wardevil0

My favorite part of this one is everyone calling out the "1st appearance" note without noticing the title on the label is "Caliber Presents." It's just another swapped label, not "CGC making up its own data."

This your personal copy? Love the star stamp on the CCA seal! Don't see a lot of those in high grade from this age.

I'd also like to point out that creating a "new language" by designing new letters and then doing a one-for-one substitution is the laziest and stupidest way. Krakoa speaks English with a cereal-box decoder ring.

For the purposes of data accumulation, for what it's worth I unpacked a box of moderns two days ago with a stamp "inspected by QC #6" that had zero Newton rings, zero hairs, zero plastic shards, zero label errors even on some fairly obscure independent books. #6 gets a thumbs-up from me.

Too long since anyone's posted, so here's one of my recent returns. As I remember the story, this was supposed to be "NHS goes to the movies," with parody stories based on popular movie franchises, but the printer wanted to experiment with 3-D printing, so gears shifted and here we are!

I don't think there was ever anything that "caused their fall," so much as there just wasn't anything to boost them up at a time when McFarlane Spider-man, Liefeld X-Force, Lee X-Men, etc was capturing headlines. The biggest hype I remember was the "New Fantastic Four," but that just made it more disappointing when they went back to status quo ante.

There was a time when yellow labels were recognized reciprocally, but that time is passed. There were reasons given, but it seems like rivalry was the main problem.

Some modern throw-back sci-fi content from Antarctic Press...

This one is so nuts I have a low-grade copy on my desk at work...

Steve Englehart?

Here's another general question about NG... would it be possible to add a custom cover to a coverless comic and get it slabbed as that comic, but with a reproduction cover attached? For example, this guy: Doctor Strange Custom Cover Project creates new covers for the early Strange Tales issues that featured Dr. Strange but had covers that emphasized the other stories. If I had a Strange Tales 110 without a cover, and I put this cover on it, would CGC slab it as a Strange Tales 110 (NG), or not slab it as a counterfeit?

Adding a cover to an interior would get you a numerical grade, which I guess is "higher" but it would also (almost certainly) get a purple "restored" label for a "married cover." This would probably sell for higher than a coverless NG, but by how much would depend on the actual condition.

I've had a ME reholdered on-site, but maybe that's a different category to them, and it was several years ago. I'm sure they're less interested in using some of the limited number of empty slabs they brought with them for reholdering vs. full grading submissions. Worth asking, especially on later days of the show when they have a better idea of how many submissions they've taken in. All I've ever seen is cracking open the outer case with a screwdriver and cutting out the inner well with a box cutter. I think there are some examples of possible gouging damage done to comics in the opening process here in this thread. Also, I think "your mileage may vary" is the most important caveat to this thread. There are lots of recurring issues, but the odds of a successful transaction are hugely in your favor. I agree the odds should be higher, and so many times there doesn't seem to be a justifiable reason for the damage. An extremely low likelihood of negligent damage to a one-of-a-kind comic is still too high, and just because I've rarely had any issues doesn't mean the issues aren't valid. But, the fact remains that I submit between 50 and 100 comics per year and I don't think any of mine have plastic shards or hairs inside, and definitely none are upside down. I did have some that were mislabeled, but were easily corrected as ME. I guess my point is, more than 40,000 people died in car crashes in the US last year, but people still drive cars. If you want to submit your comics, go ahead. Is there a chance something bad might happen? Definitely. Should we be agitating for higher standards? Definitely. Am I going to keep submitting for myself? Definitely.

It's an error, but not like most people consider the term when it comes to comics. As far as anyone knows, ALL the J. Scott Campbell cover issues came like this. Now, if they were to recall, pulp, and reprint it with a corrected title that might be interesting.

I'd like to see what he thinks is a 1st print... only the platinum edition?

Couldn't resist. 'Tis the season, after all...

Yeah, the "triangle numbers" basically gave you the reading order for each calendar year for Action Comics, Superman, The Man of Steel, and other Superman-centric issues. That's also why there's a "1998" in addition to the "Feb 98" release date. Pretty good idea and lasted for several years, but took a lot of editorial oversight.

But... why would there be a pool of blood dripping out of the camera lens...?

Kind of sad, really... his best-known works are "homages" to better artists but redone as grotesque. Q: "What are you known for?" A: "Well, here's the iconic McFarlane Spider-Man 1 cover (but as a zombie), here's the iconic Brian Bolland Killing Joke cover (but as a zombie), here's the iconic Jim Lee X-Men 1 gatefold cover (but as zombies), here's the iconic Alex Ross Harley Quinn cover (but as zombies)... also my family invented New York City!"

Just unpacked these last night from a drop-off at Baltimore Comic Con on Halloween weekend... adding these 15 gives me a total of 86 of the original 0-175 issue series in 9.6/9.8! Add in the additional continuing numbers and my few 9.4s and I'm over half way there. I have just a few more in the pipeline at CGC, and the hunt for high-grade raws continues!

I think my main disagreement lies in the scale. I have a few copies of Previews and Amazing Heroes etc that I'd like to get Sig Series, but the idea of paying $2k+ for one of these items, as referenced earlier, seems over-hyped and over-priced.

But this is exactly what a lot of us are afraid of when it comes to "overhyped and overpriced" being bad for the hobby at large. It only takes a few sales for something to be expensive because it's expensive. People (speculators, investors, influencers) see a high price paid by a few individuals and propagate that high price throughout the market. For most major keys, the reasoning for its value lies in its contents (first appearance, iconic cover, death of a character, etc) but for some of these "overhyped" candidates the value lies only in its previous perceived value. This is expressed as Goodhart's Law: when a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure. The measure of a key used to be the significance of the issue which was reflected by the steadily climbing aftermarket price as more fans wanted the issue, but often now a comic can be considered a key because the price has already skyrocketed without regard to the significance. This is why people have to use KeyCollector or GoCollect or whatever to tell them which modern books are rising in price; otherwise there's no real way to know. Those of us who collected through the 90s should understand this. Gimmick covers (with higher cover prices to inflate the revenue), first issues of new derivative series (that often were also gimmick covers like Punisher War Zone, Force Works, Silver Sable...), overextended events (Clone Saga, X-Cutioner's Song...), multiple monthly price guides who each had to try to outdo each other with their own "hot 10" list (Wizard, Hero Illustrated, Comic Values Monthly, Overstreet Fan...), and new universes emerging fully formed without natural development (Ultraverse, Comic's Greatest World, Triumphant Universe, Tekno Comics...) pumped up the bubble until it burst. It's basically a Ponzi scheme that eventually leaves someone holding the bag, and that someone will likely have a lot of unsellable copies of modern variants, non-continuity preview appearances, and independent series believed to be "the next Walking dead."

I set up a FedEx account for this purpose, but still wasn't able to make any changes to the delivery instructions.

As I understand it, the credit is in your CGC account, so if the billing office charges you when you have a credit, the credit will be applied first. If you have submissions in progress that have already been billed and you get a credit, you do not get a refund on the current submission (because it was billed before you had the credit).