Petroman

There are a few books on Amazon that are worth checking out if you're interested in the pressing and cleaning process. The Jacob Gadbois book has been very informative. I have been pressing books myself long before the book came out but its always worth looking at the pressing process that others use. There is definitely an art to pressing, which is why I'm always quite skeptical of someone offering a "quick press". Yes, a quick press can get out very simple defects like light finger bends, but many other defects require far more time and attention

Always tough to maximize profit, especially with inconsistent grading. Will definitely require more effort going forward to research what each book sells at across various grades and then building submissions that set the minimum thresholds appropriately. Kinda sux that you can only do the pre-screen for 25 book submissions and that all the books have to have the same minimum but it is what it is. I would *really* hope that CGC has some audit process in place where if say 80% of the books screen out in a batch then an extra set of eyes gets involved. If they don't have this, they certainly should.

Sorry mate, didn't read it that way at all. But regardless, I still think the 9.8 grading experiment is worth it. Or maybe a little lower depending on the books submitted. I've sent in too many books that I expected 9.8 or 9.6 at worse that come back as completely worthless 9.4, 9.2, 9.0...etc. I'd rather get my book back for an $8 fine than get is slabbed at a horrid grade that means I'll either CPR it or dump it for a loss. Personally I'm looking to downsize my collection from the 70's - 90's but it really sux selling a book that I've kept for 30+ years at a loss.

Why the heck would you hope that your books were damaged during shipping??? I'd much rather pay the $8 reject fee and get my books back unharmed than have them damaged and facing a difficult insurance claim (especially books targeted for 9.8's). I seriously doubt the shipper would give you anything if the receiver opened them without reporting a problem with the box.

25 book Modern Slow Received & SFG: 5/16 G/E/I: 7/23 Shipped: 7/26 Grades were pretty spot on for what I had written down in advance so my hats off to the grader! These were mostly Marvel books from 1978-1993 with a few DC's in the mix.

I'd say the reality is that there is no way to predict when you will get your books back. It's quite possible that the 6/10 book could move to the Grading/Encapsulation/Imaging step in the very near future, and its probably equally as possible that it could take another month or two. I personally have a MODERN submission that was received and went to SFG on 5/16 and hasn't moved since. But I've seen others showing MODERN submissions from June that have already been shipped back. The inner workings of CGC are very opaque, but many have surmised that books in the SFG status have been assigned to a specific grader and are thus in that grader's "queue". Some graders are faster than others, so the time in the queue varies. Anyway, good luck with your subs and hope you get them back in a timely manner and with the expected grades!

CGC certainly keeps us guessing as to how their internal processing works! My slow boat modern from 5/16 still sits in SFG while others received in June have already been processed. Maybe it has to do with the types of books submitted? Mine was mostly early 80's to early 90's stuff. Maybe those books go to different graders than more recent books? Who knows and there's not much you can do about it anyway.

So it does seem possible that using PRESCREEN will speed up the grading process, huh? My MODERN sub received 5/16 has been hanging out in SFG for 2 months now, but looks like a prescreen from a few weeks later has jumped the queue. I've been planning on using prescreen anyway for newer books to avoid getting a bunch of worthless under-graded slabs back, and if that ends up speeding up the TAT all the better.

FWIW I have found that the longer the TAT on MODERN books the better (i.e. more reliable) the grades. Others have speculated that each grader has a queue of books, so maybe this explains it. The better, more senior graders take longer to grade books and thus come up with more accurate grades. Will be interested to hear how you guys do grades-wise on these submissions. Good luck!

Ouch! Those are brutal, and costly, grades if you were hoping for the majority to be 9.8's. I'm planning on using the pre-screen option for all of my expected 9.8 MODERN submissions going forward. Getting them back below 9.6 is frankly just a waste of money, and even at 9.6 I'd just prefer to leave the books ungraded and maybe submit down the road if they appreciate. I figure worst case you end up with $200 in screen-out fees if the entire 25 book submission kicks out, but I'd rather lose the $200 than blow $500+ on books that I'll have a hard time selling.

ROTFLMAO! Thanks for the Friday humor!

ECONOMY with CCS! You must be a very patient person!

May 2021? Wow. I can maybe see it taking that long if they went to CCS first, but otherwise I'd be pretty worried if I were him.

How were the grades? My recent experience has been the faster the turn around, the worse the grades. Hopefully this was not the case for you!

I think the only time a submission minimum is 25 is if you add in the pre-screen option. WRT the maximum, yeah they can only fit 25 books into a box so that's why the broke it into 2 submissions.

Yes, this seems to be the new process where they charge you immediately upon entering the order in the system. I think the only exception is if you add the pre-screen option.

I have never used pre-screen but plan on doing so for my modern submissions going forward. Especially those that need a 9.8 to be worth it. I was always put off by the extra processing time, but it seems that it may not really affect the TAT much and with their new up-front charging when received it has the added benefit of moving the charge out closer to the date you will get the books back.

Completely agree. If you compare a Modern 9.0 vs. a Silver Age 9.0 it wouldn't even be close. That same Modern would likely be a 9.6 or better if it were Silver Age. The same can probably be said for Bronze and Copper age books but I think the differences get less extreme.

Its possible that they revert back, or that they were just never completely pressed out. Because of the curvature around the spine of the book those ticks can be difficult to press out. Sometimes you need to use a heat sealing iron to do it, but I don't think your typical "quick press" is going to go that in depth.

Honestly I think the book was fairly graded. It was an Excalibur Special Edition #nn that was pretty darn near perfect. Submitted 2 copies that were both bagged and boarded back in 1987. They both had an identical production error light scuff on the back that I was afraid a new grader would hammer. The other copy came back as 9.6 and had "fingerprints to cover". I didn't see fingerprints on either cover but it is a pretty busy cover so I probably missed them. In any event I feel the grades I got on this batch were consistent with the grades I used to get prior to 2021. I am hopeful this will be the trend with submissions going forward.

It was a square bound prestige format book. Not high gloss, but definitely a little glossy. I guess the fact that both defects were "very light" was minor enough to allow for the 9.8 grade. I'm hoping that the grading eases up enough to get back to the point where a 9.8 does not have to be a mint condition book. This MFT submission took about 1.5 months to process whereas my prior ones were done in about 2 weeks. My guess is that I got a more experience grader on this submission and thus the extra processing time and more accurate grades. The grades on my prior two MFT's were pretty . I'll happily have them take the extra time versus rushing the books through and getting low grades.

Best grades I've had in over a year. All pre-1993 books, 8 x 9.8 and 2 x 9.6. Oddly enough one of the 9.8's had grader notes. Never seen that before. "very light fingerprints on coververy light spine stress lines to cover"

And my magical day is today...

Agreed, and really in the case of something with a third party certified grade, Ebay should remove neutral/negative feedback that has to do with the questioning the accuracy of the grade. It might be worth asking if they would do this (although I must admit I have never had much luck dealing with their support people).

That's ridiculous. The grade speaks for itself otherwise why the heck are we all wasting so much time and money grading books? You didn't come up with the grade, CGC did. If their standards have changed its certainly not your fault.