skybolt

1 year and 2 months for me.

The last 10 minutes of this video is exactly how many of us feel these days.

Interesting point. In all honesty, I would've understood if CGC took this approach 22 years ago, but not implement it now and only on 30% of the submissions.

These days it typically ships the same day after hitting Grading / QC

Unfortunately, I don't think they're too bothered with this. Currently they have enough submissions coming out of their ears to last them a long time. If certain graders are grading harshly then that could just mean more business via CCS pressing or straight resubs. If 2 years down the line the well is drying up again, they'll go back to giving out 9.8 grades like candy. This was the case 2 years ago during the pandemic where I was batting 1000% with my submissions.

It sort of seems like some of these new graders have taken CGC orientation to extremes regarding CCS being able to press out certain defects. As soon as they see a small non color breaking spine crease, which can only seen at a certain angle, they knock it down to a 9.0 so you are forced to press it out.

Agreed. If this only happened on 5 -10 percent of my submissions, I'd be tempted to crack and resub and take the $25 hit to achieve a higher grade. However, since this is happening on 1/3 of my submissions, there's a 33% chance that I'm flushing another $25 per book down the toilet.

This is what submitters rely on CGC on. Over the past 20 years they've done a fairly good job understanding what are recurring production errors and grading the books accordingly. With respect to the Infinity Gauntlet 1, you can easily peruse EBay and see plenty of 9.8 graded copies with the same production issue.

I think you should be fine. I'm mostly seeing this with large quantity slow modern submissions (no pre-screening or fast track).

Good for you. These new graders that have no clue what production errors / defects are need to be called out. Like I mentioned above, it has now expanded to books with slight miss-wraps and miss-cuts.

Just got back my last 2 modern submissions. The first one was graded somewhat tough, but nothing too egregious. I received 12 - 9.8's and a bunch of 9.4's and 9.6's. The next submission, which went through the quick G/E/I to shipped grading process only had 3 9.8's, with the rest of the books ranging from 8.5 to 9.6. After careful inspection, even if CGC grading was tough, the results should've been the same as the first submission. I'll go back to what I've said before, these new lightning fast graders are grading 80's and 90's books like they were published within the past 5 years. They want perfectly centered books with flat spines for 9.8's. I noticed that any book that had a slight cover miss-wrap, automatically received a 9.6 or lower grade. Same thing with miss-cuts. I've had plenty of 9.8 books in my collection with these production type issues. I also received a couple of 8.5's with "light spine stress line" designations. I carefully went back and inspected these books with various type of lighting and can barely notice a very minor non color breaking spine stress line. In the past this would be an easy 9.6. Going back to these new graders. My gut tells me that as they speed through the process, their mindset is that I'd rather give a lower grade than potentially miss something and slab the book as a 9.8. They'll be like "hey, this book looks flawless upon initial inspection, but I'm sure there's some defect I'm missing, so I'll just give it a 9.6.

I think there is more to it than that. It could be the case where submissions are divided between 3 separate groups of graders. Group 1 and 2 continue to grade the books in front of them, while Group 3 is pulled to help out with Signature Series submissions. By the time they come back to their original stack, a month has gone by.

Exactly. I've been submitting books to CGC for the past 20 years and their grading has gotten tight or loose multiple times. For example, if I send in 25 books, expecting 18 9.8's, 5 9.6's and 2 9.4's, on average I'll get back 21 9.8's and 4 9.6' when the grading is loose. When their grading has gotten super tight, I would get back on average about 13 9.8's, 7 9.6's, 4 9.4's and 1 9.0. With 2/3 of my submissions these days, the latter is holding true, which is that CGC has tightened its grading (totally understandable). However, the remaining 1/3 of my submissions that go from G/E/I to shipped in a matter of hours, I'll get something like 2 9.8's, 12 9.6's, 5 9.4's, 2 9.2's, 2 9.0's and 2 8.5's. Just completely bewildering.

I'm in the same boat. My 4/11/21 CCS received submission still hasn't been pressed. I was told 7 weeks ago that only a few books were left to be pressed,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,still waiting.

The old model of submitting books to CGC certainly doesn't work for me anymore. In the past I was pretty accurate with books I was confident would come back as 9.8. Worst case scenario, I'd get a bunch of 9.6's for books on the fence and a 1 or 2 9.4's sprinkled in there, which was still frustrating. These days (on certain submissions) I'm getting 9.0's on books I was 100% sure would come back as 9.8. Again, I could easily chalk it up to me losing my ability to grade, if 2/3 of my submissions weren't still coming back with grades I expected.

I've been submitting books to CGC for almost 20 years. In the past they did call me on a couple of occasions before they proceeded to grade the books. Not all the books were damaged, but I did appreciate the heads up.

Did you press the book? Since these new graders are grading 80's and 90's books like recent moderns, if the spine does not look like a pancake, the book is guaranteed to come back a 9.4. I've also noticed that for each minor flaw, the book gets knocked down a grade. So if you have 4 very minor non color breaking creases along the spine, it'll go down to a 9.0. Again, if CGC has all of a sudden changed their grading criteria, I can adjust my grading to the new standards. However, 2 out of 3 submissions are still graded like they have been for the past 20 years. It's like playing a game of chance where 1 out of 3 submissions will get hammered. Also, I made a huge mistake of sending multiple copies of the same book in the same submission. If I had spread them out over 5 or 6 submissions, then at least a few of them would get a 9.8.

I agree. Unfortunately, based on my experience this year, you have a 1 in 3 chance of getting the same grader next time.

Yup, most of the books I'm sending in are from the 80's and 90's. I recently got back a newsstand edition of FF #358 that was absolutely perfect. It was so perfect that I actually convinced myself that it could come back a 9.9. Of course, it came back a 9.0 with no grader notes. The only thing I can think of is that a newbie grader knocked the book down since the die cut cover naturally creates an indentation on the interior cover, which is normal for these types of books. I'm cracking and resubbing this book to see what happens.

Sorry to hear that. The light stress lines that take a book down from 9.8 to 9.0 is really baffling for me. Last year I was getting 9.4's on books with 5 or 6 color breaking stress lines along the spine. It's been a frustrating day since my other submission got mostly 8.0/8.5 grades due to a crunched corner during shipping.

I feel your pain. Once I noticed that my submission just went from GEI to Shipped in a matter of hours today, I knew the grades would be bad. Of course, I only got 3 out 25 book graded as 9.8's. Lots of 9.6's with no notes. These were books that I typically get 9.8's on, but decided to quick press them anyway (just in case). What a waste.

These just went to G/E/I.

It could just be that some graders go through their batch of submissions faster than others. In all honestly, the last few times my books were rushed through the grading process, the grades were awful. I don't mind waiting another couple of weeks for these 2 submissions if it means getting an experienced grader.

Two of my three 2/24 received regular moderns are still in SFG.

I've honestly given up trying to reach out to customer service regarding TAT's. Either they'll give you a canned answer, or contact CCS regarding your books and someone there gives them a canned answer. For example, my 4/11/2021 received submission (3/23 delivered) is currently sitting at 288 business days (current TAT's are at 256). 6 weeks ago I was told that the books are in the room being pressed with only a couple remaining before they can be sent to CGC for grading. I contacted them again 3 weeks ago and was told to wait another couple of weeks. So either customer service is telling the truth and someone has been working on my submission for over 6 weeks (which seems unlikely), or the books have been misplaced and won't see the light of day for months.