Get Marwood & I

My overarching theme is "....that no one else collects". Seemingly. I also collect "Flying over Niagra Falls in a barrel whilst fixing a loose fascia board with a mastic bonding gun" covers. It's quite a small group

I enjoyed reading this thread this morning and found myself sympathising with both sides of the arguments as to when it is or is not appropriate to 'make a buck'. I've been fairly soft in my comic dealings throughout my life and I've let a number of good deals go. If I like a dealer, have a good rapport with them or generally find them to be decent I will usually bring under-priced items to their attention rather than take the profit for myself. I've done it countless times, often using my knowledge of the more obscure stuff, and have enjoyed the warm glow that followed. There's something inherently decent about bringing an opportunity to someone's attention, regardless of whether they deserve it. I have a tendency to feel sorry for people too. I once saw this old couple struggling at the London Fair not knowing what they were doing and pointing some glaringly under-priced items to their attention. I find myself imagining that they're decent, out of their depth old folk who may really need that money. I'm sure there have been occasions when they were mercenaries and undeserving of it. But I know what I'd want someone to do if that was my Mum and Dad, struggling with my post-death comic collection. I've sent messages to new sellers on eBay too pointing out wildly undervalued items. You get an instinct for it and, on occasion, the response shows that you have indeed saved someone's life. It doesn't always work out though. When I worked for the RSPCA, one of my jobs was to collect donations from customers. Once, I pulled up in the van and found a chap from Australia who was over trying to deal with his late mother's possessions. He looked a little overwhelmed. The first thing I did was hand him a pound coin that I picked up outside his front door. I made some joke about it being a start and he told me a little bit about what he was doing and why. I filled the van with boxes of stuff, wished him well and headed back to the nearest shop. On the odd occasion, I would help the shop staff open some of the boxes and that day I did. In the presence of the manager - a surly old woman - I pulled out this odd contraption and said something along the lines of "Cor, that looks interesting". "Rubbish!" she said, "throw it away". She was like that, and likely would have. Something told me to Google it, so I went back to the van and did so. It was a rare, French underwater microscope of some description and a quick check on eBay found two that had sold for several thousand. "There you go, I said" and she couldn't take it out of my hand quick enough. It later sold at auction for thousands and the Area Manager took the credit for it. Looking back, I wish now that I had kept it, and took it back to the owner. I imagined knocking on his door, saying "Remember me?" and giving him the good news. It would have paid for his flights over and back. So on that occasion, for me, it didn't work out. As for my own luck, I've found £10 books that are worth £100 many times at the fair from sellers who could be described, at best, as dislikeable. I've taken those without a second thought. One other thought, sorry to bang on, I sold my early Spideys a few years back having sat on them for 20 years and observing only modest, sequential annual price rises. When I decided to let them go, I was happy with the final sale prices. One chap bought them all, I'm told. Then they literally trebled in price within a year. It was quite an inexplicable tripling, completely at odds with the preceding 20 year trend. Did anyone contact me to give me anything back, in recognition of the sense of unfairness? Of course not, and it's silly of me to presume anyone would. Chances are I would have though. I've never had any luck with timing and money. At the end of the day, it gets dark, and all you can do is recognise how you feel having done something. If you feel good, chances are you did right. If you feel bad, chances are that you didn't. It's a personal thing, I think, and everyone will have their own take on it. Who is to say what is right or wrong?

Morning I picked up a second copy of Popeye #89 a few weeks back - a bit better than my previous copy and only the second one I've seen during the last five years of looking: Note that someone helpfully added a 10d handwritten price to what already had a 10d printed price. High grade copies are just not allowed to exist, it seems. There are a few of what I call 'the usual suspects' in the 24 issue King UKPV run - books that turn up reasonably frequently if you look hard enough. But then there are a good number for which the copy I own is the only one I've ever seen. They're a bit like Charlton in that respect, King. A very, very hard run to collect. By way of recap, the King UKPVs have a short four month cover date run and I often wondered why it was so brief. The transition from 12c to 15c may have had a bearing on them stopping: I've gathered evidence elsewhere where a price increase coincides with a change in UK distribution status, so maybe that US price increase was just too much for the UK distributor to bear. Then again, on the coincidence front, the King UKPVs stop at the same time as the Marvel ones, mirroring neatly with the latter's third UKPV hiatus: Maybe that's something I'll look into a little deeper at some point. That Marvel hiatus went on for 17 months by which time the King imprint line had ceased. So there are three possible reasons in the mix I suppose for the short lived run - the UKPV cessation in general, the King cover price increase and King's demise. The demise would be the most obvious candidate as a rule (heh heh) but the UKPVs stop before the cents copies leaving room for another possibility. I don't suppose history is that fussed either way but I do like to be in there pontificating where others are not, as regular readers of my threads will no doubt have worked out by now. Scraping the barrel of wider interest still further, I must get around to doing a piece on these 35c variants at some point: And the comps, too: Which go from King to Charlton: How cool is that? King to Charlton.... Is that the sound of snoring I hear....? All good fun

Indeed. Shame about the salient one. Lovely book though, I'm envious.

Spot the difference.... The Heritage 8.5 has the 12 Cent Price Variant status on the Verification record and on the slab label. Your 9.2 has neither, so will likely appear on the census as a 'standard edition'.

I think so, yes, but it's likely to update as the regular edition if the Verification tool doesn't show the variant field. Hopefully I'm wrong.

That's lovely. It's not recorded as the variant on the Verification page, and doesn't currently show on the census. There's no regular 9.2 either though. I'd check with CGC on this that they've recorded it correctly.

October 1975

This is a good suggestion. I'll pass it along to marketing Give some thought to the log in process. I'm reminded this morning that the log in page for the forum is the comics home page. Changing to the main CGC page may have unintended consequences.

In a way, CGC did choose you though, Doc. I mean, I look at their design work and I think "that's a right Balls up"

Damn, you're right. I've got to get out of here!

This is not what I want to be doing with my time Galen

Odd isn't it, considering how anal collectors can be about uniformity and details.....

Mine was that they saw a smouldering cigarette on the office carpet and thought the best course of action was to pour petrol on it.

Tits are birds, lostboys. You can't block tits! Why, that would be as silly as blocking Philip K MR. or MR. Grayson! Oh. Hang on.

“If you want the rainbow, you’ve got to part with the rain. Do you know which philosopher said that? Dolly Parton. And people say she’s just a pair of tits.”

You should offer your services https://boards.cgccomics.com/topic/517816-need-a-logo-for-your-comic-business-or-convention-the-doctor-is-in/

David Brent

True. They are unfairly roasted. Jacket in you two.

@CGC Mike Actually Mike, you might want to flag that up to web-help as a suggestion. Now the forum is for discussions about all the CGC products.... ...it makes sense for the main CGC page to be the home page, not the current comic-specific one: https://www.cgccomics.com/ Additionally, there are two improvement suggestions below that you could flag up, assuming you haven't already spotted them: https://boards.cgccomics.com/topic/525424-theres-nothing-here-yet-the-images-tab-on-our-profile-pages/#comment-12898962 https://boards.cgccomics.com/topic/512177-gallery-album-image-limits/#comment-12892568

There's nothing wrong with using technology to improve things if it works, I agree. The possibilities are indeed intriguing. I've just posted elsewhere about CGC's branding and when you look around their various web pages you see the scale of the operation. They have an extremely impressive portfolio of activities and for the most part their presentation of them is slick and professional. You can only imagine the amount of things that are vying for the management's attention on a daily basis and it's easy to forget how impressive CGC are as an overall proposition. Can you imagine the boss sitting at their desk on any given morning. They have staffing, premises, operations, advertising, web presentations, research, financials, product line development, media relations etc etc. It must be staggering. So it's easy to see how they could take their eye off the ball on one of the basics. Look at all the razzmatazz that surrounds a graded comic. Look at all the things you have to juggle for the proposition to exist. And somehow, in that whirlwind of activity, you find yourself with a slab that generates Newton Rings which, no matter what anyone at CGC says, destroys one of the fundamental selling points of their product - crystal clear presentation. And you find yourself with an operation that struggles with the volume and allows faulty products to go out. As important as all the elements are, none are more important to a grading company than accuracy, competence and clarity. Those are the things I would want the leadership team to focus on.

I think what CGC are trying to do with the new logo is to differentiate all the separate product components which now fall under the 'CGC' company banner. Five of them have their own logo now and there are more in the pipeline (toys, concert posters etc): Each still carries the original scales logo though, to maintain the consistency with the overall Certified Collectibles Group companies: https://www.collectiblesgroup.com/companies/ To be fair, CGC have some excellent websites and web pages. They are very slick and full of enticing graphics and moving components. The rolling picture on this home page below is really effective and looks extremely professional: https://www.cgcgrading.com/ As the product line expands, it becomes increasingly difficult to maintain a coherent site map. CGC now comprises cards, videos and games, with more components to come, and whilst each has their own webpage some of them are actually quite difficult to find. At the foot of most CCG (CCG, not CGC) pages you will find these standard links: NGC and NCS both take you to the same page for coins, PMG for paper money, ASG for stamps, etc. The CGC link takes you to this page... https://www.cgcgrading.com/ ...which is different to this page... https://www.cgccomics.com/ ...the CGC comics home page. We're used to that home page, as we are here for comics and that's the home link from the forum: You have to hunt around though for some the home pages that relate to the non-comic CGC product range. Unless you do a separate Google search, CGC Cards for example only seems to be accessible from the 'collectibles we grade' link half way down the comics home page. Now that the forum comprises discussions for all the things CGC grades, perhaps they'd be better off having the main CGC page as the home link, not the comic specific one. CGC are likely in a transition phase, but it can be quite confusing for the customer at present. The logical way forward would be for there to be a link at the foot of every Collectibles Group company homepage which has links for all the various products and not the overarching titles of CGC, PNG etc. which are meaningless and in some cases represent various products. In the meantime, I think it is a good idea to amend the logos to be product specific especially now that 'CGC' isn't just about comics. They've retained the old scales logo and letter font and then added funky product specific wording. Whether you like that font is a matter of taste I suppose but I can see why they're doing it and where they're going. I kind of agree with @Lightning55 that 'CGC Comics' implies that they sell them, but how else could they make the distinction between their various product lines? 'CGC Comic Grading', perhaps?

Of the two, I prefer Mustard Fly.