitter and Facebook also had glitches today. Not sure if any other sites did. Might be something bigger than just CGC happening. At this point anytime something huge happens with social media I just assume that Big Brother is doing something to the Matrix.

That butter hit you took caused it.

Is it just me or does this guy actually look like Cobbledlam in real life?

The majority of people lean towards fear so the markets generally lean towards fear. Never underestimate a market's eagerness to overshoot expectations in any direction. Personally, I've bought several #181s recently.

If the powers granted by hindsight could be used to accurately predict the future, we'd all be geniuses. And we'd all be rich. At some point you have to make a move, and there are always reasons to hesitate if that's your temperament. What I see when I look at that chart is that something drastically changed in 2021, and based on that change, I have no reason to believe that all of that data from 2002 to 2018 will be very relevant going forward. Whatever the market is now and wherever it's heading, it's a fundamentally different thing than it was in 2004. The stock market has been around for what, 250 years or so? The most powerful minds on earth have been trying to predict it for 250 years. They still can't. Most still get burned. Risk takers gonna take risks. Big risk, big reward. How big are your cajones? Conservative buyers won't. They'll miss the tops and bottoms and average out. But ain't one single person in this hobby that can predict the future and this is all just an exercise in wasting time. When somethings looks "too cheap" someone will buy it. These "cheap books" selling at auction are already being offered at higher prices. That's the business model of some dealers. Bought a book at a new low? Quick flip? Make 10% and move on. That new buyer now has the capital to hold for the longer term and will sell once the book hits the mean trend again. There are markets within markets and some are willing to work on smaller margins than others. The theory of "these books will just be cheaper next week" is just as untrue as "these books will be worth X next week"

Mike, the problems are multiple but one solution seems relatively simple to alleviate a lot of pressure. There seems to be an increase in ME returns percentage wise in my experience . The returns of those ME books back into receiving and grading are creating delays for all other paying customers. They are in effect multiplying CGC's work load unexpectedly. I've actually had one book receive ME erros more than once, meaning the same book had to go back to CGC multiple times. And this one book alone, going back to CGC for ME customer service is going to create an UNEXPECTED increase in receiving traffic / shipping room and grading / encapsulation. At a quick glance it seems that just increasing quality control standards BEFORE books leave the door and reducing returns will alleviate a lot of the pressure from returns, which in turn will alleviate pressure from the entire process for paying customers including receiving / grading / shipping process. This seems the logical place to focus efforts.

It was just the comic. The comic is always worth more graded, without the record since records aren't certified.

I don't think it's an easy problem to fix. Any pressure you put on the book elsewhere has the potential to damage it. The first iteration of the 3rd gen of holders led to a lot of problems (just look up "creep engine"). I think you could try and reverse that idea to make the slab concave in the center rather than convex, but that would probably lead to torn covers and damage from indentation at the center. If you eliminate the whole aspect of an inner "well" and just sandwich it between two pieces of plastic with a seam, then any overhang is in jeopardy of being damaged. Other than that, I don't know what the answer is. And to be fair, the damage isn't caused by the well. It's caused by motion within the well. So the answer is just never ever move a slab, and then you're fine. Borock, when he was president, on this forum openly stated that if anyone had a better design CGC would pay you for it. So if anyone is an engineer and wants to make it happen, go for it.

There's likely no color breaking (just slight waviness on the Marvel overhang) and the lighting from the scan (or camera) definitely makes it look worse in the image than in real life. FF#74 is the "budget friendlier" version of 49 (I've always thought). Similar color scheme with both Galactus & Surfer on the cover. With 49 out of reach for many collectors nowadays, some people probably gravitating to 74. Maybe. I never thought of it that way, esp since #72 has a WAY BETTER Surfer cover but a good point to take note of is that at a fixed price NOBODY would pay 30% over GPA for that book. But at auction someone did (and there was an underbidder too).