bc

2 for 2 and I'm tagging out to watch some football: -bc

Those books like real nice all lined up like that And yes, been a bumper crop of PHMs in the last few CLink auctions. Grabbed the ST74 since I haven't seen a nicer one in years: Looking forward to your undercopy sale, need a few more raws to complete the 164 and it's been fun collecting "boardie books" (I put a note with the name with each book). Collected 7 of you so far but probably have a few more slabbed books that have come from others collections. Probably help your sales thread if you give some specific start dates/times Good luck to all tonight! -bc

Couldn't pass this one up at the price (a little over $700) : -bc

Good news everyone ! The new style slab barcodes use the same codec as the last generation. The spreadsheet tool worked on all of them : The Art Contents do not exactly match what is on the label: Jack Kirby & Ayers cover Jack Kirby, Steve Ditko, Don Heck, Paul Reinman& Ayers art Yes, the missing space in "Reinman&" is actually how it is printed. Uggh, can't believe they auto-replace Mr. Ayers first name I only have 5 of the new style slabs, all basic blues, but they all worked fine. -bc

If there are any nerds still following this thread : I have created a tool to automate the collection of data from the barcode into an Excel spreadsheet. I have scanned the 200+ slabs I own to verify functionality and tweak the "codec" that everyone on this thread provided. I have a Windows 7 laptop running Excel 2013. I bought the barcode scanner that takeyourlemons posted earlier ($35 w/shipping for the Bluetooth version). Once you get the Bluetooth scanner paired to your device (I verified it worked in Notepad first), you can open the spreadsheet : Once you acquire the barcode, some information is automatically pulled from local tables : Pressing the "Lookup" button will extract the data from the CGCComics.com databases. I only have a free/basic account so premium membership is not required. Once the Lookup is completed, most of the other data is populated based on the book/barcode: Again, I have verified this works on everything except the Mark1 labels (referred to as "Old Label Goodness in auction & eBay adds). Well, they aren't so good for this tool because they only contain the Certification number. My first "new" label books will be here tomorrow so I am anxious to see how they respond & if the information is expanded. If anyone wants to do some further testing, please send me a PM and I will send the workbook. Again, I'm on Windows 7, use Excel 2013 and (forced by my corporate IT) the default browser is IE11. I am not an administrator, just a power user as far as local access. Just want to see if this works anywhere but my specific setup - I'm a virtualization specialist so I can mock up any config in a day or so once I know the basic mechanics are functional. I can easily change the output layout from a column to a row and change the data order based on storage/database needs; just trying to complete as much of the codec as possible. Let me know if you want a specific layout. I have an alpha version that supports batch imports from a CSV or other spreadsheet but I'm not ready to release that one yet as I've had some hangs when trying to lookup more that 100 books in a batch. Thanks to everyone in this thread for a cool project - Nerd power activate! -bc

-bc

Thank you, thank you, thank you for the codec ! Working on some automated analysis tools but your data was a huge head start Can anyone confirm that the "old labels" only return the Invoice# and Invoice Item# (otherwise called the certification #). That's all I get with the bc scanner mentioned earlier in this thread. By the way "152" is for Nova Scotia pedigree. I think that field goes from 0-511 (512 total options, computer nerd stuff again = 2 to the 9th, easy binary). Also, it appears the other companies bar code contains hex data as I get stuff like this "0008485-AB-010". Again, thanks for the rabbit hole.! -bc

WOW ! Applaud all the cryptography work done in the last 24 hours! Ordered my bc scanner - I have a couple other pedigrees in my collection ( at least Nova Scotia & Pacific Coast from memory). The power of the boards is amazing -bc

GREAT tip on the COMIC_ID field in the Registry! I have confirmed that the PQ code are the 2 digits before the grade code as all the 23's checked out to be White pages and all the 16's checked out be OW-W pages except for the #148 which was the earliest graded issue (3/24/04-also the one without the "00008"). The 152 was graded on 8/3/05 and contains the proper 2 digit PQ code as well as the trailing "8". Maybe it was a free field at the time or maybe it was graded onsite versus at the shop.....again, still insufficient sample set but we are making progress! Sample set is still all Universal and non-SS as well, need some Restored and SS books data...please. -bc

Now that a have a fresh pint..... Yes bababooey, that could be it as well. Tough to determine with a single data point The data in the header of the barcode would more than likely link to information that is available via the Census and the Registry; a.k.a., title, issue # and the criteria mentioned earlier like grade, PQ & category. So I started thinking about the issue number and according to the GCD, House of Mystery #221 is the first issue of Volume 23. Going back to your unknown data component “14410239800011”, could the “23” represent volume number component ? Need more data  -bc

As a comic collecting professional geek and amateur cryptographer, you have seriously piqued my interest. I was going to suggest posting more data to begin correlating the header information into meaningful data, but you are all over it. If it's like most barcode systems, it uses a series of significant digits (just to keep it geeky, like an IP address has a set of 4 significant series/octets or a MAC address uses a series of 6 two digit hexadecimal values as identifiers). The "98" may match the grade, but some of those zeros may represent that it is Universal (0) vs a PLOD (1) or Conserved (2), non-sig (0) vs SS (1) and White pages (0) vs any other PQ. Just guesses due to the fact that typically the best default value is a "0" and the other options increment as positive integers. Think I need to buy your setup to help add to the data set to crack the code -bc

Didn't expect to win this as my bid was $100 less than the one GPA record from Feb 2013, but I will gladly take it ! Other than that I got "out snipered" on the 2 other TOS I aggressively bid on (24 & 32). Any boardies grab any of those beauties? -bc

Gratz ! Does that take you down to a bakers dozen now? -bc

Worst part about the whole thing is I got a bad case of the Blip : -bc

Well boys, I'd like to say I thoroughly enjoyed the Shagg, but just as we were starting I looked down and saw the Thing in the Black Box : Needless to say, I headed for the door only to find it wasn't the place I knew before : So be wary of those easy Shagg's ! -bc

September is my "back to slabs" month which started with snagging some Shagg from Clink : This was the first PHM cover I could find that features both Kirby & Ditko, at least according to the GCD. Also my first "new" slab design so I'm very anxious to see it in hand. -bc

Those rock ! Congratz on the keepers ! -bc

Go BAF Go ! -bc

Great pickup mysterio ! Saw you mentioned that in the other thread, thanks for sharing the pic ! -bc

Picked these up at Comic Heaven's Anniversary sales today. Couldn't pass them up at 30% off ! -bc

That's more than nice, that may be a very nice- Great pickup Dr. X ! -bc

I was thinking the same thing. Not a Marvel, but you know it's Kirby at first glance. Picked this up at Wizard a few years back. Was not an easy one for me to find in decent grade. Very sweet copy of a classic Kirby cover Dr. X ! -bc

From the same show I raided these from the Burning River Comics stash of PHMs : Mr. Broccoli Head : Want to thank Ken for spending some time talking PHMs during a busy show! -bc

Picked up some late summer readers at the Strongsville Comic Con earlier today This one is from Comic Heaven : -bc

Very nice ! Colors still pop on that one ! -bc