SteppinRazor

You can. It will never be worth more than just before you drove it home though That I agree. Unless I earned it for you, I couldn't care less if you light it on fire. Even if I did earn it for you, I wouldn't have done so unless I didn't care what you did with it.

You can't say the same thing about a vacation, because your enjoyment and recollection of it continue. A car though, is a depreciating asset.

I haven't lived there since the 90s, but my old LCS was at the corner of Ox Rd and Burke Center Pkwy. They had pretty good back issue selection back in the day.

Yes. Not to be a grammar nazi, but you can't mitigate the risk after the purchase, you can only discover the result of the risk taking. To mitigate the risk, the OP would have had to garner some more information that would offset some of the risk of PGX's incompetence prior to buying it. For instance, insisting the seller sub to CGC, and only then paying for the comic + CGC fee. I suspect that would not have gone over well.

Perhaps this is the root of the flaw in your thinking. How do you know who the submitter is? It may be the seller in this case, it may not be. Second, why should benefit have anything to do with the responsibility of an error? Get in a car accident and no one benefits, but someone pays for their mistake. PGX would not be responsible for the difference in value between a book with missing pages and a book with no missing pages. PGX would be responsible for failure to perform the task for which they offer in exchange for money. Should there be a court case, one would sue for punitive damages and fraudulent appraisal. So you are arguing the wrong thing. That someone would pay an amount higher for a slabbed book than raw, and therefore there is a real value added, is indisputable. Though as above, I pointed out that the market rate for a PGX slab (or a slab) is not what they are responsible for. They are responsible for either fraud or failing to provide the service for which they exist to provide. Again, no one has to benefit for someone to be repsonible for their mistake. And again, you don't know the seller was the submitter. If he/she was, then he/she possibly acted in bad faith, and at the least failed to do their own due diligence, but that PGX acted in bad faith or incompetence is unassailable. They were specifically hired to evaluate the condition of the comic book, and they failed to do so. I did not choose not to address the 'mystery factor' and 'resealable factor', they aren't relevant to the analogy. Why the card pack is worth whatever isn't the argument or analogy. The fact that you cannot verify its contents without destroying the package (you can't crack a slab and reslab the comic in that same slab, and can't reslab for free) and its additive value for whatever reason, is the analogy. I, and the market, am not operating under any erroneous perception. A slab provides physical security for the comic, people in the market value that. The slab ensures the comic within is the very comic that was appraised. People in the market value that. The slab includes the grade. People value that. Those values is absolutely real, and they are demonstrably present and reflected in the market. Interesting anecdote. If a random ebay seller offered a comic and a label and claimed the latter was for the former, would you pay a premium over raw?

The analogy does work, because the commonality is the value attached to the sealed object. You may get 10 mystery cards, but you expect 10 cards, as that is what is on the label. It may be a mystery whose cards are in there, but you expect baseball players' cards in a baseball card pack. An empty slab has no value but neither does an empty yet sealed pack of cards, so that is irrelevant to the discussion. The slab absolutely adds a value, I don't think I need to explain to you why a slabbed comic costs more than a raw comic. If you buy a slabbed comic, and it sells for $50 raw, and $500 slabbed at X grade, and you crack it out to verify all the pages are there, you have spent $500 for a $50 comic. If you then resubmit the comic to get reslabbed, and receive the same X grade, then you have spent $500+say $35 for a $500 comic.

Unless there was complicit fraud in obtaining the grade/slab, it seems to me 100% of the blame lies on PGX. The buyer didn't do anything wrong, either. Knowing PGX's reputation is not equivalent to expecting any PGX slab to have a book missing pages in it.

If you're looking for an analogy, I think this one fits better - you come across a labeled, unopened 10 pack of baseball cards. There is a value attached to it being unopened. If you open it, you destroy that value. You buy it at a good price, and do not open it so as not to destroy the value of it being unopened. You resell it at a profit. Your buyer opens it and discovers that the manufacturer only placed 8 cards in the pack, even though it is labeled as 10 cards. How could you possibly be responsible for two missing cards? I can imagine how much it hurts the OP to have spent this kind of money and have it go sour. But the person who wronged him is not the person who sold it to him. Unless he subbed it and bribed someone at PGX to label it complete.

Not saying it's a good idea, but it really isn't that far from having approved witnesses for SS books.

If you violate the package (slab), then you destroy it, and it's added value. And how do you prove a buyer damaged it cracking the slab? If you didn't crack the slab, how do you know that damage didn't exist before? With your logic, if you buy a slabbed book, and you re-sell the slabbed book, you are responsible for the contents of the slab that you could not open without damaging its value. In essence you are assuming responsiblity for a comic you never handled and never examined.

Some good starting info above. Just be aware, for comics that era and newer, condition has to be pristine, with a few exceptions.

Can't imagine why he'd regret it then

I've never owned anything really valuable. Most is my NM98 and I still have it, but I miss the comics that were stolen that added up to a potential couple grand.

What did you use the cash for?

you know what you did

Marvel had a limited signed copies of 'Fatal Attractions' comics promo w/COA in one of the X-titles, my brother and I ordered 3. Two Fabian Niciezas and an Al Milgrom came in the mail. And once when we were little, my brother got some sea monkeys

That's just mean . Now he's gotta go back out on the streets

For real. Reading it as a whole, it was hilarious to see the OP goad the board, rousing it to wakefulness to see to the heart of the matter, not what the OP intended. Be careful what you wish for.

Great thread. OP poked the bear

Can I have a thread with minimum purchase # of comics? I have a bunch of $1 books that basically aren't worth shipping unless it's in bulk.

Unless you're talking about when Marvel tried to fix that

I did get it hot enough to literally melt the plastic, so those big cracks seem like a manufacture error, or possibly a freeze or hot-then rapid freeze temp change

My experiment was just one. And I was trying to duplicate the big cracks. I suspect with enough trial and error, the right amount of heat may be able to be applied without causing the warp. I'm dubious it would be worth the effort, but you never know what the right time/temp/distance is. It could be stupid easy, and I'm just stupider. I wouldn't take much away from my test other than it is likely a blue hologram was caused by a certain amount of heat exposure greater than most receive. My suspicion is that it doesn't often happen by storage with the possible exception of leaving it outside in TX this past week or so.

That's it in a nutshell. If you want a slabbed comic, someone has to pay to send it in to slab it. It's either you, or the seller of the already slabbed comic. If the seller can't recoup that cost, why would they continue to slab copies of that book, and why should they take the time to slab books? if you want a slabbed book but don't want to pay extra for it, it's equivalent to saying, "hey, gimme $20".

I will get scans/pics sometime tomorrow, A few seconds of high heat from a heat gun approx. 1/2" off the surface was enough to affect it. Furthermore, after taking a look+pics, heat for approx. 1 min was applied, from further away (approx 2", with varying heights a few times). The first, initial high heat close to the surface produced an interesting result. Because the heat gun barrel is approx. 1 1/4" in diameter, I was able to apply heat not covering the whole hologram. The part that got heat turned blue in front of my eyes. With some practice on timing/temp/distance, you could presumably make these, [ETA:but I suspect most of them out there are made by storing in non-climate control.[/EDIT] The reason you need practice is that almost as quickly as it turned blue, it also buckled, so the front cover no longer lays flat. The buckle is in the hologram area itself, not the paper, so no idea if it could be pressed out [Edit: I suspect not, because it is a plastic]. Where the heat was not applied, stayed hologrammic (it's a word now, if it wasn't before. Such is my power). When I lingered for a few seconds, the hologram bubbled, though the bubble faded (I believe it's responsible for the cover not laying flat, but you can't see it once it's cool, only when it's formed under the heat). The second, extended heat application did nothing to discolor the portion of the hologram that didn't initially turn blue. If you try to make blue ones, better get it right the first time. it did turn the majority of the blue to black. Eventually, it did lead to cracks - in the non-blued area only as I concentrated heat there (by not moving the gun, not by geting it closer), but there are small surface cracks, not big cracks as posted above. The buckling of the cover is more pronounced. You can see a few tiny bubbles on the edge between blue/not blue. I'm not sure the pics will accurately show the results due to the swamp gas refracting the light from venus depending on the angle you take the photo at, but hopefully the description provides some insight.