Get Marwood & I

What a load of Kraapence!

Bigger!

I know it's Insect Man, but they could go a bit bigger Frisc

The full pence issue list is here, but this will help too - some of your favourite book titles:

It's a fine start Frisco - keep going

Yet another example of where our humble UKPVs help to inform what other cents books may or may not exist:

Hello PeteUK The GCD often has a template set for a book that doesn't exist so I wouldn't worry too much about that where there is no image. They would be better to remove them, if they do not have picture confirmation. Now, UK Price Variants exist for some but not all June 79 cover dated Marvels. Your three books above all have standard 'newsstand' barcodes on the 12p copies: However, the remaining UK Price Variants for June 1979 all have slashed barcodes like so: What this tells us, is that any UKPV cover dated June 12p has a slashed barcode UPC where an equivalent slashed cents copy exists. So the fact that your three books have UKPVs with regular barcodes is a good anecdotal indication that slashed barcode cents copies (your early directs) do not exist. Probably.

It's a Mark Jewelers too?

My one is $20 cos it's a newsstand newsstand

Oh, sorry Is it too late to change my post to that Captain America 'I saw what you did there' meme?

Get going then Frisco. Starts from May 1960...

Well, it is green isn't it

I've made this observation before - when it goes right, the end product is quite an impressive thing, whether you are a fan of slabbing or not. It's when it goes wrong that CGC need to step up, I think. Past performance hasn't been great - I'd like to know how they deal with these mislabelling scenarios now, and what they do for the submitters who are the unlucky recipients. Imagine a post here from a Borock equivalent: "I'm so sorry to see these examples and I ask the owners to get in touch on this number now for immediate redress. There will be compensation too, and a fulsome apology for the unacceptable drop in standards. Please be aware that I will do everything in my power to investigate and eliminate the cause of these mistakes - which I can tell you are in the extreme minority - from our grading process. I'm so sorry that we let you down on this occasion - please let us do what we can to make it right" How would that make you feel? It took me thirty seconds.

The Incredible Mole!

It's not because it hasn't occurred to them - I have made several attempts down the years to get CGC staff to consider some well placed communications here and they never go for it, always citing other time pressures. I suspect CGC are making a lot of money collectively if they can afford sign on bonuses for staff who cannot even identify one comic title from another. I will never understand why they choose not to allocate a tiny fraction of that income to establishing a regular communication presence here on this forum that they say they value so highly. They can't even make a single post or announcement here when the forum goes offline for two days. I noticed too that key personal post regularly over at the competition. It does so much for the community and gives a strong sense of how they value it. It's such a shame the forum software itself is so unforgiving otherwise I think many more collectors might take up residence there.

Indeed. All we can do is speculate. The one thing CGC rarely do is explain the aspects that are wrong in their business model. They will never, say, pop on here and explain what is going wrong in their QC model and what steps they are taking to address it. The model, to me at least, always seems to be the same - tout for as much business as humanly possible, make the product look slick and inviting, then ignore all justified criticism when things don't go right. And often, as we have seen with newton rings and case scuffs, try to normalise production failure in a way that would not be tolerated in any other business. They get away with it because they can. The ten measly books I have in my CGC submission pile - which have been there since before the pandemic - will likely stay there now as I am reluctant to support the current model, even if it means the resale value of my books is diminished. Personally, I don't like how CGC operate. Yes, there are good and friendly people in the business, with whom you can converse. But the collective for me feels like a money making, rule asserting juggernaut with little empathy for the customer and a reducing respect for the product being encapsulated (see calling non-US comics what they aren't). I like this forum, the people, the knowledge contained within it and the friends I've made here. I wish CGC didn't own it.

...by not QCing it, perhaps....?

I posted this elsewhere, but why not...

How do you think CGC actually do it Wombat? Is there a person(s) whose sole job is to look at every single book from a QC perspective, prior to it being released to the customer? If so, that person should indeed be identified and severely retrained given that, as you say, they have failed on the functional prerequisite of matching the comic to the label. And the person who encapsulates the book: is it really such a stretch to ask / expect that person to notice that the book that they are encapsulating does not match the label details? And, further back in the process, the person whose job it is to put the book in the tray after grading with the unique bar code, if that is where the error manifested. Even the chap who packs them up might be expected to notice. So many chances for the error to be noticed. For these mistakes to exist in the numbers that they do implies a factory model running at break neck speed where the process step is the only important factor to the agent - don't think, or pause - no time for that - just slab, record, pack etc My belief is that not all books are QC'd. If CGC have more volume than they can handle, and recruitment difficulties (hence sign on bonuses) then I don't think it too much of a stretch to imagine they would introduce, say, a one in ten QC check to help speed things along. In their March TAT update, CGC say "Expert grading should not be rushed, and we will never compromise on the quality and integrity of our services". All these examples show that the integrity of their services is being compromised though, don't they? If every book is QC'd, this should not happen, even taking into account natural human error. In the example above, the agent has missed five consecutive mistakes, not one. So my suspicion is that not all books are QC'd. Or, perhaps, not QC'd when the QC bloke goes to the loo. Or is off sick. The conveyor belt doesn't stop for breaks, I'll bet. Something like that. And the internal scuffs mentioned again earlier are likely there by design to prevent Newton Rings. One of our volunteer mods - you know, those people who effectively work for CGC for free - asked that question in the 'Ask CGC' forum (appropriately enough). They were ignored. Charming, eh? So we'll never know for sure. Meanwhile, lots of people in the CGC operating model are likely getting very wealthy, doing online videos with the hip and happening and meeting famous people. Famous people whose involvement, incidentally, in never ending signing events, increases the very volume that CGC are struggling to manage, and for which they ask our year long forbearance. Every company makes mistakes. It is how they deal with them that matters. We all know that. I'd be interested to see how CGC manage a submission like the one above, where every book is mislabelled. Maybe one of those books does not belong to the new owner, and one of theirs may be in another recipients box. I would expect CGC to offer compensation as well as a fast track remedial process. Does anyone know if they do that? Based on earlier Newton Ring communication episodes, I wouldn't surprise me to hear CGC say that mislabeled books are a 'normal and acceptable' part of the grading process, and only egregious examples will be redone. They will judge whether your IH #181 being swapped with a Bugs Bunny #57 is sufficiently bad to warrant a return though, and you'll have to pay the return shipping. Probably...

Taboo matcherroo

Yes. Gold isn't my field, but I like a mystery. Usually you can find something online with the right combination of words - Jim, Frisco, Uncle Dudley etc - but this one has me stumped and all my usual search tactics have drawn a blank. You'll probably have to rely on someone seeing this who has the actual comic, or who recognises the art / character(s). Good luck

Could she be 'Frisco Florrie' do you think? (War Against Crime #3)

Journey Into Mystery #65, February 1961: Mike's Comic Newsstand 'on sale date' October 27th 1960, actual on sale date (if these are anything to go by).... December 1st December 29th