jimbo_7071

Putting Mickey Rooney picture on comic subtitled "Short Story Comics" is blatant discrimination against vertically challenged people. That wouldn't fly today.

In this hobby, that would be par for the course. Most of the guys out there now make Jay Maybruck and Ernie Gerber look like campfire girls.

63 from 1949 to 63 from 1949.

Tied up woman in a red dress with an old man in white clothing to same.

Doubtful. Kept pristine for 75 years by someone who loved the books, ruined in 30 days by Heritage and their gang of well-dressed scumbags.

Mitch, we all know that if a 7.0 book is sitting in a 9.0 holder, there are people who will blithely pay a 9.0 price for it. We've all seen it too many times to count.

It's too bad we can't be talking about what a nice collection was found. Unfortunately, the chicanery overshadows everything else. And it appears that many of the books, like the Subby and the Sun-Girl, were ruined by pressing, so the collection sustained more damage in the past month than it did in the previous 75 years.

I'm wondering whether what CGC did with these books rises to the level of criminal activity. It seems like there must have been some kind of sweetheart deal between CGC and Heritage. There's no other way to account for the grades. Books with corners ripped off getting 9.0 grades? Really? Overgraded books are common enough, but I have never seen this many books this overgraded. It might be a difficult case to prove in court, but I don't think it would be impossible. It would require a lot of effort to educate a jury, that's all. The company that owns a stake in CGC consistently seems to get the loosest grades. Smells like collusion to me; it could even be a RICO case.

Very, very likely.

Stream of light energy to stream of electrical energy.

It's a shame. I would have loved to bid on some of these books if they had been graded accurately. As it is, I have no chance of walking away with any of them because my valuation will be way below that of people who are bidding based on the label.

At least you have one of your own. I heard that Gary Carter and Dan Greenhalgh have to share a Gimp Box in Bedrock's basement.

There's no rush in bringing it to market. I still have a small coin collection that my great-great-grandfather put together over 100 years ago. I'm not sure why people are assuming that the collection ever has to be sold. Unless you find yourself in dire straits and need the money, just keep it!

Quite a few Mile Highs have dust shadows. If they were going to penalize dust shadows severely, then they would have had to penalize many of the Mile Highs severely. That just wouldn't do. A dust shadow is a type of stain, so that example should be a wake up call for people: grading is all about CGCs bottom line. They're in business to make money. They're not in business to protect the integrity of the hobby.

Yes. It's been obvious to me for a long time that "gift graded" and "submitted by Heritage" are synonyms.

They used to have three graders grade every book, but I thought I read somewhere that they were down to two graders per book. Do you know whether that's true?

If that's a 9.8, then I need to resubmit every one of my 9.4s.

That's the thing about highest-graded copies: they're not always the most desirable copies (except to narcissistic collectors who want to feel special). The Fiction House books are good examples. In many cases, the highest-graded copies don't have particularly good colors. Sometimes highest-graded copies don't have perfect registration, aren't squarely cut, etc. Many of the Harvey File Copies are highest-graded copies despite having poor page quality.

I agree—although I don't share the perspective of those willing to pay massive premiums for single-highest-graded copies. For me, grading is a little too subjective for that to make sense. (And for some collectors, it seems to be more about narcissism than it is about an appreciation for the books.) I've done it once or twice due to impatience, but I'm nearly always happy with a VF copy of a book regardless of how many nicer copies are out there. Are you in the process of buying the Mile High Timelys, West? If you are buying them, are you going to slab them? It will be interesting to see how many highest-graded titles are claimed by Promise copies versus Mile Highs. It'll be the comic book version of Friday Night Fights. The Mile Highs might have a bit of a handicap considering how over-graded the Promise books appear to be.

I wouldn't order anything raw from them. This book was advertised as a 9.0: And this one was advertised as a 6.5: I only ordered one other raw book from, and I sent it back because it was so obviously overgraded. They're zero for three with me—three strikes, you're out.

Comfortable to uncomfortable.

I'm not sure the sale of a single-highest-graded copy would pull up of the value of other copies. The opposite might be true. The previous highest-graded copy is now the 2nd-highest graded, etc. I firmly believe that many of the nicest copies of GA issues are still raw and locked up in 2nd-owner collections that were built up in the 60s, 70s, and 80s, so I've always considered the census something of a dog-and-pony show, anyway.

My 8.5 copy (which is unpressed) also has a bit of color breakage along the spine; I think that was common for the Holyoke cover stock. However, if I compare that book to mine, I would say that the grades should be the same. I don't think that mine is undergraded—I would have given it an 8.5, and that's what I would have graded the Promise copy. Is that because HA gets special treatment, or is it because they submitted the Promise multiple times until they caught a break and had two easy graders look at it? Only HA knows for sure.

Ummm . . . Captain Kirk's kidney stone sold for $25,000, so I think Batman's testicle should be worth at least $50,000.

I have yet to find any undergraded books in the auction. I find them often enough on eBay—never on HA. Heritage may simply re-submit tightly graded books until they get a gift grade. Resubmissions pretty much demolish the law of averages because tightly graded books get resubmitted but loosely graded books don't.