RockMyAmadeus

Chuck's numbers are wrong, and Mr. Nobel is, shockingly, using them incorrectly. And that article reads like a 5 year old wrote it, explaining how he discovered his knees to his mother, filled with the usual errors and assumptions that Mr. Nobel makes on a regular basis, because he doesn't know what he's talking about.. "But now they have reassigned it"...? For example: there were no such thing as "incentive" variants until the early to mid-00's...a decade after Image appeared. So, when Mr. Nobel says things like "There appear to have been two different retailer incentive variants" and "Local comic shop owners who ordered enough copies to obtain the gold or platinum variants", he again demonstrates his ignorance and lack of perspective, and repeats things that aren't true. It is true that there were REWARD variants...but the idea of "ordering enough copies to obtain the gold or platinum variants" is wrong, because there was no mechanism in place for that to be even possible at that time. Remember: this was still the era of MULTIPLE distributors, and the variant market was still in its infancy. There would have been no way...remember, this was still before the internet was widespread, and quite a bit before the comics industry got involved with it...for various retailers, many of whom ordered through multiple distributors, to order books the way orders are done solely through Diamond now. The concept of "ordering incentives" simply didn't exist, nor could it, until the consolidation of distribution was completely by Diamond in 1996-1997. No, the various "golds" and "silvers" and "platinums" and "holograms" were used as REWARDS and GIVEAWAYS, not ORDERING INCENTIVES. They would have been given to retailers or fans who promoted the publisher, or sold at conventions....Steve Schanes, publisher of the defunct Pacific Comics and Blackthorne Comics, ended up with 600 copies each of Brigade #1 Gold (1992), Supreme #1 Gold (1992), Youngblood Strikefile #1 Gold (1993) and Youngblood #0 (1992) that I purchased directly from him in early 2000. Why did he have so many? Was it because he ordered tens of thousands of the regular books? No, of course not. He obtained them directly from Image. They were going to be used as giveaways or sold at the conventions he was promoting in the early 90s. And, when he says things like "What all of this means for the survivorship difference between newsstand copies and the retailer incentive variants should be fairly obvious: excepting accidental damage and loss, it is hard to imagine much destruction or damage to the incentive variants — nobody would have been taking the condition down by reading the retailer incentive variants they bought from high up on the top shelf where comic store owners kept the highest value books out of reach." also betrays a lack of understanding of the comics market of the entire 90s. By the time of the crash, Image still had TENS and TENS of THOUSANDS of these variants hanging around...see: the golds I reference above. Image was NOT staffed by collectors. When Jim and Bill Jay were buying variants from Image for 5-10 cents each in the late 90s, and selling them for $1 each at the monthly Shrine show, and various other venues, those books were BEAT TO HELL. And they were beat to hell because they had been sitting, unbagged and unboarded, sloshing around in boxes at Image's SoCal warehouse, where they'd been since they were printed several years earlier. SOME of the books were still in their boxes from Quebecor, true, and those books generally survived ok...but thousands more had been unboxed and tossed into short boxes, to be taken to various cons throughout the year and handed out one by one. It's how the publishers dealt with these back then, and, to a great extent, it's how they deal with them today. I went to the Diamond summit at C2E2 a couple weeks ago...and I was handed "rare variants", like the Power Rangers #25 variant, and it was not bagged or boarded. Publishers don't care. And, on top of that, when the crash came quickly on the heels of the publication of many of these books, retailers refused to sell them, so they got stuck in back stock, where they, too, ended up getting sloshed around by rotated stock year after year, decade after decade. So, yes, the small portion of those variants that managed to reach COLLECTOR hands in the beginning WERE probably well preserved...but the vast majority that remained ended up getting abused. Mr. Nobel says "it's hard to imagine much destruction or damage to the incentive variants" because he doesn't have much knowledge of the comics industry or its history. Sorry, kid. His ignorance of comics history leads him to make many errors, and he is, sadly, opposed to any debate about it. I do find it hilarious that Mr. Nobel takes it upon himself to point out the errors of other authors, like Todd Allan about Image's exclusivity to the Direct market. In point of fact, Youngblood #1, the first comic published by Image, WAS exclusive to the Direct market. Do not be deceived: NONE of the Image newsstands are particularly rare...there are perhaps thousands to tens of thousands of each issue, lurking in boxes all over the world at this point. Perhaps.....PERHAPS...some of the later, 1996 Image newsstands...are tougher to find....but not a "mere 1%." Chuck pulls that number directly out of his arse, and people quote it as if it's legitimate. It's a guess. It's not even an educated guess, because almost from Day 1, Chuck has NEVER DEALT with the newsstand market. He dealt with the Direct market, and has very little direct experience with how the newsstand worked. He looks at his inventory and makes guesses from that, but he buys almost exclusively from other dealers...stores, wholesalers, or convention dealers. But newsstand copies went to readers, not speculators or dealer overstock. So, newsstand issues...and granted, a good chunk were "destroyed; returned for credit"..were distributed far and wide, one copy by one copy, to people who read them. Retailers wouldn't, in the normal course of events, even SEE newsstand issues, unless someone who bought off the newsstand happened to sell them to a retailer who dealt in back issues. It's why you can find 10 packs of most everything Direct, but very rarely come across more than one copy at a time of newsstands. But that doesn't mean they were destroyed. They exist...they're harder to find, no doubt...but they're out there, waiting to be discovered. One more error of Mr. Nobel's: by the 1990s, especially when Image came about, even those who bought from the newsstands weren't throwing their books away en masse after they read them. Yes, some of them would have...but at that point, even the casual newsstand reader knew that "comics were collectible"...after all, you had Marge Simpson saying to the entire world that "Todays mom knows to seal 'em in Mylar, so you can never read them again, never ever again." So, even if they didn't take collector care of them, they still didn't throw them out, as they would have in the past (which is the main source of retailer inventory of these issues...they were sold to the comic store.) Finally, this disturbing paragraph: As of this writing, collectors have not actually sent in a great number of Darker Image copies to CGC for grading, but perhaps the copy count will increase in the future, on account of the recent change by CGC to their 1st appearance credit… Collectors looking to own the first appearance of The Maxx will see that Darker Image #1 is the book that carries CGC’s 1st appearance credit, and thus will need to own this issue." That perfectly sums up the lazy, uninformed generation of "collectors" that have swelled the ranks in recent years. They don't know that DI #1 is the first appearance of the Maxx on their own: they need CGC to tell them. It's a subtle, but quite telling, distinction. Instead of saying "Collectors looking to own the first appearance of the Maxx will find it in Darker Image #1", it changes to "...will see that CGC says it is Darker Image #1, so they can know what to buy." It places the credit in the notes as the paramount point of information necessary to purchase the book, rather than regarding the notes as supplemental information that any buyer should already know before purchasing the book. It is the cart before the horse.

One of the beauties of the vast wasteland that was the 1990's in comics is that it created a lot of tiny little niches for people to explore, books that would never have gotten produced under other circumstances, which makes the era rich for finding hidden gems like this. Are they worth anything? SHOULD they be worth anything? Probably not, to both questions. It's simply cool to find "something different" amidst the acres and acres and acres of standard comics of the era. People can throw Batman #492 at you by the pallet...but the third printing...? Now it gets a little trickier.

Theories, guesses, anything is welcome. Why did they second print these two? Sales, of course, wouldn't justify it, but collector's packs might. But...at that time, they were already selling 20 packs, so they certainly could have printed enough for those...and the 20 packs contain first printings, same as #12, #11, etc. The original Batman Adventures art contest might have passed, too, which...if anyone cared...might have created a problem for DC...or it might not. They're interesting little relics, aren't they?

Eet'sa Mario!

I love piracy. All the canvas, all the eye patches, all the fancy hats, all the booty, all the keelhauling, all the over the barreling, all the catami...oops. I've said too much.

Same.

Sienkiewicz is NOT pronounced "sink-o-wits." It's pronounced sin-kev-itch.

Must...resist....obvious..."your mom"...jokes...must...RESIST...

I bought 100 of those. I'm gonna be rich.

It's a card they carry in their back pockets, to get all sweaty and bent up during the game, which groupi...er, fans can then pay big bucks to satisfy their perve...er, collecting goals. Everybody knows that.

This was all addressed in subsequent dialogue between Turtle and myself. I would encourage you to read it, if you are interested.

I am "comic-sutra". I suspect that not everyone is of the same opinion as you, but you've had a consistent pattern of disagreeing with my perspectives and the perspectives of those I respect, so this should come as no surprise to anyone paying attention. How do you know what I was "hoping for"...? Do you agree 100% with Turtle's follow-up comments...? That determines your level of intellectual honesty. After all...you DID tell the entire CGC message board back in November of 2016 that anyone who disagreed with you on the hot-button topic of that month that they were...how did you put it...? "Effing idiots", among other things...but you didn't use the word "effing", but the word it represents. It was quite the furious rant, for which you got a well-deserved strike. What is your eBay user id?

Yeah, that would be me. I've been scouring eBay for over a year to find another. No luck.

Is this where I say "exactly." ...?

Welcome, fellow Grammar Nerd! And what is the pronoun for this fourth person...? Agree to disagree...and, since it's a debated topic, I'll stand by my position. Language is, after all, also built on consensus. As I said before, several have tried to make it be...can't blame them for trying.

Good post. To add to that, there's nothing whatsoever with cracking a book out of its case. Aside from SS, which is a whole different beast, there's nothing whatsoever (aside from perhaps the difficulty...the new cases are MUCCCCH harder the break than the old) preventing anyone from cracking out a book and storing it raw. I encourage people who have no intention of selling them to do just that. The beauty of third party grading is...you know what you're getting, and you know what you've got, so there's no need to keep that book "entombed" if you want to touch it. And, as a nearly totally unrelated side, if any of you have never touched, held, smelled, or thumbed through a high grade Silver or Golden Age book...especially a Marvel...it's a wonder to behold. Seeing these books as they were when brand new is a whole different experience than handling the typical G/VG copies you see filling bins at cons. Grab an Avengers #14 in 9.4 or 9.6...or even 9.8...and open it up. Take in the crispness of the book, the smell of the newsprint, the gloss. It's otherworldly. Truly, one of the best experiences in comics. I understand why Chuck was so excited...and everyone else...about Edgar's collection.

Yes, and I don't think anyone thought otherwise. No. The answer is "because of a persistent and pervasive pattern of incompetence, collusion, and outright fraud." That's far, far beyond mere bias. No. The reason PGX grades very differently is because Daniel Patterson 1. doesn't really know how to grade, and 2. has no problem committing fraud. Sure, you can make a chicken or the egg argument...is he biased in favor of submitters so that he attracts business, or does he attract business because he is biased in favor of submitters? The point is, PGX isn't a legitimate third party grader, and never has been. It's not bias that is at work here, it is simple incompetence and criminal fraud. But even he (because Patterson and PGX are one and the same) can't grade a book that CGC would grade 5.5 as "10 Platinum Mint" (which, as an aside, is a ridiculous name.) As fraudulent as PGX is, even he has to follow some market standards. And I have no problem accusing PGX of criminal fraud, and CGC has no problem with their "competitor" being accused of it on their board, either. There's a boatload of evidence, which is why Patterson wouldn't dare challenge it. PGX doesn't give random submitters "gift grades" (although it's hard not to call 92% of their grading a "gift")...he reserves that for the Terence Leders of the world. Or, since grading is, after all, subjective, it stands to reason that perhaps there's different "scoring" simply because different people look at a book in different ways. That would not have prevented the incompetence, collusion, and fraud, however. The reason there is "marketplace acceptance" of what a CGC 9.4 represents is not because CGC can say "it's a 9.4, because we say so." There still are a LOT of people...hundreds, if not thousands...who know perfectly well how to grade. They won marketplace acceptance because they were competent enough, and consistent enough, to satisfy the market as a whole. Again...999 times out of 1,000, I'm going to crack open that 9.4 slab and encounter a book that I will agree is a 9,4...or 9.6, or 9.2, depending on how harshly or softly it was graded...but it won't be a 6.5. That's the difference. I can show you...quite literally...thousands and thousands of books that I have bought over the last 29 years that were advertised as "Near Mint", but which would grade 6.5...7.0...7.5. And very, very, VERY rarely is it the other way around. VERY rarely. Just human nature at work. In other words...the cart doesn't come before the horse. The market didn't just "confer" onto CGC "favored status" just because it felt like it. They had to earn it. And if the market is smart, they will force the TPGs to KEEP earning it, forever.

There are 6 graded copies of the 2nd print? Since CGC doesn't break out the newsstand vs. direct, are they newsstand 2nds? I would imagine they're direct seconds, no? I was the one offering $300. No takers, yet.

1:1000 and 1:500 variants will still be less than 1000 books with those sales estimates. At the risk of being repetitious, that's not how incentive variants work. The number of variants printed has nothing to do with the number of copies an account must order to qualify. They're not tied together. One is simply an ordering requirement, and has nothing to do with anything beyond that, other than establishing a minimum number that they MUST print. It does not have anything to do with a maximum number that they DO print. We know this because publishers who have such incentives have routinely sold and/or given away leftover incentives, far, far in excess of the numbers suggested by Diamond North Am sales numbers. If Diamond reports to Comichron that they sold 56,928 copies in North Am of Comic X #14, and there's a 1:100 incentive variant of Comic X #14, that does not mean that they only printed 569 copies, plus a little extra for spoilage. Keeping those numbers secret is nothing more than a marketing gimmick. In fact, even the store exclusives, which we DO know are specifically limited to 1,000, 3,000, etc, aren't printed exactly to those numbers.

No, I pressed them myself. Onsite pressing isn't the wisest idea. Books can have an unsettling tendency to "revert" if not done properly...quality, not speed, is the goal. That's why the press-n'-dash sweatshops are such a bad idea.

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. 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.

I appreciate that. Thanks.

Yeah, that's on me. You're completely right, I should have taken the time to carefully go through everything, instead of just looking at the BP #1s. Unfortunately, I knew that onsite grading at C2E2 was imminent, and I was really looking forward to getting these slabbed and making some money, while the movie hype was still on. My fault.

I understand where you were coming from, but you know that some people reading here aren't the most diligent in making sure they've read everything through properly, so I didn't want them to get the wrong impression, if I could avoid it. Uphill battle, no doubt. There was even someone conflating two entirely separate situations, because he or she didn't pay attention. I don't. But that doesn't mean I think you're wrong. Your answer is the best answer, certainly, in some, even many, cases. However...this is not the first time I've done this...as buyer OR seller...and I think it provides a great touchstone for people to test their grading against CGC's. And as I said in another thread, I could certainly be way off base in my estimation, too. 14-15 years ago, I sold someone on eBay two raw X-Men...#118 and #128...as "NM+ 9.6." He didn't agree with my grades, so I suggested he send them in to CGC. Now, that does involve some risk, but in that case, I was reasonably assured that the buyer didn't further damage the books, either purposely or through carelessness/negligence. They came back 9.0 and 9.2. In that situation, I'd overestimated flaws (in #118's case, a bit of foxing) that I shouldn't have. And it wasn't as if I was *that* far off...after all, in the olden days, VF/NM or NM- to NM+ wasn't something anyone really made an issue of...but it was a good lesson for me. In the case of the BP #1s, even with the rusty staples, I saw potential. And, I could very well have been wrong, and overestimated those rusty staples' impact on the grades.I paid about $65 a copy for those four copies. "8.0" is about the "break even" point at that price on GPA, when slabbing and other costs are factored in. If I had gotten a 9.4, I would have done quite well...and, if you read the seller's description, he says himself (paraphrasing) "I was going to press these myself, and make a lot more money, but I'll leave that for the buyer." In that case, the seller was admitting to "leaving money on the table"...that's his right, but it's also his responsibility. If I take the risk, I deserve the reward, just as anyone does. In this case, the SELLER was the one who stood the chance to benefit most, because the books had an upper limit grade cap due to the rust. Consider: he'd get 1-4 books that were properly pressed and properly graded; carried to CGC, submitted onsite, then shipped back to him, in BETTER condition than he sold them to me for, without having to lift a finger in the process. He didn't have to stand in line, he didn't have to fill out paperwork, he didn't have to pick up the slabs and send them. And do not forget: had any or all the books come back 8.5 or higher, the seller WOULD NOT be responsible for issuing ANY refund for those copies. Functionally, I would end up paying the full price for those copies that passed, as if the staple rust didn't exist at all. Put another way: I don't think any reasonable person agrees that those four BP #1s were accurately described, and therefore, the price I initially paid was more than they were fairly worth. But under the terms of the proposal I made to the seller, if any or all four books had come back 8.5 or higher, the seller would get to keep the full price I paid for those, even though they weren't worth that. And, if any or all of them had come back 8.0 or lower, the seller would get...without any effort on his part...books that were improved and graded, and even if he had to refund the purchase price for those, he would still have graded copies which he could then sell for a price commensurate with their grade, at a much lower cost than I had to pay. I think, in light of that, that the seller had absolutely nothing to lose, and much to gain. That he ultimately chose the partial refund route was, in my opinion, shortsightedness on his part. And I don't think I am being remotely unreasonable in that regard. And don't get me wrong...in the interest of total transparency, there is absolutely an element of "I told you so" to this, potentially for either side. I can't deny that that element exists, and there's a measure of satisfaction one can get from having your point proven, for the seller OR the buyer. It's an interesting experiment, to be sure, and not suited for everyone. I understand where you're coming from, and I certainly see the wisdom in your course of action. I just disagree that my course is a mistake. I agree that it was a mistake with this seller, or, perhaps if I'd been a little more diligent, it would have turned out better...but keep in mind that regardless of my course of action, the seller still 1. sent out rusty stapled books undisclosed, 2. sent out overgraded books, 3. forgot/did not include 2 of the 9 books in one lot, and 4. sent out a book with a torn out page that was also undisclosed. None of those things could have been avoided by any course of action I took. That I tried to mitigate the loss, for both myself AND him, I don't see as a bad thing. Had I just sent everything back, I would have lost all the time I had invested in those transactions...and counting pages is a chore, let me tell you!...and had nothing to show for it...even though I hadn't done anything wrong. The seller would have gotten the books back to sell to some other sucker, er, customer, and perhaps for potentially more, and would only have been out shipping (which he wouldn't have been if he'd accurately described the items he sold.) I like to think this alternative is a way in which both the buyer AND the seller can benefit...the seller by keeping the sale, and the buyer by potentially making something more out of it, if possible. Rather than both parties losing, and the buyer having nothing to show for it, it's a chance for both parties to gain. I count a LOT of pages... And let me be perfectly frank and clear: I so, so, soooo much appreciate that you care enough to offer your perspective. Nobody has all the answers here. We need people to bounce ideas off of, and part of the reason I expose myself to the potential scorn, contempt, and mockery (and you've seen some of it here) is because there are people like you who are intelligent enough and willing to offer a different perspective, in a calm, rational way, to perhaps consider things that neither party had considered, or even to articulate and reinforce good positions and opinions. There are a lot of people who would love to seriously discuss these issues with like-minded people, but the troll crowd makes it so difficult, they just decide it's not worth it, and we get endless pages of " +1 " or memes or dumb jokes. I wish the troll crowd was better controlled, but that's the way it is. It's an effing risk, putting yourself out there. There are always people with bad motives, looking for anything they can latch onto to take someone they don't like down a peg or ten, if they think they can. In this case, I had considered it and don't agree, but that doesn't mean there isn't something I can't learn...and in the process, others too...only fools think they know everything. And if we don't agree, at least we got to hear each other's perspectives and motives and reasoning. So, without blowing too much smoke up your arse, I thank you.