joeypost

Given the prior 9.8's, this should have graded a 10 purely on principle. we should beat the grader who graded those other copies...with reeds..

FIFO is not a hard and fast rule.

This would include looking over the whole book under high magnification under the best lighting conditions. Even then you are wrong 99.99 percent of the time.

I have only had 3 books come back as 9.9 or 10.0 that i called. The rest were surprises. The book has to be exceptional. Perfect corners. Straight edges and a spine with 0 defects. When you have a book in your hands that has that potential you can tell it is different compared to the run of the mill 9.8. Wish I could call them more often, but it is mostly up to the CGC graders at this point.

.1 to .2

I don't see them going a month over due for FTs. There probably is a misunderstanding or a unique problem there. This is a fact: I have an Eco FT (20 day turn around) that is on the 26th day. This is the third FT I've had go five days or more over. It's actually not that big of a deal to me, but I drop off and pick up everything and try to schedule my visits when I expect subs will be ready so I'm often pushing back the days I want to go there, which also pushes back how quickly I can sub other books. This becomes a bigger problem for me because I submit a lot of books for customers for various reasons. They usually want those subbed as quickly as possible. Every once in a while I have a customer that doesn't have their own account and it's a pain in the azz trying to explain that CGC is behind. I hate making excuses, even if it is out of my control. I hate when that happens.

And then there were 3.

For the cost of one pedigree book, I'd rather buy 2 or 3 non-pedigrees. As long as they're nice books, that is. I like pedigrees because they're usually nice books. But if I can get sweet books at a fraction of the cost, I'm one happy collector. Ditto.

Nice, never seen the CGC building. I always imagined it looking more industrial. Nice to see all the green. I have taken many a nap on the couch in the lobby waiting for other board members to show up for lunch. They even have a flat screen TV in front of the couch so you can watch headline news. That usually puts me right out.

We all forget at times how many great books Barton does have. I feel like a fledgling collector next to him.

I have my eyes on 5 books, but refuse to overpay - my offers were more than generous. I'm really hoping they decide to auction them off, as I'll likely win them all for less. There are a few "throphy" 9.8 books I would love to own for the long-term but they seem to be priced at 2 or 3 times what the average copy would sell for. The FF#134 for example is asking $675 and that is a $200 book on a good day. As are some of the Marvel horror titles.

East vs. West will never, ever work. It is always brought up but CGC will never do that. Look at how hard it is to get additional help let alone a new facility and staff. I understand the difficulty with their current staffing and the specialty involved in terms of employing people. Another facility would indeed work and could be done within a year. I'm unfamiliar with automated services and have no idea what they would automate - help me out here, Joey. Too bad they don't have a couple of folks committed solely to grading moderns. Yeah, and there's no way a legit competitor would crop up any time soon. Too many have tried and failed miserably, clearly not understanding the depth of the work. Automated would be anything that reduces or eliminates any process or service that reduces time at the tasks CGC needs to perform. A few examples would be, 1- Notes. 2- Status 3- A FAQ page that is more comprehensive. Basically anything that a customer would call in to find out that could be provided on the website or programatically through email.

I can think of 5-10 people right now that would make perfect CGC graders the problem is you would need to pay them 100k starting to make them even think about stop selling comics or quit their day job now. Like I said age demographic plays a big part as I doubt you would give up your job as a lawyer to be an entry level employee grader right? I would rather have CGC behind then hire graders that are not qualified and hurt the hobby. How much money do they stand to lose when a competitor opens shop? Good luck with that. You need probably a million just to open up that shop. A savvy investor would carefully look at CGC's numbers and do the math. You don't have to be a genius to figure out averages. Heck, even at $25 a book on average @ 200,000 to 300,000 books a year I am sure you can find someone to invest the capital. Hiring the right people to start with and developing a better case and pricing structure would help if not eliminate most of the ramp up time.

East vs. West will never, ever work. It is always brought up but CGC will never do that. Look at how hard it is to get additional help let alone a new facility and staff. If the fear of having to lay off new hires is part of their thought process, I don't see CGC's popularity falling anytime soon. Not doing anything or not making changes in a speedy manner just leaves them ripe to have legitimate competition appear. Having worked with the automation crew for a large fortune 500 company CGC would need to look at the current processes that are pain points/time consumers. Whatever can be automated they need to seriously look at. If they cannot see the flaws in the system a consultant should be brought in. 1- Automate what can be automated. 2- Additional help. 3- Consistency.

Hey, I like this idea! And let's add SS to the mix too, that's where there's a real manpower drain... I would imagine SS books will pass Universal submissions in the not too distant future.

As far as CGC is concerned, they really don't care why a book is submitted. If i submit a book to sell or to keep CGC views it the same. What is happening is non-comic people are getting in on the band wagon and trying to make a quick buck. While I do see some similarities comparing today with 1993, the amount of books submitted to CGC should be expected to be on the rise as new collectors and dealers get involved. Keep in mind that a lot of this has to do with the economy. So many collections are being sold and what happens to them? They are purchased by collectors/other dealers/flippers and sent to CGC. Even if you removed all the modern variants CGC would still have a backlog of books.

Thanks, Joey, as usual, we can count on you to be the voice of reason. I guess many (including me) are frustrated that CGC is going through incredible growing pains without giving us tangible hope there will be improvements made in the future (e.g., hiring new staff, expanding their location, etc.) We can only hope CGC reads these forums and understands our concerns. They do. They are trying, but IMO they are doing the best they can with what they have. When the powers that be decide to add more staff you will see TAT's go down, until then I just don't see it happeneing at a rate anyone (including CGC) will be happy with.

You have a point. What is the lag time between the time CGC registers the book's grade on the website (where you can access it,) and when they physically ship it back to you? I would think it's negligible amount of time, no? It used to be a few days from scheduled to be graded/graded/shipped. Maybe 4-5 days at tops. I remember when fast track books would have greades sometimes by day 9. Seems that has gone the way of the dinosaur. You can see some books (i.e. value) take up to two weeks to go from graded to shipped. I know how hard they are working at CGC. It is not from a lack of effort. Do the math. They did 1,000,000 books in 9 years. The next million in 2. During that time period the staff has not grown to meet the need. Even if the present staff worked 24 hours a day it would be a miracle if they got TAT's to half of what they are. Again, not a dig on the present staff, they just need more straff to help balance the equation.

My newest entry, thanks to Mr. Storms.

The lesson learned here. "Never judge a book by it's front cover".

Picking it up in Baltimore.

This time next week I will have a new entry into the club.

What does the back cover look like? Aside from the production defect I see another spine break over the "B" in blood.

Sweet.