Stefan_W

Just picked up a collection that was mostly mid to lower grade books. Mostly bought it for the ASM 129 but there were a few other goodies in there.

I'm in

Shipped out today, June 29th. Fingers crossed that the fourth time is the charm with these books!

Kudos to CGC for taking action. One element that makes this complicated is that the scam extends beyond CGC. From what I understand, some people were doing pre-orders on Ebay which has a limited time for refunds. I remember doing a pre-order from a different seller on Ebay and even though he may have been legit (still no idea about this) I cancelled the order when it was pushing up again the max window for a refund. While most people are honest, and just want to get by, there are always people out there trying to scam a quick buck.

2 book ME marked at arrived at CGC on June 14 and SFG G/E/I - June 27 Q/C - June 28 Super fast for an ME, which is great. These are the books I posted about in another thread that have now gone in for the fourth time with the same issue, and where I was charged for shipping but given a credit for it. Fingers crossed that the spotting on the back is fixed, which required swapping out the inner plastic sheath.

I am not complaining about it, but this is 100% what I use graders notes for. If I can get a 9.2 copy of a book with fixable defects, and there is a big enough price bump for a jump in grade, then I go for it. Crack and re-subs are a bit of an addiction for me.

I picked up an interesting collection a couple of days ago. Tons of Tomb of Dracula, a full run of Jonah Hex, piles of Wolverine, Weird War, and Vampirella. The dude knew what he liked. It was mostly without bags and boards and kept in regular boxes as well, so not much in the way of clean copies. Nothing horribly valuable but still a cool collection with a lot of very solid books.

Sorry to hear about your loss Mike, my condolences to you and your family.

Just to switch things up a bit in this thread, a 20 book submission came back to me today. There were no crack cases or newton rings, and only one scratch on the exterior of a case that I was able to buff out with a product in about a minute or so. I believe this is the first return without an ME in the last 8 or 9 submissions, which was awesome to see. I dont know what is happening behind the scenes but it seems like things may be improving.

As a Father's Day gift my wife agreed to let me set up a comic wall in the basement in my comic work area. My goal was to do it for about 20 bucks and I found the basic idea on YouTube. Step one was to mark out the wall area. I was using J-Tubes which come in 12 foot lengths that I cut in half, so the big decision was between two or three rows (I went for three) and the tape marks different layouts. Putting the first one on was the toughest. Had to make sure everything was level, plus I made jigs out of cardboard at 13 5/8 inches. I put in wall anchors where there was just drywall and I made sure I had a few screws going into the studs, which I marked out with painter's tape. It was pretty much a steady stream of swearing at this point which is my usual work process. After struggling a bit with the first ones the others went up relatively quickly and easily. The entire process took an hour or so. The last step was putting up some comics. I dont have lighting set up in the right way yet and was getting tons of glare so I just took a couple of pictures at different angles. Next steps are figuring out the right lighting and probably doing some painting. Yeah, I should have painted first but I just wanted to get this done so it is what it is for now. It was a bit over 20 CAD but made it to around 20 USD so I will call it a win.

CGC has been absolutely flying lately with return times, but FedEx is totally crapping the bed right now especially coming back to Canada. It took a week for them to get this order to CGC, and now on the return trip the package has sat in the same spot for three days and counting. The shipping to and from are actually going to take longer than the entire grading process including the time it took to open the box, which is completely absurd.

This is so true. I have owned many copies of most of the SA keys and they don't really get me excited anymore. Once I hit about 50 or so I find myself selling off my PC every couple of years and starting fresh with different books. I get bored with the books I own, sell them off, pick up different books that I think are cool, and lather-rinse-repeat.

Thank you Mike, you are the best!

Yeah, I had good luck in general with CCS when I used them and the results were roughly in line with any other external professional presser. The only weird part of that I experienced was with a group of early TMNT books that I sent in through Comic Link that graded out way lower than I expected. Not sure whether it was super tough grading or bad pressing (those books are basically printed on toilet paper) and there was no way for me to check carefully since they went straight to auction, but I was getting 8.5s and 9.0s on books I was expecting 9.4/9.6/9.8 on.

Yup. If I had to guess, I believe this is because I am in Canada and FedEx charges a processing fee to handle customs on International shipments. I get dinged about the amount of the charge (approx $40) each and every single time I send books to the USA including to CGC. So when CGC did not cover the cost of shipping they also indirectly did not cover this. I could be wrong, but I am pretty sure this is what happened.

To add one fine point to what everyone else is saying, if you do a pre-screen the rejected books will come back in the bags you sent them in. They will have a sticker on the front that identifies the book which means the bag cannot be re-used but the board can.

Sure thing!

Hi Mike, I may need your help with this one. When I contacted customer service they told me the $80 charge was all for shipping and they gave me a credit. However, I woke up this AM to find a bill in my Inbox from Fedex for shipping charges for the ME. Not sure what this is about, but I cross-referenced the tracking numbers just to be sure and yup it is the same one. I am not sure what to do about this one since this bill is from Fedex not CGC, but I was not supposed to be billing for this since it is an ME.

Nice book! A press would fix up a lot of the wrinkling and such on the front and back cover, but likely will not improve the grade much if at all. I would do it simply because I have a press and nicer looking = better to me, but if you are paying for someone to do it for you an argument can be made either way.

I always appreciate your help, thanks Mike! In this case it is under control for now.

In this case the online submission form was filled out I believe 5 days after I got the books back. I may be off by a day or so, but it was definitely under a week. I was charged anyway, and when I called the customer service rep immediately saw the error and gave me a credit for the charge. I was initially very upset, but it was dealt with promptly so all good on my end. I do agree that some things may need to be ironed out with this new policy, unless I am the only person this has happened to in which case it was just simple human error.

I was not, but as I said earlier I am planning on sending in another submission shortly so it made no practical difference to me. I cannot say one way or the other what would have happened if I pressed for a refund.

Funny you should mention this - I just set up an Instagram account and am posting some pics there. I figured I was missing out on a potential selling stream. The reality for me so far has been that it is awful to use (have to re-do each scan in a different program to make it look good) and I have the joy of trying to build an audience there. I would be thrilled if I ever sold a comic in that format, and I am pretty resigned in that my sales will come from Facebook, Ebay, and in-person comic shows in that order.

Things went fast today. QC - June 15 Shipping scheduled for June 16 This is my second fastest submission missing my person record by one day. Super fast!

If you want to believe that it is your prerogative, but being reasonable is not a sin.