Stefan_W

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.

The guy I get supplies from has been trying to get these for months, and now that they are back in stock he was warned that only one side is white. Gerber told him it was to keep the costs down plus they could not source the proper materials.

My two cents - Currently red labels are sought after by collectors like me because at the time they were holdered very few people pressed comics before sending them in. So a 9.4 red label can potentially get a bump by cracking it and pressing it out. Like you, I also have a couple of red labels that are 9.8s already so I just leave them in the holder. Others in this thread are talking more about the value of the red labels as scarce items, and that is something I have never heard of. There is no intrinsic value that I know of for red label slabs as hard to find items. To the best of my knowledge talking with other collectors the desirability is all about being able to crack and re-sub with a decent chance at getting a grade bump. No one that I have heard of collects old style CGC slabs for their own sake, although given how diverse the collecting community is it would not shock me if such collectors are out there.

I do this quite a bit. I sell off extra books at an auction house and bundle the credit together to buy books that I really want. It is a great way of making purchases without giving the visa a big workout.

Accidental damage almost never happens so extremely low to nothing. Wrt to turning 9.6s into 9.8s it really depends on the reason why it is a 9.6. If it is a dent that does not break colour I get those out pretty much every time. Some other flaws may take multiple presses to get out, and a few simply will not be fixed. The single biggest benefit to pressing my own comics is that I can check a comic after the press to see if it came out as well as I hoped. I have learned to be absolutely ruthless when looking at my books after pressing, and I create my own reject pile with books that I initially thought were good enough to send in.

Yup, as a matter of practice I press everything before I send it in. No point in paying for reject books that you will just press and re-submit later. Full disclosure though that I press my own comics. The cost of having someone else do it would completely change the math.

Not a comic per se, but I did up my game by adding three of these stands to use at upcoming comic shows. I set only one up to road test the new setup and I think it is going to be amazing. Excuse the back lighting in the photo but I had to use the great room for this and it is what it is.

Another group of 25 9.8 pre-screen books moved today. SFG - Aug 8 2022 G/E/I - Sept 1 2022 My last pre-screen batch has been sitting in G/E/I since Mon so I think it will be a few days yet before this clears, but still a great sign that everything is moving quickly.