Rick Rizun

Sad news. I met him at the Toronto summer convention way back around the year 2000 or so when it was a much smaller affair than it is nowadays. I bought a cool 8x10 photo of Boba from ESB aiming his blaster at someone out of frame and he signed it "To Rick: You're next!" I framed it and it is still hanging on the wall in my home movie theater room. Seemed like a good guy. Condolences to his family.

It's awesome how so many of you are so eager to help newbs like myself. It's very much appreciated!

Yeah, I found the pricing structure a little strange at first. In the specific example that you've given, you would submit those issues at the modern tier because they were published after 1975 (and also assuming the value of each issue is under $200). You would then be charged $20 per issue regardless of what grade is given to each. It sounds like you're in the same boat as me. Most, if not all, of your comics will be post-1975 and thus you likely would submit them in the modern tier. The other tiers are used if you are submitting older comics and/or very valuable comics worth way more than $200. It really helped me to understand more about slabbing by reading these very forums. Read up on the pressing and cleaning services (CCS) as well. The before and after pics on the CCS page are amazing. I haven't personally had any pressing done but I currently have a submission of 15 comics that are awaiting pressing, cleaning and grading that I can't wait to get back! CGC and CCS are a game changer, a fantastic evolution of this hobby that we all love!

Lots of fantastic advice from everyone here. Thank you all! Exactly what I was hoping for. Definitely going to consider the pre-screen option from now on. What is a reasonable threshold to shoot for? Do not slab anything under 9.4 or 9.6? Or do people just go for it and specify 9.8 or higher only (or is that being silly and greedy)? On the other hand, if I just press and clean all issues that I want slabbed regardless, then the grade will be the highest that it could potentially get regardless of how high I want it to get. Hopefully that makes sense, haha. Translation: I want all my grades to be 9.8, but this is not realistically possible even with pressing. I have issues that will not be 9.8 but I still want them slabbed anyway. Therefore, just press everything. I'm torn on the GI Joe 1 because re-submitting may not do anything, although the suggestion to wait for a signing opportunity seems like a smart thing to do seeing as I'm slabbing these for my personal collection, so there's no hurry to crack it open and re-submit at this point. Thanks again for all the great advice, everyone!

Why the heck is it dividing my post up into tiny pages??? Edit: Ah, figured it out. Didn't realize that the page lines actually created a page break divider, so I got rid of the page divider lines.

Hi, everyone! As the thread title implies, I just received the results of my first ever CGC submission! Just for background, I collected comics during the early to mid 80's and had to quit due to high cost and to concentrate on school and university. I recently retired and finally got back into collecting within the past 2 years. Recently discovered the awesomeness of slabbed comics and decided to try my hand at it. Okay, just received the results today, but have not received the physical slabs yet as they are still in the mail: Star Wars 68 2/83 Marvel Comics 7.5 WHITE Star Wars 42 12/80 Marvel Comics 9.4 WHITE Star Wars 42 12/80 Marvel Comics 9.0 WHITE G.I. Joe, A Real American Hero 1 6/82 Marvel Comics 9.6 OFF-WHITE TO WHITE Amazing Spider-Man 252 5/84 Marvel Comics 9.8 WHITE Wolverine Limited Series 1 9/82 Marvel Comics 9.8 WHITE Marvel Super Heroes Secret Wars 8 12/84 Marvel Comics Canadian Price Variant 9.0 WHITE Marvel Age 12 3/84 Marvel Comics 9.8 OFF-WHITE TO WHITE Spectacular Spider-Man 64 3/82 Marvel Comics 9.6 WHITE Before I begin, I will say that I purposefully submitted comics that I thought were in excellent condition with the full intention of receiving grades in the 9.4 - 9.8 range for all of them. I thought that they were in good enough condition to receive high grades without the need for pressing and cleaning (which was not done on these 9 issues). Needless to say, I was VERY happy with the three 9.8's, especially the Wolverine 1 and ASM 252. The head-scratchers for me were my two copies of Star Wars 42. I believed them both to be in fantastic condition, figuring that at least one of them would be a 9.8. The grader's notes were as follows: Star Wars 42 - 9.4 - very light finger bends on cover, very light spine stress lines to cover Star Wars 42 - 9.0 - very light creasing to cover I was also surprised at the grading for Secret Wars 8 and the 7.5 grading for Star Wars 68 was an absolute gut punch I have to say because it seemed fine to me when I submitted it. Here are the grader's notes for those two issues: Secret Wars 8 - 9.0 - light crease top of back cover, very light bends to cover, very light spine stress lines to cover, very small crease left bottom of back cover Star Wars 68 - 7.5 - light bends to cover, light crease right top of back cover, very light spine stress lines Overall, I consider the results to be "okay" considering that this was my very first submission and I am still learning a lot about slabbing, much of it from the forum members here. Reading the results was a bit of a roller coaster (haha), especially when the 7.5 was the first one that I saw at the top of the list! Gut. Punch. My intention here with this thread is not to whine and complain about the results however. My intention is to post my thoughts as to what I may have done wrong and to seek further advice from the experts and veterans here. Hopefully, future newbies can read this and learn from my mistakes. I will admit that I have already submitted a second batch of 15 issues, but these are ones that I felt could benefit greatly from pressing and cleaning. When I think back on how I submitted these two batches, I realized that I looked much, much more closely for subtle flaws on the issues that needed pressing and cleaning. I realized that I didn't look nearly as closely at my first batch of "perfect" condition issues as I did at my second batch. On top of that, I honestly didn't even look at the back covers of these issues at all! Obviously, looking at some of the grader's notes, this was a silly and careless mistake on my part. I realized then that I simply didn't look close enough at issues that seemed perfect at first glance. LESSON LEARNED: Look very, very, VERY closely for flaws, regardless of how subtle, even on the back cover. And as a result of the lesson learned above, I'm considering just automatically pressing and cleaning every single issue that I send in from now on as I've noticed is common practice with many of the forum members here. If I had done that with this first batch, I'm sure that the gradings would have been better, with the GI Joe 1 and the Peter Parker 64 possibly being bumped up to 9.8. Knowing all of this, I am already considering re-submitting for grading and pressing/cleaning all three Star Wars issues and the Secret Wars issue. I believe that pressing and cleaning would be worth it for the GI Joe 1 considering the large FMV difference between a 9.6 and a 9.8 copy, if I determine that the flaws are able to be fixed (grader's notes: very light soiling on cover, very light spine stress lines to cover). Obviously, I will not resubmit any of these if the defects are unfixable (colour-breaking defects, stains, etc.), so I will have to look very closely at these issues when I receive them back in the mail. To those who have managed to read this far (haha), am I going about things correctly? Is resubmitting for grading but with pressing and cleaning this time around possibly going to be a net benefit? (I am more than willing to incur the extra cost for this) Does it seem to you that I've made other mistakes that I haven't realized? Thanks in advance for any advice that you can give. Now crossing my fingers for my second submission! Rick

Thank you for posting this. However, I'd still be interested in seeing a full shot of the slabbed copy of the lower grade (unless I missed that as well, haha) BTW- I am a complete amateur wrt grading and pressing. I am just throwing my two cents out there, and it's two Canadian cents to boot!

One thing that I've noticed in more recent pics posted by the presser is the hand-written "3.00" inside the top of the "A" of the title of the lower grade copy. I have yet to see (unless I simply missed it) a pic from Dylan showing a wide angle after-shot of the lower grade copy where we can see both the "3.00" mark AND the botched lower staple and lower spine at the same time. Dylan keeps using the convenient excuse that IG is cropping his scans. He actually goes out of his way to make sure that everybody is aware that THIS is the reason for the cropping as though he is incapable of figuring out how to get around this simple problem. This just seems very suspicious to me. Are there some switcheroo shenanigans going on here? Awfully convenient that there are two of the same issue involved here. We still have yet to see the full picture here, both figuratively and literally.

Thanks!

Wow, your submission is almost identical to mine! I also have a submission with 9 items, $890 declared value, but date received is 8/31 and modern service (not fast track). This is my first ever submission and I'm incredibly eager to receive them back. I collected as a young teen in the early 80's and only recently got back into collecting within the past 1-2 years. I'll be slabbing many more of my older issues in the near future! What a fantastic service CGC offers here!