Stefan_W

Part 1/2 I have cracked open a few books with bent inner wells and I am finding the same thing every time. With the goal of sharing with those who are here looking for info, here is what I saw with a Werewolf by Night 9 CGC 9.4 (cert number 4426121019) which was graded on 5 June 2024. I just cracked this open a few minutes ago and took some pictures. Apologies that some of the pictures suck but it is hard to get good images with my phone. It is especially hard to take good pics of ticks so you will have to partly go with my description. Please note this book was purchased as a crack and resub that will eventually go into my PC. I will post the grade after a press and resubmit down the road if I remember to do so. - The inner well had the "u" bend where top and bottom curved upwards - There was a pronounced tick at the bottom of the top staple (circled in image) - When you look up the cert number that tick is no where near as pronounced - I removed the inner well and immediately took a photo, and it shows that inner well is still bent - When I removed the comic from the inner well the comic itself was bent, but not to the same degree as when it was in the inner well - After removal from the inner well the tick at the bottom of the top staple reverted to looking more like what is in the cert lookup photo, and was far less pronounced than when the book was in the inner well.

I just had my latest pre-screen submission come back to me and here is what I am seeing. I realize this thread is sometimes fact-resistant so mostly posting this in case someone comes here looking for actual information. - 23/25 in this submission hit 9.8. - All 23 books had the bend inside the case. - 20/23 books were clean copies with no ticks, and they look perfect so no damage done. - 3 books had very small ticks that I knew were there. - One book had a tick closer to the spine, and the bend did nothing to make it show more. It is exactly as it should look. - 2 books had ticks close to the middle of the spine. They were both a bit more pronounced by the bend, but they were tiny to begin with so you still have to turn the slab in a bunch of different directions to see one of them them. The other was slightly larger and can be seen if you hold the slab close up, so not ideal since it removed the positive effect of pressing. - If I didnt specifically look for the bend I would have seen nothing usual about the slabs that came back. But for context this is a high grade submission and more noticeable will react differently.

I dont completely disagree with the sentiment, but the total yearly dollar figure for comics I sell on Facebook is greater than the amount I sell on Ebay and Comic Conventions combined. A decent chunk of the older-skewing comic demographic is very happy to buy their stuff there, and selling there is perfectly fine for now.

8 book High Value submission Aug 5 - Arrived at CGC Aug 13 - SFG Aug 13 - Credit Card charged for submission

The trick is to put the tip of a flat head screwdriver onto the top seal and tap lightly with a small hammer until it cracks through a bit. Then just turn the screw driver until you crack the seal and proceed as usual from there. I find it takes a minute or two longer than it used to. The part that prevents tampering is it is impossible to get the inner well out without mangling the case. I am not sure what you mean by major warping. Since you crack cases you can see how little room there is in there, and the significance of the bend is limited by the freedom of movement in the case. If you are referring to cases where ticks look worse or the book looks like it hasnt been pressed, none of that appears to be permanent based on the limited number I have cracked so far.

When you ship to the PO box it is still delivered to CGC even though USPS is odd about how it shows up in their tracking. Boxes are currently taking over a week to open which is the lingering effect of San Diego Comic Con, where they are slammed with submissions.

They are still slammed in terms of opening boxes mailed to them. I have a couple waiting in that queue including on that got there a week ago.

True. But I have worked on books that have been bent for longer than that which ended up with no structural damage. Sorry, no need for spoilers since I have dealt with thousands of books like that. If you want them to lay flat again after that point you can either press them (the fast way) or put a stack of heavy books on them (the slow way). Or, and this is important, if the book is already in a slab you can keep it there and it will stay undamaged. Whether a person opts to do so will likely depend on how it looks. The specific trouble is with instances where the book looks worse or like they have not been pressed even though they have. This is the very specific issue that is going to arise from all of this and the solution space is a matter of picking your poison. If CGC does nothing their brand can take a hit and they will likely lose customers, but if they do ME returns on undamaged books it will be extremely expensive and hard to justify to the shareholders. I wouldn't want to be the one making that decision.

It is referred to as building a straw man argument, which happens when people want so badly to disagree that they make up extreme positions that no one is actually taking and then argue against those positions. No one is taking the stance that people send books in to make them look worse. No one wants their books to look worse. No one wants their books to look as though they have not been pressed after spending money to have them done. But if people acknowledge those basic things then they don't have an excuse to get angry on Internet message boards, and then where would we all be.

I crack a pile of slabs ever week or two in order to do crack and resubs. These more recent books are a tiny part of the market so I have only done a couple so far, and I will wait to do more before saying too much. But spoiler alert - so far (and things may change), I have not seen anything was I not expecting.

This is what I said in point form: - The timing suggests it may have had something to do with changes made to the cases following the tampering incident - To avoid further tampering, cases were beefed up by having them sealed all the way around - What may have happened is during the process of cooling a vacuum was created which bent the inner wells (I used the example of canning where the tops pop when jars cool) - The amount of space within a case leaves a small amount of room for the inner well to bend and that amount of bend does not create new ticks in the books I tested - The amount of space within a case provides enough room to make existing ticks look more pronounced - People pay money to make their books look good, so the fact that bends can make them look worse is a problem that needs to be fixed.

The worst part is he would have been better off actually acknowledging my posts. His approach was to take a book and bend it a bit, which is fine for most people and keeps the flow of the story he is telling moving. But not all flexes are equal and it is extremely important to get it right. I measuring everything so I made sure the amount of bend was correct, and when I test further out of curiosity damage started to occur on books with about a 1/4 inch more bend. So we are fortunate the cases do not have much room on the inside. In any event, you cant convincingly show all of that by just bending a book a bit and saying "nope, no damage."

When you actually examine the flex the case allows the small bend does not damage the book but makes it look worse, and because people are paying to make their book look as good as possible when grading it needs to be fixed. Gee, I wonder where I have seen that take in this thread. I do give him credit for calling out all the people who hate CGC that sit on these boards, wait for whatever issue to come up, and then glom onto those threads making dozens of posts trying to knock the company. That part was pretty funny.

I am holding onto my copy for now. The market is down on this book at the moment but I am expecting it is surge again at some point in the not too distant future.

25 book Modern Pre-Screen submission July 16 - arrived at CGC July 23 - SFG July 30 - G/E/I Aug 8 - Quality Control Aug 8 - Credit Card charged Aug 8 - Category column updated And Shipped - Aug 8

25 book Modern Pre-Screen submission July 16 - arrived at CGC July 23 - SFG July 30 - G/E/I Aug 8 - Quality Control Aug 8 - Credit Card charged Aug 8 - Category column updated I ended up with two rejects out of 25 books and each those books was a hail Mary to begin with so all good.

25 book Modern Pre-Screen submission July 16 - arrived at CGC July 23 - SFG July 30 - G/E/I Aug 8 - Quality Control Aug 8 - Credit Card charged Based on the charge looks like 23 or 24 made the pre-screen. Happy with that result.

25 book Modern Pre-Screen submission July 16 - arrived at CGC July 23 - SFG July 30 - G/E/I Aug 8 - Quality Control This one is a bit strange. The status flipped to Q/C but there is no change to the form yet (normally the Category is populated at this stage) and my credit card was not charged right away. There must be a lags in other places in the system as the glut of books clears through. Very happy to see movement though

I was watching this one. A 9.6 copy of X-Men 266 with the Mark Jewelers insert just sold for $1499 (add 3% for fees). I noticed through a GPA check that this exact comic sold at My Comic Shop on 6 May 2022 for $1975 (GPA has the sale $2034 so that must include fees). That seems like a pretty big hit but it could have been worse - the bid amount doubled in the last ten seconds of the auction. A part of what made this interesting is Mark Jeweler books were a part of the switcheroo scam, and it is interesting to watch how the community now reacts to these books even though copies like this are not tainted. I feel this was a pretty strong sale all things considered, but the seller who just lost a few hundred bucks on their investment probably disagrees with me.

They do include signed books in the census, but they are not differentiated by who signed them. This is likely because it would make the census look extremely messy. They could do a separate page for signed copies which would allow more space, and it would be fantastic to see how many of those sigs are Stan Lee, etc.

My suggestion is tracking a label notation rather than changing it. Currently Mark Jewelers inserts are noted on the slab but there is no count of how many graded copies exist in the census. Since "Mark Jewelers" is a part of the cert lookup it should be possible to scrape these and gets counts of MJ copies across grades per book. This would be helpful since it would highlight the scarcity of these copies for assorted books and grades.

Yeah, exactly. I lump all of that into a general category of supplies that I do not want to have to re-buy.

My wall display would hold them. I have seen the types of walls that people who do shows a lot use and it boggles my mind. I do two shows a year and I use industrial stuff that can take many, many times the weight I put on it. Had no idea that these cases can't fit into existing boxes - that is a show stopper for me since I do not want to have to buy specific supplies if I do opt to try them out. This is my off-ramp.

Thanks Allison! I don't personally have any vested interest in it being in one category or another, and the cost is the same. I was just hoping to avoid delays that could come up if it makes it's way to the front of the wrong line.

When I called customer service on Mon I was told my books have already been graded and are in the queue for encapsulation. I was thinking about this type of delay and the only things that make sense is a machine being down or out of service due to something faulty happening, or a gazillion SDCC books being graded quickly and jumping the line. The optimist in me is holding out hope that delays are due to fixing an issue.