Off Panel

If I could react with the Laughing face AND the Sad face AND the Confused face, I would. Nothing else really seems to up to the challenge of your comment.

Thanks for highlighting this, ak47po. I’m all renewed and ready to bedevil the boards for another year. I had turned off my auto-renew during the acetate scandal where CGC was blue-labeling books that had aftermarket things STAPLED to them, and had decided I would not renew unless they changed course. I’m glad they eventually did — I would have missed this place.

I want to understand this better. Here is my question: Boardie A has 7 issues of The Amazing Spider-man in 9.8 condition from 1967, and Boardie B has 7 issues of The Amazing Spider-man in 9.8 condition from 2019. Neither set of books has any "keys." Do both sets score the same?

My vote would be to continue this approach. Basing modern comics on the prevailing cover price makes sense to me, but I can’t see modern and vintage comics treated the same. I’m in complete agreement with your observations on volitility and FOMO, and personally I don’t expect CGC to chase prices up for a few months before the next Disney+ streaming show only to chase them back down again after. (I have a vision of wytshus standing in front of an old-fashioned stock ticker, reading the tape and yelling out “Young Avengers 6 UP 0.875!” She-Hulk 1 DOWN 0.125!”) Maybe it’s just setting expectations that CGC registry points are more of a 12-month trailing indicator than a “last sale” affair. Maybe your update cycle should be more Overstreet and less GPA. Maybe that takes a little oxygen away from all the FOMO right now. Also, I don’t want to constantly chase my registry points up and down on the latest rumors from self-serving YouTube speculators. What if you guys licensed Overstreet’s data for the sole purpose of calculating registry points with your algorithm? Somebody doesn’t like the points for a book? Take it up with Overstreet. Your labor savings would probably cover the licensing cost (especially if you only need the 9.2 data).

I still think of those two as the pinnacle, even though others are worth more money today.

I agree that registry points should not be determined solely by the price of a book, BUT price and registry points may be driven by many of the same factors, including demand and scarcity. In the end, both price and points are trying to measure the "worth" of a book, so while registry scores should not equate to market dollars, they are probably highly correlated to market dollars. If I may ask, what factors were used to determine the points for each book when the registry was first rolled out? That may be a good starting point for our discussion.

Wait, are you saying you would set the 9.0 Universal Score on ALL books to 4 points? If so, that wouldn't make sense to me. I appreciate the differentiation that various ages and types of books enjoy today. For instance: Today, the score for an Amazing Spider-man legacy 894 from 2022 is 4 points. The book just came out a few months ago and I could have picked it out of a stack of 894s for four bucks. It would actually be hard to get a 9.0 because most issues are going to be nicer than that, but let's assume I'm an enthusiastic reader. That definitely feels like it's worth 4 points. The score for an Amazing Spider-man 109 from 1972 is 60 points. This book is never going to be a key, but it's a 50 year-old gem written by Stan Lee and penciled by John Romita. My LCS probably doesn't have this. I might have to do some searching to find a 109, and unlike with the 894, 9.0 condition is a plus rather than a minus. I had to pay a little money for this but I didn't break the bank. This doesn't feel like a 4-point book. It feels more like 60 points. Then there's the Amazing Spider-man 129 from 1974. This book is a grail. I had to work hard for this book. I had to compete with other collectors to score this. Maybe I had to budget carefully to buy this book or maybe I had to trade some other big books to get it. There was some sacrifice involved to get this book in a 9.0! 3,133 points doesn't feel crazy for this one. Points-wise, the current system "feels" right to me. If I understand the proposed approach, these books would now look like this" The 50 year-old book and the 5 month-old book are equals now. If I bust my hump all over town and the Internet to find a 9.0 issue of 109, I'll have the same score as the dude who skipped down to his LCS and dropped 4 bucks on a 894. (Actually, I'll trail behind him because his book will probably be a 9.2.) That feels broken out of the starting gate. (Consider this: How many grumpy old dudes on this board like to loudly proclaim that they "haven't bought a modern book since aught-seven when that Quesada fellah broke Spider-man"? They'll be none too pleased when their carefully curated Silver Age collections start getting out-scored by guys who had a big day at the Modern dollar boxes.) I don't know how you'll calculate the "key" bonus, but let's say you calculate it at 3,133 points (or something in that neighborhood) and I've got no beef with you. You have maintained a status quo that works well on that book without fixing the issue you're trying to avoid. All the annoying guys who want you to add points because She-Hulk #1 just sold on Comicconnect for $2,300 will now want you to add points because Comic Tom told them that Daredevil-25-first-appearance-of-Leap-Frog is a major key now! I guess what I'm saying is that I think the current scoring system works pretty well. I can see how it wouldn't work well for you, whytshus, and I'm not unsympathetic. That's not an easy job you've got. We need to find a way to make it easier without destroying the point system. P.S. - Qalyar, I'm in awe of the thought you've put into how to manage the sets, and I find myself agreeing with your approach.

This has been the narrative with Hulk 181 for 30 years:

Definitely an interesting theory, if a little on the dark side...

The "Bad Love" sign in the background is a little on the nose, don't you think?

My wife and I decided we needed a few days off last week and headed up to DC. While we were there, I spent a couple of hours at Victory Comics going through the back issue boxes and checking out the slabbed books. Almost every customer who came in referenced the robbery and asked about the disposition of the case. I heard the update a few times, and as shared here previously, the crooks were insufficiently_thoughtful_persons who had no idea what they were doing and tried to sell the books to nearby stores, all of whom were on the lookout for these chuckleheads. At this point Jeff has gotten all but about seven of his books back. His staff said that the community has been incredibly supportive, with many people coming in to buy books and support the store after hearing about the theft. I also bought a slab and twelve raw books, but not because I was trying to be charitable. Victory has some of the most gorgeous Bronze Age books I've ever seen in an LCS's back issue boxes. I will now be looking for any excuse to make my way back to the DC area.

This morning I was reading an old Bronze Age Marvel book cover dated July 1975. (That sounds cooler than admitting I was reading Arrgh! #4, so I'm going with that.) When I got to the Bullpen Bulletins page, there was a short anecdote in Stan's Soapbox about going to Penn State and seeing the word "blexcroid" everywhere, but they wouldn't tell Stan what it meant. That was a new one on me -- I was in elementary school in '75 -- and I was curious. Luckily I've got the Internet, the sum of all mankind's knowledge to date, at my fingertips, so I figured I'd just look it up. Well, the Internet definitely seems to confirm it was a thing. In fact, it was this dude's senior quote in the 1978 Ursinus College yearbook: I also see all sorts of people out there with "Blexcroid" screen names or winking references to the term. What I don't see, however, is any sort of definition. So, if you are Robert Jamie Brancatelli, Class of '78, or just someone who is cooler than me (which is not a small group of people), spill the tea. What does "blexcroid" mean? (Apologies in advance if it is something unspeakable that will get both me and all of you kicked off the boards and put on government watch lists.)

I'm not familiar with the story, but I'm wondering if this would be a tale from one of the old Gold Key anthology series like Boris Karloff Tales of Mystery, Grimm's Ghost Stories, Ripley's Believe It or Not, or The Twilight Zone. I don't believe this is your book, but this is what I was reminded of....

I've been on a 'key spree' this year, but I ended my buying season with just enough gas in the tank to add one more (non-key) picture frame Spidey. For me, this book actually IS a bit of a key though. ASM 111 was the first Spider-man issue by Gerry Conway, the precocious 19-year old who went on to bring us The Night Gwen Stacey Died, The Goblin's Last Stand, the original (non-sucky) Clone Saga, and the Punisher. When I started upgrading my childhood comics, there was a reason I started with ASM issues 121-129 -- those books were the first back issues I tracked down as a kid, and those stories made a huge impression on me. Admittedly, not all of Conway's stories were nuggets, even in that 120's run (did we really need a second appearance by the Kangaroo?), but I think he did an amazing job of expanding the Spidey mythos in a way that opened story possibilities for generations of writers to follow.

HulksDaddy1, I was just looking at your GS X-men 1 in another thread. You are having a pretty awesome month!

I think there may be something off with Marvel Spotlight #32 (first appearance of Spider-woman). A copy in 9.8 condition is listed at 220 points, while a copy in 9.6 condition is worth 611 points. Right now, a 9.8 issue is worth less than a 7.0 copy, which comes in at 246 points. I suspect it's a simple typo, but thanks for looking into this! Score adjusted per Overstreet Access 9.2

Take.

Take.

But he’s keeping Aquaman so you know his priorities are… Hold up, did he say he’s only keeping Aquaman?

But did you like it?

Thank you, Prince Namur, for a fantastic thread! I read every word and enjoyed this for days. I need to be careful though; I can’t afford to get bitten by the Golden Age bug on top of all my other comic interests!

Awesome book, Barton! I’m hoping those same factors help me upgrade my ASM 101 next year…

I’m a huge comic book booster and always get a laugh from all the doomsayers who predict the bottom is going to fall out. Having said that — and just between us chickens — the one question that might keep me awake at night is this: What happens when DC/Image/Marvel/etc finally stop printing new monthly books? What happens when some bean counter finally passes down the edict that all titles must go digital, with maybe a trade paperback every six months? I think the success of the MCU has done a lot to stave this off, but it still feels a little inevitable. Kids seem to prefer their content online, and even here, in a group that likes comics so much that we spend our time typing about them in Internet forums — how many of you guys are actually buying new comics to keep the format alive? What happened to collectible record prices when compact disc delivered its smackdown? (That’s not a rhetorical question; I really don’t know. Keep meaning to do the research, but the days are just packed.)