Happy Noodle Boy

I actually really like Kirby's work on ASM 8; it's my favorite of the single-digit Spideys. Pete punches out Flash Thompson, insults the Human Torch and leaves Sue Storm a valentine made of webs! Great issue.

You know, I never realized just how bad that drawing of Spider-Man was on the bottom of the cover of the first Fantastic Four Annual. The worst Spider-Man I've ever seen. Was that Kirby? Or did he just draw the Sub-Mariner section at the top?

I've always believed pressing is restoration. CGC can't always detect it, so they decided it isn't restoration. But I think it is. As for slabbing -- it's never been my thing. I like being able to look at my books. It has always surprised me that CGC has been so successful with slabbing comics -- I had assumed that it just wouldn't catch on because comics aren't like stamps or baseball cards or coins. Who would want to slab a comic book when that meant the inside pages couldn't ever be viewed? I was wrong.

I generally agree; most of them are all about the latest key issues based on the latest MCU rumors, and they treat comic books like stocks. But I found one great channel that doesn't treat comics that way, but is instead about the pure love of reading comics. It's called Old Guys Who Love Old Comics and it's hosted by Jason Mink. It's just Jason introducing you to a different stack of comics every video, opening them up and talking about them. He has no CGC slabs; he doesn't care about condition at all. He just likes reading the books. You never know what kind of comic he's going to pull out of the stack. Gold, silver, bronze; superhero, Archie, horror; Marvel, DC, Atlas, Charlton, Gold Key, Whitman, Dell. Watching him has really revitalized my collecting and reconnected me with my love of comics.

I'm not a person who submits to CGC or buys many slabs, so forgive me if this sounds naive--but maybe CGC could offer a discounted rate to anyone who wants to get any CGC book reholdered and regraded?

There's enough money involved here that I can see some people filing lawsuits against CGC if they refuse to take any sort of action. People have apparently been scammed out of thousands of dollars.

With all the ideas presented in this thread for new measures CGC could take to make sure this doesn't happen again, the cost-per-slab to CGC needs to be taken into account. Because any security measure expensive enough to significantly increase the fees to slab comics could result in CGC losing business. And CGC has to take that into account. I don't send books in to be slabbed, but whatever the price is, if it were to, say, suddenly double due to new security measures, that could lead to more casual customers deciding to stop slabbing their books entirely.

As I said on my previous post, a human being could flip each of the pages and the computer could scan and grade them. The computer wouldn't need to be housed in a robot that handles every single step of grading and encapsulation. Human beings could do the physical work (handling the comic, encapsulating the comic) while the computer scans pages and assesses condition. This would save CGC a ton of money in the long term ( no more having to scour the country looking for people who know how to grade and are willing to do it all day long) and it would eliminate subjectivity in grading.

Aren't there computers in hospitals assisting in surgeries right now? A funnybook just isn't that complicated, man. Maybe CGC (or whoever) would need a human being to turn the individual pages and set them up to be scanned, but that's about it. Sure, they'd have to teach the AI to grade first, but there are zillions of examples of graded comics for an AI to learn on.

Exactly.

Yeah, this is a big, complex, tangled-up mess. All I would realistically expect from CGC now is "We're looking into it." Especially since it's the holidays. It will just take time.

The idea that actually reading comics is somehow "elitist" is the stupidest thing I have ever read on this board.

I used to watch Automatic Comics and Swagglehaus, but I got tired of their flipper-focused content; they treat comics like stocks. The one comic-focused youtuber I follow is Jason Mink, whose channel is called Old Guys Who Like Old Comics. He's an old guy (well, in his fifties anyway, like myself) who likes old comics. That's it. He pulls out eclectic stacks of old comics from his collection and shows them off. And these aren't "keys" (I hate that word so much.) They're just comics. Archies, Marvels, DCs, First, Eclipse, Pacific, Atlas, whatever; they're just silver and bronze age books that he likes (with the occasional golden age book thrown in.) He does not care one whit about condition. He has plenty of coverless books. He doesn't care if a book is a reprint. He owns no slabs. He just likes reading comics. I'm constantly discovering cool old comics I've never heard of through his channel. He's into action figures (especially Mego) too, but the channel is primarily comics-focused. It's neat.

I think CGC will have to publicly respond somehow, even if it's just to say "We're looking into this." There's too much money involved, and too much potential damage to their reputation involved, to just ignore. I do agree though that people will keep on submitting to CGC as always. A lot of people's collections, and even their conception of the hobby itself, are inexorably attached to, and dependent upon, CGC. There are plenty of people who like to collect the way coin and card collectors do, with their books on display in nice cases. And although I'm not one of those people, I get that the "bags and boards and long boxes" manner of collecting can be both an inconvenience and aesthetically lacking. (All those beautiful books just hidden away in a box somewhere, when they could be prettying up your shelves as display-pieces instead.) At the end of the day though, I see collecting slabbed books as being very much like collecting classic cars that you don't have the keys to. You can look at them, but you can't ever take them out for a drive. You can't even open the door. Where's the fun in that?

LOL. (CGC isn't "the world" of comics collecting by the way. A lot more people buy raw than slabbed.) And you're misinterpreting what I wrote. I didn't say I want the grading companies to go under. (I actually don't want them to go under, because raw books are that much cheaper because of them.) I said that if they do go under, the hobby will be just fine. What I wrote was, "The people who actually like comics beyond their monetary value as collectibles to be bought and flipped will all still be here, buying and reading." And you're saying that you enjoy comics in other ways beyond their monetary value. So we're saying the same thing. So maybe untwist your knickers?

Raw was always safer than graded. With raw books you get to actually see what you're buying; with graded books you're taking someone else's word for it. Sure, whoever graded your CGC book probably checked to make sure the Marvel Value Stamp was there...probably. But you never know unless you can look for yourself.

That's a highly debatable point. I don't think the hobby would suffer at all if all the grading companies went under. The speculators would leave. Prices would crash. So what? The people who actually like comics beyond their monetary value as collectibles to be bought and flipped will all still be here, buying and reading, and looking at more that just the front and back covers.

Being a "raw comics" (I really don't like that term, but we're stuck with it) person myself, here's where I would normally say, "Buy it ungraded!" but in a case like Hulk 181 I wonder how many raw copies are out there in high grades that haven't been slabbed. It seems like anyone who wants to actually check the inside pages of a high end book before they purchase it these days is going to be out of luck, because slabs are often the only game in town.

I keep hearing this every time there's a scandal, but people seem to keep on going back to CGC anyway. I don't think they ever lose any business at all.

That's what I thought was happening when I checked out the Automatic Comics video. Not because I'm some kind of an expert on sonic welding, but because the scammer has to spend thousands of dollars in order to acquire the books to commit the scam in the first place, and I would think involving CGC in the process at all would be too risky.

The speculators will certainly leave, and prices will plummet, but the hobby won't disappear. Some of us just like old comics.

What the heck does this mean? I've seen it a whole bunch of times proclaimed on Marvel covers as if it was some ancient proverb laden with tremendous philosophical import. Did Stan just make it up off the top of his head? Of course "he" (the Hulk, Howard the Duck, the Silver Surfer, whoever) never "made" the world. The world was created by cosmic forces. Seriously: every time I see this line I'm befuddled. What does it mean?

Okay, thanks for the clarification. I've been assuming it's one or more of the inside pages anyway, as the front and back covers look good to me.

Thanks so much for the advice! Seriously, you guys are great. One quick question: I'm considering taking back the Marvel Family 38, as I really like the book, but the water damage notation gives me pause. Is there any way to access "graders notes" of some sort so I know where exactly the water damage is and how bad it is?

So, about consigning comics to MCS... I've consigned a bunch of golden age books and I'm happy with the experience. Most of them have sold and MCS is very communicative and helpful when I have questions. My last three remaining books haven't drawn any interest, and I'm wondering: for those who consign to MCS regularly, how long do you leave books up before you decide to either take them back or put them in the MCS auction? It's only been a month, but the reason I seem so impatient is because two out of three of the books--Buccaneers 21, graded 5.5, and Marvel Family 38, graded 4.0 with water damage--seem like they might sit for a long time. Buccaneers has nothing to recommend it really except a nice Reed Crandall GGA cover, while the Marvel Family book has a Sivana cover and it looks nice and is priced to sell, but Marvel Family stuff doesn't exactly light people's worlds on fire anyway. I know some people leave their stuff up for years but I don't want to hold onto these that long. I've heard though, that books put into the MCS auction can sometimes sell very low. Any advice would be appreciated...