Jstan70

Book is complete and lays flat; staples are firmly attached. Some staining front and rear cover with minor ticks on the spine, minor cover creasing and a date stamp. The most significant flaw is the color rub(?) on the right front cover. Thanks for looking! Edit: sorry for the poor pictures; need to upgrade my phone. LOL

Very cool. Where did you get those stats? Would be interested in seeing other stuff like that.

Looking at their submission form, it looks like they'll go all the way down to 0.5 on a pre-screen, but at that point, why bother with the pre-screen? Might as well just send it in as a regular submission.

I've been submitting books to CGC for many years and had never had an issue with damaged slabs when I got them back. Not until recently, anyway. I submitted my first pre-screen (36 books) in early March. Of the 36, 28 got slabbed. Of those 28, 7 had to be returned for damaged slabs. Seven! That's 25% of the slabs! How is that possible? 4 of the 7 were small fractures in the cases that could have conceivably slipped past QC on a bad day, but 3 of the cases had such severe damage that there were loose pieces of slab jangling about in the bag. I refuse to think that that damage happened during shipping, because the box in which it was delivered showed no signs of distress severe enough to cause that amount of damage (and CGC does a great job in packing the slabs for shipping). There is 0 reason to allow a slab in that condition to leave the facility. CGC, please do a cost/benefit analysis of the cost of adding competent QC folks versus the cost of paying for me to ship those books back to you and then you paying to ship those books back to me again, and don't forget to include in that analysis the benefit of satisfied/happy customers.

Good to know. I'm within easy driving distance from south of the border and will definitely keep this in mind. Thanks!

Got a handful of SA Flash issues (non-keys) at an antique store over the weekend. They look to me to be in the 4.0-5.0 range under normal conditions, but they all also have 3-hole punches along the spine (kept in a 3-ring binder at some point). My question is to what degree do these kinds of holes affect the grades of books like these? And does CGC give a blue label at a lower grade, or is this the kind of thing where they would give a green Qualified label in the 4.0-5.0 range? Thanks! Edit: not really looking for any specific grade on any specific book; just a general question on to what degree these kinds of holes affect a grade on any given book?

Apologies for photo quality. I don't have a scanner, and the camera on my phone stinks as you can see.

Hey, all. I'm going to restrict my comments to the more significant issues with this one. As can be seen in the photos, there is a spine split from the top of the book to the top staple that also includes the inner four wraps. There is staining at the right top and bottom corners that runs through the entirety of the book (all pages affected). There is a large piece of the bottom right corner of the front cover missing. At the same point where that missing piece starts along the right edge, there is a 1/2" tear throughout the entirety of the book, affecting all pages and the back cover but with no other pieces missing. On the plus side, all pages are intact, and both staples are still firmly in place. I would call the pages cream to off-white (not brittle). Thanks for taking a look.

How in the actual %*^& does that Wings get a 3.0??? I have a Flash 139 that's graded at a 2.0 that looks worlds better than that thing! SMH Man, these GA books are KILLING me!

Hey! MUCH better this round: a couple of bulls-eyes and off by only 1 on two others. Rex Dexter flummoxed me though. Oh well. On to 3!!

Interesting that, in each case, more went under than over. You'd think that it would be more even than that.

I'm in. Interested to see how far I'm off. :)

Yep, that was the one. They were originally in the shopping center across Golf Club Road, directly north from the Diablo Valley College campus' tennis courts, but then they moved to a small strip center further north up Contra Costa Blvd. Unfortunately, I couldn't tell you exactly where, because, looking at Google Maps, that part of town looks to have changed so drastically since then.

Ah, the memories. Thanks for that. Yes, I used to shop at California Comic Book Company in Concord, CA back in the early '90's, the location on Clayton Road near Treat Blvd, back while I was still buying new books each week. That was back in the day when the Diablo Valley had a number of good comic book shops. In addition to CCBC, I would also frequent Flying Colors (also in Concord) and Land Of Nevawuz in Pleasant Hill (just north of the DVC campus). But my primary shop was PJ's Comics in Concord (near Willow Pass Rd and Galindo), because he sold all his new books already bagged and boarded, so I got to save a little on storage supplies. Sadly, to the best of my knowledge (I also haven't lived in the area for 25+ years), Flying Colors is the only one still in operation.