gaz973

I don't think it was anything to do with private pm's Boozad, no harm in asking about anyone if yer not sure. It's when people make accusations about people they've not dealt with or don't know and just like to make assumptions, I've only had two problems on ebay, one was item getting lost and the other was where the postman I think had a mission to force something into a letter box even though it was mean't to be signed for. I've never had anyone moan about the grading, or at least tell me so.

 

thanks

herc

Lance, I did a search for your eBay ID on the boards and the only two posts that showed up were the ones from you and me yesterday.

Your grading stinks.

..... and what kinda name is kungfugirl50?

Good to see you at the mart too, mate.

I don't pay much attention when they say "this is the hottest summer since 1429" or "this is the foggiest July since 2011" or whatever silly statistic they come up with.

 

Being a farmer though, I keep a rough track of rainfall and this really is the wettest year I've ever known and my dad who was born in 1930 can't remember one quite as bad as this.

 

Must be hellish to work in this sort of weather.

 

I was thinking the same.

It's better than working in the snow.

Surely that brings most work to a standstill, or am I wrong?

 

At very least, all the cattle still have to be fed and strawed down. When it gets very cold, the water troughs have to be thawed out every day. My least favourite job is fishing out chunks of ice from freezing cold water so that the water doesn't freeze twice as thick.

 

i'm sick of cows acting all high and mighty thinking they're too big for an icepop

They keep asking for a slice of lime to be floating in the top of their water trough.

I don't pay much attention when they say "this is the hottest summer since 1429" or "this is the foggiest July since 2011" or whatever silly statistic they come up with.

 

Being a farmer though, I keep a rough track of rainfall and this really is the wettest year I've ever known and my dad who was born in 1930 can't remember one quite as bad as this.

 

Must be hellish to work in this sort of weather.

 

I was thinking the same.

It's better than working in the snow.

Surely that brings most work to a standstill, or am I wrong?

At very least, all the cattle still have to be fed and strawed down. When it gets very cold, the water troughs have to be thawed out every day. My least favourite job is fishing out chunks of ice from freezing cold water so that the water doesn't freeze twice as thick.

I don't pay much attention when they say "this is the hottest summer since 1429" or "this is the foggiest July since 2011" or whatever silly statistic they come up with.

 

Being a farmer though, I keep a rough track of rainfall and this really is the wettest year I've ever known and my dad who was born in 1930 can't remember one quite as bad as this.

 

Must be hellish to work in this sort of weather.

 

I was thinking the same.

It's better than working in the snow.

I am REALLY interested to see where they go with this.

 

I am as well - it's dangerously and precariously close to Spiderman 3 in terms of overloading the story with too many characters. However, I have faith that Fox is going to be demanding Marvel-levels of quality from their films - so the new X film I think may bring back the errant franchise back from the brink.

 

I am cautiously optimistic at this point.

I do my best to refrain from being either optimistic or pessimistic until I actually see it. That way, if it's bad then it doesn't hit you too hard and if it's good then it's a nice surprise. I certainly pay no attention to all the armchair critics who pan a film before they've seen it.

 

Fingers crossed for a good one, loved First Class.

 

No - start complaining now, loudly and frequently, years before the movie comes out.

 

Isn't that what the internet is for? Complaining, shopping and porn?

Complaining about porn shopping?

I am REALLY interested to see where they go with this.

 

I am as well - it's dangerously and precariously close to Spiderman 3 in terms of overloading the story with too many characters. However, I have faith that Fox is going to be demanding Marvel-levels of quality from their films - so the new X film I think may bring back the errant franchise back from the brink.

 

I am cautiously optimistic at this point.

I do my best to refrain from being either optimistic or pessimistic until I actually see it. That way, if it's bad then it doesn't hit you too hard and if it's good then it's a nice surprise. I certainly pay no attention to all the armchair critics who pan a film before they've seen it.

Fingers crossed for a good one, loved First Class.

Ian McKellen And Patrick Stewart confirmed.

 

http://www.bleedingcool.com/2012/11/27/x-men-comeback-for-ian-mckellen-and-patrick-stewart-confirmed/

 

 

Oh goodness...Prof X does not have an English accent

Stop being so darn picky

I agree, I'm a lot more interested in whether an actor can portray the essence of a character than if the accent is wrong or if Wolverine is taller than he was in the comics or if Thor isn't wearing a winged helmet.

I am REALLY interested to see where they go with this.

I don't pay much attention when they say "this is the hottest summer since 1429" or "this is the foggiest July since 2011" or whatever silly statistic they come up with.

Being a farmer though, I keep a rough track of rainfall and this really is the wettest year I've ever known and my dad who was born in 1930 can't remember one quite as bad as this.

.

 

And the money doesn't matter to me...the deception does, as does the fact that books that were previously high grade by the grace of the gods are now high grade by the grace of the waffle machine.

 

Sorta takes the fun out of it for me.

This.

Even so, I think most of us can agree on this: many people don't consider it restoration for the reason that it is a benign procedure that simply mimics what can very possibly (and often likely) be a natural occurrence.

 

That might be the case now - at least in our little CPR flipping community - but I can guarantee that that was not the case back in 2000 with the general collecting populace.

 

No it may not have been. But that's because the thought didn't even cross some people's minds. Some people just don't think that way. Doesn't mean nobody does. Not everyone is inventive. Every time I look at something I try to figure out how it's made or how it can be improved. It's the way my mind works. Others might just see a lamp, or a door knob or a wheel. Pressing is the same. Someone just took what kids have been doing and made it work better.

 

Again, I honestly believe that the reason people who dislike pressing are outraged is because of the money. Not even the grade increases. If the grade increases didn't = more money they probably wouldn't care half as much.

 

If you remove the money from the discussion and just look at it on a scale of 1 - 100 with 100 being a full on extensive restoration job where much of the book was worked on (pieces added, colour touch, cleaning, staples replaced, glue, etc) where does pressing fall on the scale?

 

10 or less? 5 or less? I mean what was done to the book?

 

The book was pressed. It was placed under something heavy and pressed. Nothing added, nothing taken away. Same weight, same molecular makeup, same size. Everything the same.

 

EDIT: To add this, a book is even pressed when it's published.

 

So if a professionally pressed book gets a low score like a 5 or a 10 out of 100, what does an Encyclopedia pressed book get?

 

To me pressing is a 2 or a 3 out of 100. It's negligible.

 

Do you see what I'm getting at?

 

The procedure is so benign, so non-intrusive and so painfully obvious because we all pressed our books as kids that this is the reason people don't even consider it resto.

 

People are upset about the dollars not the pressing itself.

I disagree. In my case it definitely wasn't the money and in the cases of most people I know who dislike pressing, money wasn't the thing that bugged them. In a lot of cases, it's just the way that someone looks at the hobby.

Look at it this way, why would the people complaining about pressing not just take up pressing to recoup at least some of their losses if it was just about the money. The money is on the side of the pressers so anyone who is mainly concerned about the financial side of it would be better served in starting pressing than complaining about it.

I'm not even collecting anymore, just selling my collection yet I won't have a book pressed ever. What does that tell you about my motivation for disliking pressing?

So assuming the graders still won't know a CI submission from any other.

 

What happens when a $1000 CI submission does not meet the projected grade? There will be a strong incentive to, at a minimum "run it through again at no charge to see if we catch the graders on a better day" again, and again and ..... or even a CI employee directly inquiring from the graders "what will it take to make this a x.x?"

Hey, it doesn't need it to be someone important complaining about a given grade to get their book bumped up. A while back there was a guy who wasn't happy with the grade his AF # 15 got and he was complaining about it on the boards. After everyone telling him that he just had to accept it, they were proven wrong by the head of CGC taking it in for a review and giving it that bump.

 

If CGC have done that in the past for a regular customer, why do people think they'll have a problem with giving a bump to a book because Matt Nelson couldn't get the expected grade after a press?

A better question is, why do people think this wasnt already happening. If there is collusion between CI and CGC (im not saying there is) it started over 10 years ago.

Well, most threads bashing Matt Nelson have mysteriously disappeared.

So assuming the graders still won't know a CI submission from any other.

 

What happens when a $1000 CI submission does not meet the projected grade? There will be a strong incentive to, at a minimum "run it through again at no charge to see if we catch the graders on a better day" again, and again and ..... or even a CI employee directly inquiring from the graders "what will it take to make this a x.x?"

Hey, it doesn't need it to be someone important complaining about a given grade to get their book bumped up. A while back there was a guy who wasn't happy with the grade his AF # 15 got and he was complaining about it on the boards. After everyone telling him that he just had to accept it, they were proven wrong by the head of CGC taking it in for a review and giving it that bump.

If CGC have done that in the past for a regular customer, why do people think they'll have a problem with giving a bump to a book because Matt Nelson couldn't get the expected grade after a press?

On the whole, the other thing this abomination of a move by CGC is going to do is ensure there will be no more "undergraded" slabs. When CGC 1st started, there were plenty of undergraded and overgraded books. Of course no one is going to resub a gift grade book, so the overgraded books will remain.

 

Converserly, as undergraded books are identified and flip hands and work their way through the ringer(s) (and make no mistake, there are books out there that have been pressed, re-pressed, and post-re-pressed as the new "owners/investors" have no history that a book has already been pressed and re-pressed), the % of overgraded CGC books will increase as each book is maxed out. That, and the loosening of CGC's standards over the last few years, has resulted in an overall population of CGC graded books that lean towards the low end of the grade spectrum.

 

So, while the impending census explosion will make a given 9.4 or 9.6 cheaper due to the institutionalized pressing, those 9.4's and 9.6's are more like yesterday's 9.2's and 9.4's. Sucks...

Well said.

Think my short collecting experience is coming to an end

Comics are collectable outside of slabs too.

For those who genuinely can't see how there can be a conflict of interest in the move, let me run through a couple of scenarios which should be obvious to most.

CGC are grading a high value book and would give it an 8.5 but grade it particularly harshly for some non colour breaking creases so give it an 8.0 or maybe 7.5. BINGO, it can be passed straight over to Matt Nelson to iron out those creases and then straight back for another submission and end up where it should've been at anyway.

A book is passed onto Matt Nelson for pressing before submission and he estimates the grade it will get after as a 9.2. The book is pressed and submitted and only comes back as an 8.5 which brings much dissatisfaction from the owner of the comic. This dissatisfaction can be avoided by CGC not going to hard on this book when grading.

Now I'm not saying that this is going to happen but the only guarantee that it won't happen is....... um, actually there isn't one. It's all down to trust which is why conflicts of interest shouldn't be allowed to happen.

To be impartial, CGC should have NOTHING to gain from the results of their grading in any manner. Now their sister company will be gaining revenue from books that may have the possibility of gaining a higher grade from being pressed.

This does not seem to me be complete impartiality. Thus conflict of interest.

As Nick said earlier, it's those who don't want to see it, who don't see it.

Hmm, I'm guessing that turnaround times could suffer more from this as every book will now probably be assessed for pressing potential.

Any chance it will be disclosed on the label?

 

 

If they knowingly pressed a book,they should disclose. Isn't that the ethical thing to do?

 

 

Ethics vs $$$

 

$$$ beats ethics like rock beats scissors.

I'm so glad CGC has enough money to invest in buying a resto and pressing company like CI but they don't have money to spend on fixing their horrible turn around times.

 

Sickening quite frankly.

 

And to think the whole argument of not being able to detect pressing is now out the window. They will know exactly which books are pressed or not and don't care anyway.

 

That's a good point! Will they now disclose pressed book on it's labeling?

 

You'd think that ethically they would have too. They'll know for sure which books are pressed and which aren't.

If they were worried about ethics then they'd probably care about the conflict of interest in the whole move.

Obviously, backing down from the move when they last tried it was less about concern of whether it was the right thing to do and more about putting things on hold until they were in a more established position to not be concerned with a backlash.

Hey you lot, check out this site from one of our customers (and a friend).

 

want to be a Zombie?

 

Undead Me

 

That's quite nifty.

I really appreciate your comments - funny how many of my high grade books have been submitted to CGC and come back with higher grades.

You make it sound like there's some conspiracy against you. All you're seeing is honest responses from people who have formed an opinion over time.

Just a heads up for those interested: episode 1 of Comic Store Heroes is repeated on Nat Geo tomorrow (sat) at 1.00 pm.

 

For those who haven't seen it, it's a 'reality' show set in Midtown Comics in NYC. Parts of it are obviously contrived bs but it is still entertaining to those with an interest in comics in general.

Thanks Phil, I'll probably record it out of curiosity. (thumbs u

Where are all the Brits?

 

Is it a nice day in the UK?

 

Enjoy / enjoying the football?

 

 

Hello

Been trenching in electric cable all day and feeding it through piping. Didn't go well and finally rained on us and then it got dark a frickin hour earlier today so was doing it in the dark.

Beer required.