SteppinRazor

2 hours ago, Jordysnordy said:

A few things. Not sure why you assume I have been giving out the name by PM. Just because the box has been sent it doesn’t mean that it hasn’t been tampered with - I doubt it but after all I have been through I want to be sure. Once Randall safely has the books things will become clearer. The boardie hasn’t made a post in over 10 days - I am monitoring him to make sure everyone else is safe. Lastly, as I have stated, is that once the books are safely returned to Randall, whether I agree or not, he has successfully completed the transaction and from what I understand wouldn’t be PL worthy, because that is for getting incomplete transactions completed and not about punishment or calling people out for bad behaviour. It has been suggested to me that I canvas discussions by posting in the Probation Discussion thread and put a link to this thread there with a recap of this thread and let everyone weigh in on whether it is a PL issue or not.   Rules are in place for a reason and just because it seems he didn’t follow them or that his actions have been shady, it doesn’t mean that it’s OK for me to do the same. Yes it stinks.

I inferred you had based on reading the thread, which I did after the fact, not in real time.  It appeared as people were asking for the name and you replying, 'pm me' that you were answering in private. My apologies for misunderstanding, I may have read it differently had I not been catching up.  I completely understand waiting until a resolution, I would just consider it resolved once the box is in the air.  That is, if it's full of newspapers, you have a conclusion.  if it has the comics in it, you have a conclusion.

@skypinkblu is absolutely correct, we can wait.  Also correct both that the PL may apply as you haven't recovered shipping, and that it is community-policy.  I think that the purpose of it is to give both parties a chance to put forth their side of a deal gone south and to let the community know that a) that has happened, and b) decide for themselves if the instance merits dealing or not dealing with a party.  It's a venue for those who feel wronged and those who do not feel they have wronged anyone, to present their cases and to seek resolution.  It's not just a check box of parameters IMO.

In any case, I hope that the solution you have found works out in your favor as best it can.  It really sucks that it happened, and it made more expensive and complicated by shipping from Canada to here.  Good luck

2 hours ago, Jordysnordy said:

Yet another update - box - that I hope contains all of the books  - has been sent to Randall with the tracking number.

Randall with send me a picture of the box when he receives it so I can look at it and make sure it is the box I had sent and that it has not been opened/tampered with.

Every and I mean every PM has been replied to.

Thanks for all of the support. This truly is a great community we have 

Now that you have a tracking number for the books being sent, is there some reason you are making everyone pm you for the boardie's name?

We all make transactions on this board, and have the PL list and HoS, to protect each other as much as ourselves.  We rely on feedback from each other. If we don't help one another by supplying information, both good and bad, then we don't support the community. The only person who is helped by not being named publicly, is the shady boardie.  It doesn't help us.  It doesn't help anyone who hasn't read all of this thread.  It's one thing to withhold a name to give the person a chance to resolve the situation.  That ship sailed.  It's one thing to wait until the goods are in the air so to speak.  That ship's sailed.  What we are left with is what seems to me an unnecessary hoop to jump through, which not everyone will, that partially shields a buyer who is clearly one for which people should be forewarned.  Not on a case by case basis, but forwarned for all to see.

Thanos is a greek name, pronounced Thah' nos (short o, hard s)

57 minutes ago, RockMyAmadeus said:

But they are accurate. A third party grading service has no fealty to me, as either a buyer OR a seller. That's what makes them unbiased about that transaction. Nobody is totally unbiased...but in regards to a transaction between myself and another party, they have no...or, very little, to make a concession to you...interest, direct OR indirect.

Yes, we can get into the philosophical weeds about how they are indirectly biased because if a seller doesn't make a certain amount of money, they're not going to submit as much, so the TPG has to err on the side of the sellers. And I do not deny (though the TPGs certainly would) that that is certainly a factor to contend with. But you're missing the point: the goal is mitigation, not perfection.

And if a TPG is looking at a book, and a finalizer says "well, this could be a 9.4, or it could be a 9.6"...and a consideration is made in favor of the submitter, even unconsciously...the fact is, the situation is mitigated, and we're talking about MINISCULE differences in condition....not the massive differences that existed in the days before third party grading, where Seller X says "this book is in perfect Mint condition!" and there's an ad page torn out, or it's been slightly trimmed, or there's a coupon clipped, or the spine's been color touched, or the staples have been cleaned/replaced, or there's a 5 inch NCB crease that you can't see, etc etc etc.

Even more reason, by the way, for the inclusion of 9.7, 9.5, 9.3, etc.

They aren't grading the transaction, they grade independent of transactions even taking place.  But that's not what I meant about their bias.  What I mean is, if you ask yourself why PGX is so poorly thought of, the answer is their bias.  PGX's business model is vastly different than CGC's.  That leads PGX to grade very differently.  Different scoring by different companies shows that whether they have a dog in the fight in any one transaction isn't of consequence to the numerical value assigned. 

What is of consequence is how collectors respond to their service.  That is where CGC's value is.  Collectors want less risk.  To mitigate risk, they collectively agreed that an entity consolidating a score of condition is worthwhile.  They may not be able to tell why a comic is a CGC 9.4, but they know what it represents.  They don't have the same relationship with PGX because they often see PGX grade at a lower standard than CGC.  PGX could've and probably should've just gone with an entirely different scale, like SAE v metric and make everyone do a conversion.

7 hours ago, RockMyAmadeus said:

 

Since everything material (and much that is immaterial) that is possessed by another has value by virtue of its possession, then that everything has a cost if someone else wishes to obtain it. 

You say "no TPG exists without a profit motive"...but motive for what kind of profit? The value of the TPG is that they have no direct interest in the exchange of the items in question. They are unattached, and therefore, unbiased. They are not in favor of the buyer, and they are not in favor of the seller. Because they have no direct interest, they can offer a fair, educated opinion on the condition of the item in question.

 

These aren't accurate.  Being unattached to the particular transaction does not mean they don't have their own bias, just that they don't care about a transaction.  They can have their own goals that may influence their grading.

gocollect.com is a good resource to look up what comics are being slabbed and what their ebay sales data is.  I'd start there for what to slab.

8 hours ago, LordRahl said:

There is a difference between an objective opinion and objective measurement. Where did anyone ever say that 3rd party grading was an objective measurement of condition? Given that grading is a subjective exercise, you are talking about an impossibility. 3rd party grading does solve the problem of an objective opinion however.

And just how does 3rd party grading set a price floor? 

There's no such thing as an objective opinion.  Opinions by nature are not objective.  An objective measurement is precisely what a numerical scale, say between 1-10, with .1 increments, is intended to measure.  Your given, that grading is subjective, is due to a - human nature, and b - impossible if the criteria is secret (a condition that is proprietary for a reason).  I happen to agree with your given, which is why I think CGC both offers stability, and yet does not offer what people assume it does.  it is essentially a group agreement that an assigned number corresponds to a particular price, whether one X.X comic looks better or worse than another X.X comic.

3rd party grading cannot solve 'objective opinion' (the idea that a 3rd party has no dog in the fight so to speak) because the buyer and seller may evaluate a particular condition differently from each other and/or the third party grader.  Rather than provide any clarity of objectivity, what 3rd party grading does, is provide a score that is popularly (ie the populace in general) accepted.  In that case, the commodity is not only the object to be purchased, but also the number assigned.

It sets a price floor in the sense that one will not send a comic in for grading if one does not believe it is worth the cost, and one will not accept a value for an encapsulated comic equivalent to the same comic in a non-encapsulated form (unless forced by market forces).  IE, you wouldn't sell a 9.6 graded comic for the same price as a raw comic.  That only happens with misses, and even then, the inflection point for that is mostly lined up with a relatively high score in the high value comics.  There might be a point where a raw NM98 meets a high grade encapsulated, but for most comics that aren't major keys, the slabbed v raw price will never be close.  Ergo, a graded comic will usually go for more than a raw.  It's natural for that to be the case, as the submitter has made an investment, and the investment is printed on the plastic case that the buyer knows the cost of.

5 hours ago, RockMyAmadeus said:

So, it's understandable why you would think that there's a problem, but that's not what third party grading is supposed to do at all. Grading is subjective. It always has been, and always will be. The purpose of third party grading...or grading by committee, as BB puts it...is that it removes the motive for the first and second party (the seller and the buyer) to overestimate or underestimate the item's condition...and thus, it's value. That ensures a measure of objectivity in the process, but the act of grading itself is not objective, because grading is subjective. What bothers one person may not be an issue for another. That's true of graders as well. The point is to come to a consensus among educated graders, whose opinions are informed.

I don't think there's a problem, any time the buyer and the seller disagree about the condition, a problem occurs (without a grading service).  The grading service in fact does not solve that problem, even though it exists, as you say in the bold, to provide objective measure used to determine value.  But, what it does do is provide consensus, as you said (I would say though that informed buyers as opposed to educated graders are the consensus that applies).

Note that this is not a judgment of whether CGC is good or bad or 3rd party grading is good or bad, or effective or not.  It really does not matter.  What matters is that the market - informed buyers - agrees the assigned number has a particular value.  If tomorrow all informed buyers agreed that CGC was no better than PGX, everyone's slabbed CGC values would drop to align with PGX slab values.  That's all that really matters.

3 hours ago, RockMyAmadeus said:

What, in your opinion, is that problem?

 The problem it's supposed to solve is objective measurement of condition, represented by numerical scale.

It provdes stability to the market despite not doing that by providing solutions to other problems, some of which @blazingbob posted.  The existence of 3rd party grading also sets price floors.

On 3/3/2018 at 5:17 PM, nepatkm said:

I'm liking the recent Punisher: War Machine arc, anyone else reading it?

 

 

 

Funny, looking through my old What If?s, Punisher was War Machine in the What If Capt. America founded the Avengers story, so I guess this is the second time he's been War Machine

I don't think CGC solves the problem it's supposed to, the one RMA is extolling, but it is a stabilizing force for online purchasing.

12 minutes ago, jsilverjanet said:

The question is not about demand. These books will be in demand (well maybe) and I’m not interest in high grade. Plenty of books are scarce in high grade. I’m curious if the book will ever be considered scarce. Like bababooey said maybe the answer is no. Maybe it’s never. Maybe 1 million copies is just too many copies to begin with 

I think it is far more likely that demand will die way before the comics do.  Copper/Moderns are eras after the idea of them being collectible existed.  They were bought and bagged/boarded new.  Kind of like baseball cards too.  Kids used to stick them in the spokes of their bike wheels.  Comics in the Silver age and before weren't considered valuable, other than for the kids who swapped them with friends for other stuff.

No, I think there won't be a scarcity of Copper/Moderns, as too many people had already realized they were of value.  There would need to be a lot of throwing away of comics that people just don't do as much anymore

1 hour ago, Bomber-Bob said:

Very true. I always say, all the good stuff is gone before they open the doors to the public. You can only hope to find something they missed. We have two big conventions a year in Chicago and I always used to go to setup day but I think I have given up, too frustrating. Too many others have the same idea. Last time, last year, I walked out with nothing in hand.

Isn't it up to the vendor to decide if he/she wants to pre-sale items on set up day?

23 hours ago, jaeldubyoo said:

I don't think you'll be able to get those people to step into a comic shop, no matter how well-lit, clean, and organized your shop is. Some people are perfectly content to order TPBs off Amazon or order digital. A lot of readers do not enjoy the experience of going to a shop like most of us. The internet has changed the way a lot of people get their comic fix. All you can do is try to make the experience enjoyable for those that are likely to go to a shop.

yeah, one complaint in there was that people were in his way.  How is a store owner supposed to keep someone from standing in front of a box and browsing?

My last completed steel sculpture

This one's called Harvey's Influence because my shop flooded when hurricane Harvey hit, and the bottom foot or so got rusted.  It hadn't been painted yet, so I left the rust on and painted the rest.

9 hours ago, shadroch said:

CGC can not be happy that their customers are being abused like this. If only there was something they could do about it.

There is.  They can revoke their status as an authorized delaer

36 minutes ago, shadroch said:

 

You should have turned to the guy and said "I'll take your offer, just let me finish paying for them first."

My hope is that the seller did the right thing here.

6 hours ago, FineCollector said:

I'm still waiting for someone to explain what "paucity" means...

It's a synonym of dearth

I thought it was more a question about effective use of space and quality of container, so the room in which they are stored doesn't look like a stock room.  If there's enough interest in that, I might be able to design a steel box to put them in.

On 3/13/2018 at 1:51 PM, EngineJoe said:

What you got left bud?

Everything that's listed in the first post of the thread is still available.  I'll be closing this thread soon, as I just don't have time to scan and post on a reasonable time table to keep it alive.  When I get some more time, I'll start anew.

Thanks for the interest!

Prints certainly seem worthy enough of their own thread.

1 hour ago, speedcake said:

Give me all your drek

Careful, ask and ye shall receive

9 minutes ago, Aweandlorder said:

Ghost Rider #1 fetches anywhere between $5-25 today. You will have no problem getting 10 bucks for a 9.6-9.8 raw. X-Force 8 & 11 are solid $10 books, Some New mutants btw 85-100 (excluding the big ones of course) are solid $10 books in NM... Newsstand image books are all the rage... Plenty other examples

Maybe just not here then

Still say drek should be sold, not stored

Dropped the Ghost Rider lot on pg 1 to just GR#1

3 hours ago, FutureFlash said:

I think they have run out of ideas for new characters with new power sets

With the parent companies, there's no incentive for a creator to create someone cool.  Unless a creator feels like Disney could really use a few bucks since they hardly have any, so gifting them a new property is just being nice

No one seems to want my X-Force or Ghost Rider stuff, so I don't get your point of reference, but it seems like just being a way station for drek is still a good idea.

A better question would be what to do with keys that aren't major, like Batman 497. 

Isn't that Weapon H?