Stefan_W

No, he is just being a MR..

Same issue with submission tracking but I did not think much of it since I figured it was hurricane related.

I hope everyone in the area impacted by the storm is all right and stays safe. Scary times.

I have a pile of books in the current auction along with Oct and Nov, and yeah "bloodbath" is the perfect way to describe the ones that ended so far. I sent them all in hoping to roll smaller books into a grail but if they all end at a full third below value I will end up with a lesser book than I had hoped.

I think this is a big improvement. I have sent in a lot of news stand and Canadian price variants, and up until now they have made the notation on certain books and not others. This creates more consistency and acknowledges that a group of collectors hunt for news stand copies. I also like that they will be split out better in GPAnalysis moving forward since some "big sales" in certain books were just news stands that hit the market.

This is exactly right. When comic prices were going up and up in 2021 I sent in a lot of books that were "heating up" on the hot comics lists. By the time I got them back most were already well on the way to decline and I doubt I will see my money back on them. I think the best bet on those types of books is a quick raw sale that can be pulled off before people lose interest and move on to the next spec book. Live and learn. On the topic, IMO it is really easy to fall into the trap of assuming the market will stay the way it is. So in a hot market it is easy to assume it will keep going up, and in a sluggish market like we have right now there is probably a tendency to assume it will keep dropping. The people who do the best will ride the highs and lows and focus on the bigger picture and long term trends.

A few select goodies from a long box of comics I just bought.

Found this group at a garage sale earlier today. Most have three hole punches and "6c" written on the cover, but it is what it is and I am just happy to pick up a few more silvers.

Thank you as always for your help, it is greatly appreciated

This one is confusing. It was sent in a 9.8 pre-screen submission and it came back a 9.6. I assume this means that it is a 9.8 since it passed the screen and someone keyed it in wrong in the system which also shows 9.6, but it could be something else. I got 24/25 on this pre-screen and every other book was 9.8, and the one that did not make it had a miniscule flaw so it was actually probably a 9.6. I'm not sure what to do about this one. I think it should be sent back as an ME but I could be wrong. Any recommendations @CGC Mike?

18 Reg track moderns SFG - Sept 2 GEI - Sept 8 QC - Sept 13 Lightning fast turnaround time!

Ruh roh raggy. Both of my shipments that are en route have been delayed with new TOAs of Thursday, which is one full week of travel to get here. The odds of all of them arriving intact are ranging from slim to none. Hopefully the damages will be minimal.

I agree 1000% with this. I spend thousands last year using "quick press" options that did not repair minor issues that I do now in under 2 minutes. A quick press is just popping a book into a press with no work done to it at all, and as such it does little aside from cleaning up wrinkling in the middle of the cover and stuff like that. It is a total waste of money IMHO.

After pressing my own books for a year now I found the biggest benefit is being able to see the books after the press. Sometimes things come out that I dont expect to come out, and other times things I thought would come out actually dont. Another big plus is no one is ever going to take the care with your books that you do. I pick at mine, sometimes putting books into the press two or three times, unless I get every flaw out that I think I can possibly fix. I learned by buying a Heatpress on Ebay (and more recently a second of the same press on Amazon), and watching You Tube videos. There are a lot of tricks with older books but I find new ones are pretty straightforward. The 6th comic I ever pressed in my life was an EoSV 2 and I got it up to a 9.8. And I have saved thousands in pressing fees in the past year alone. My only regret is that I did not set up my press earlier and that I wasted so much money paying people to do what was mostly pretty easy work.

In previous submissions I always screened books prior to pressing and then checked them over after pressing them out. More recently I added a step at the end where after I get to 25 books and I am ready to ship I pull out each book again and check them carefully under some really good lights that I use for finding ticks and flaws. I basically graded them myself as though I was a grader looking at the books for the first time. What I discovered was that about a few books that I initially thought were 9.8 candidates had flaws. In those cases I either pulled the books or I pressed them again and checked to see if that fixed the flaws. It is a bit time consuming and it is not all that fun to look that carefully at the books so many times but the results are there. I went from getting about 17 out of 25 on a 9.8 pre-screen up into the 20s.

It is the amount of 9.8s. I just had a shipment graded where I got 20/25 9.8s and I was not all too pleased with that results since I triple and quadruple checked each book before sending them in. I have to see the books again to confirm, but it looks to me like I got one of the really tough graders even though the overall percentage of hits does not look too bad from the outside.

Group of 18 regular track moderns Entered into the system and SFG on Sept 2 Moved to G/E/I today Sept 8

This is now showing in the system as being in QC, and I got 20/25. I am disappointed with that but I will hold off judgment until I check out the rejects.

I called CGC today since these books looked like they were stuck in G/E/I, and I was told they were graded already and hit quality control today. This is the first time this happened to me, but for some reason it was not updated in the system so I could not see the movement (they are still showing at G/E/I). I am not waiting for the charges to hit my Visa so I can see how many books passed the pre-screen. Hopefully they provide tracking info and update it once the books are through QC and shipped. Side note, the customer service people are always awesome. I do not envy them their job since I am sure they deal with a lot of angry customers. But they are always cheerful and pleasant when they talk to me (and I to them) which is greatly appreciated.

The 8/8 pre-screen was just marked as shipped for tomorrow, so will probably get to me early next week. Shipping over the weekend to Canada is always a bit dicey, and hopefully FedEx does not give it the full gorilla treatment this time. Fingers crossed 🤞

24/25 on a 9.8 pre-screen, this is a new record for me I modified my process a bit and it is already showing results.

My theory is that at a certain point, probably G/E/I, books move from the general queue and are assigned to a grader. Some graders may be faster than others, and sometimes they are sick or on holidays or something like that, so the last stages can move at different speeds depending on which line your books are in. But who knows for sure, I am just really happy that things are moving so fast right now.

This is odd, but not complaining. My 8/8 pre-screen modern just hit QC, but my 7/19 pre-screen modern is still in G/E/I.

I will if it stays there a couple of more days. We just had the long weekend which could have had an impact.

Hmmm, my 7/19 pre-screen modern group is still in G/E/I.