Stefan_W

I guess I am old fashioned, I still have my tried and true Facebook comic group and I am not even on Instagram. I do know people who have done very well with selling comics on IG, and it is a fantastic option for people, but I really dont want more social media in my life. 

On 3/17/2022 at 8:26 PM, comixry said:

Based on some of the TATs posted here, I think I can get an estimate of when my books are coming back to me (+/- a few days). The only bad news is that I may be out of town when they arrive due to a trip planned way before these TATs were off the charts. FedEx online manager doesn't allow me to change the delivery instructions once its out CGC's door because the sender, CGC, requires the signature and if a 2nd attempt of delivery is made and no ones home, FedEx states that they will ship it back to CGC. Then I've got to pay shipment twice, and risk damage to the shipment with all the back and forth.

Has this happened to anyone and/or know of a way I can set up my delivery to arrive later when I get back? Would CGC be able to hold off on the shipment once I see that it's in GEI status (just before SHIPPED status)?

If FedEx is the same in your area as mine you can get them to hold at a location for pickup. Assuming your trip is not super long that should do the trick. 

On 3/17/2022 at 3:26 PM, Tnexus said:

Looking back at the last two in this thread, there was a Mid-August submission that got graded late Feb. The second was also from Mid-August and just got returned last week.

Mine are from 11/12 and still SFG.

So I probably have 30-60 days left for mine.

 

Mine are 11/11 so we are pretty much back to back. 

On 3/17/2022 at 2:25 PM, Sefageus Magnipab said:

It's not Tier + 30 business days?

It is now, was 15 when I submitted. 

Does anyone know where things are at with modern pre-screens? I have a shipment of moderns heading back starting today, and my pre-screen moderns got to CGC about 4 days ahead of the other group. The web page said 15 working days at the time for pre-screens, but some people have said that the pre-screens have been taking much longer. 

On 3/16/2022 at 5:37 PM, ADAMANTIUM said:

How'd you do? Or will you peek?

I was pleasantly surprised twice as many times as I was negatively surprised, so I am calling that a big win. The only downer is the biggest book that I thought was flawless ended up at 9.6 instead of 9.8. C'est la vie. 

On 3/16/2022 at 9:12 AM, Stefan_W said:

16 Modern slow track:

Arrived at CGC 15 Nov 2021

SFG 15 Nov 2021

G/E/I 16 Mar 2022

Grades are in and it is marked as shipped for tomorrow.

This is a special one for me. Up to now I have always submitted through a presser. This time I pressed and submitted my own books. 

Awesome!

Some modern books are really good. When I returned to collecting comics after many years I went straight back to collecting Star Wars, and I found a lot of the modern Star Wars (especially Darth Vader) books were amazing to read. There is definitely some good stuff out there.

On 3/16/2022 at 9:12 AM, Stefan_W said:

16 Modern slow track:

Arrived at CGC 15 Nov 2021

SFG 15 Nov 2021

G/E/I 16 Mar 2022

Shifted to Grading/ Quality Control 16 Mar 2022. That was fast. 

16 Modern slow track:

Arrived at CGC 15 Nov 2021

SFG 15 Nov 2021

G/E/I 16 Mar 2022

On 3/15/2022 at 10:15 AM, greggy said:

Thank you so much, this is very helpful!

On 3/15/2022 at 10:03 AM, Pontoon said:

I can't tell whether you are being serious or sarcastic.

Just to be clear there was no sarcasm in my reply. 

This particular Ebay scam has been going on for weeks. The person or people behind it use the same big books as bait, same photos, new accounts with zero feedback, and usually try to direct people to sites off ebay for direct sales at a discount. You see it a lot with EoSV 2 Land Variant and books like that. I started off reporting them when they popped up, but Ebay only took some of the bad ads down and eventually I gave up since it was turning in to work for me. Besides, Ebay should find a way to be more vigilant to prevent stuff like this to begin with. 

Sorry you got roped in to it, and I am happy to hear you are getting your cash back. I am sure insurance companies backing paypal and credit cards are the ones losing cash on this in the long run. 

It happens when you use the wrong type of backing boards when pressing. The BCW ones are fine, the other types typically have a pattern that presses into a comic book. I found that out the hard way the first time I ever tried to press comics on my own and used the mylite full backs that I had handy. It was a mistake I never repeated. 

The good news is that the pattern presses out really easily. I re-pressed the books after picking up some BCW boards and it completely removed the pattern. 

On 3/11/2022 at 1:04 PM, ChrispyC66 said:

 

Modern 25 books - Prescreen (No CCS, No FT)

• Delivered to CGC (FedEx Gr.) - 6/23/21
• Received/SFG - 8/20/21(D + 41)
• G/E/I - 03/10/22 (D + 172)
• GQC - 03/11/22 (D + 173)
• Shipped - 
• Delivered - 

Eeep, the extra wait for prescreens seems to be longer than what they say to expect. 

My two cents added is that there is more to the equation, at least for me, than just the costs. Space can be at a huge premium especially if you are talking about graded comics. So it may make sense from an investment standpoint to get more books that are lower graded but if you are talking about potentially dozens or even hundreds of slabs you need to have lots of room to store them and a very forgiving spouse. From this perspective it may make more sense to invest in one expensive 9.8 book over several lower graded ones. 

I guess a second two cents (three cents?) is depending on the book you are talking about it may be difficult to resell lower graded books down the line when you want to cash in on your investment. When you send books to auction keys that are in high grade typically push the fair market value at the time while lower graded and less valuable books, especially non-keys, can sometimes get poached at a fraction of value. So if you are planning on making the books an investment for your family to cash in if something happens to you (which I do) it makes a lot of sense to distill a bit and trade a lot of lower value or lower graded books for a single higher end one. 

I hope this helps, and best of luck with whatever direction you choose to go in  

On 3/9/2022 at 12:44 AM, ComicFill said:

CGC saved the comic collecting hobby in my opinion. Without grading companies I don't think we would have nearly the interest there currently is.

This is true as far as it goes, but I would also add the impact of the Marvel movies has made a massive difference. For good or bad, the success and continued of the MCU has pushed the comic market from being largely flat to one where there is continual growth at least in some titles. 

On 3/8/2022 at 9:27 AM, october said:

Hmm. I never found a way to just permanently block sellers from every search. I had to block them manually for every search. I got around it by just saving each seach as a bookmark.

Permanently blocking some of these guys would be awesome though. 

That was a long time ago. I have been on Ebay basically since the site started. I am in Canada, and the best days were when the Canadian Dollar was above the USD in value and you were still able to declare things as a gift to avoid any type of customs fees and taxes. Those were the days. 

On 3/8/2022 at 8:56 AM, october said:

I am still able to exclude sellers. Advanced search > by seller > exclude. They changed the location or something. I had to redo all of my saved searches a month ago and it was kind of a pain.

 

I believe you have to fill that in every time though. You used to be able to block sellers and none of them would appear in searches. So you could block however many bad sellers and the process was automatic that none would show up when you did searches. 

On 3/8/2022 at 7:10 AM, theCapraAegagrus said:

When was the last time that eBay changed for the better?

Truth.

Some changes were for the better. I still remember buying items on Ebay and the seller keeping the money and simply not sending, and I am glad they fixed that part of the process. The automatic return regardless of why they have now leads to abuse though so I cant say it is completely fixed. 

IMO, the worst change they made is no longer allowing people to block sellers. I would love to be able to block sellers who I know I will never buy from and focus on search results that I am actually interested in. I complain about this every time they do a survey and ask for feedback. 

On 3/7/2022 at 8:35 PM, Bird said:

getting a little demanding now as well

My question was literally the topic of this thread. 

Did anyone have any slow track moderns ship out today? If so, when did CGC mark them as received?

I know mine are getting close and I am checking more often now. 

People are practical, and many are sending in a lot of books right now because it benefits them to do so. As long as the math works people will keep doing what they do, and more power to them. 

The two things that would make a substantial impact on the number of books being sent in are: 1) a market dip where there is an overall price correction, and 2) CGC raising grading prices to a point where it no longer makes sense to send in many comics (e.g., doubling or tripling their current pricing across the board). 

On 3/3/2022 at 6:48 PM, DocSaum said:

Side question and for the peanut gallery too: when you submit for a re-grade do you crack it out yourself and just submit again or submit in the slab and have it regraded? I ask because I think it’s the former but I’m always afraid I’m going to damage the book if I crack it out myself. If it’s the latter, the paranoid spidey sense I have feels like they’ll just give it the same grade if they know what it came in with. 

I cracked myself. I did not want them to use the original grade as an sort of basis for the regrade. 

On 3/3/2022 at 3:37 PM, skybolt said:

Looking at my 2 recent slow modern submissions I'm actually shocked at the grades received. I typically on average get 60 to 70% 9.8's, but only 3 out of 43 books came back as 9.8's. Either I'm losing it or grading has gotten super tough. Anyone else experience anything similar? Even the 2 batches graded last week that were sent it at the same time came back at 50% efficiency. There's no way my grading fell of the cliff like that. Whomever was grading these was looking for perfection.

9 of my last 13 CGC submissions had grades I was roughly expecting, and the other 4 were totally hosed by the grader. For one of the hosed shipments I re-subbed 6 books that were originally graded with four 9.2s and two 9.4s, and with no addition press or anything the second time through there were three 9.6s and three 9.8s. 

So about a quarter of the shipments were destroyed by impossibly tough grading. I figure maybe it was new graders trying to show they are tough or something like that.