Rick Rizun

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