Axelrod

Where would I be if I had skipped out on that one really bad contest! Or, maybe it was more than one bad one actually. I can't even remember. I usually have (at least) one really bad round, I remember that! Still, these are fun!

Same! One grade off each of the other two, so, 4 pts for me this round.

Weeeeeell

I think with Dave Stevens, sadly by virtue of dying young, there's also a limited output issue. By which I mean that it's realistic to actually collect all his covers. And that's appealing to many people.

It's just another one for the "what were they thinking" file. How do you spend so much on something so underwhelming? How is it even possible? You can make Godzilla Minus One for 10 million. Did they really not see? Or is it all just what William Goldman said "Nobody knows anything."

Heh. Old movies. P'shaw. My list for the next 8 looks (very) roughly something like: Civil War The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare Challengers The Fall Guy Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes If Furiosa Bad Boys: Ride or Die Possibly some additions or substitutions in there depending on what else might be showing. Do not mock my tastes, or lack thereof!

Are you talking about this? People have definitely been talking about it.

Gonna go out on a limb and say there is no chance an "R" rated TMNT ever hits the screen. Too many execs will complain about how they'd be knee-capping themselves and losing too much of the potential market. About as much chance as an "R" rated Barbie movie, I suspect. And I would totally go see an "R" rated Barbie movie.

Well, I'm rescinding any insinuation that MCS undergrades when buying and then re-lists the same book at a higher grade. I misread Shadroch's above comment to mean that they had undergraded books he previously had bought from them, and then recalled other complaints in this thread of that happening. I just re-skimmed the entire thread of 3 1/2 years and there were only two times people claimed that MCS had now graded a book lower than what the seller had bought it from MCS as. Many more people complaining/remarking about how tight they grade (as compared to what CGC would give a book), but that's really something different altogether.

That is kind of sad, but appears to be the M.O. If you are selling to them, they will always undergrade you and pay you less. Too many stories about people sending them the exact same book back that they previously bought from MCS and yet now it gets a lower grade. And I also have little doubt that when the book subsequently goes up for sale it will magically have become the higher grade again - possibly I'm too cynical there. They assign tight grades on consignments too, I gather, but probably not as much as when they are buying themselves.

Well, I was, in fact, pleasantly surprised that there was an actual story to go along with the giant monster smashing. A silly story, to be sure. And, amusingly, almost too much story, as they have to jump through a lot of hoops to try and make all these silly "Monsterverse" films at least nominally consistent with each other, despite the "mythology" being just about the most ridiculous thing ever. Many exposition dumps. Godzilla really did not need to be in this movie at all. It's much more just a Kong film.

It's the Internet and People Have Opinions.

I also had one fairly recently where my item that was supposed to have already shipped was suddenly returned by the carrier. I got a note like this: Hello Matthew, You ordered the item below, but the package is being returned to us by the carrier. We’ve issued your refund. Refund Confirmation They never said what happened.

I thought it was fine. The main issue might have been trying to serve too many masters, with the all legacy characters and the new characters. They had to dumb it down just to make everything fit, I think. In particular: I liked the frozen monster design and wish there had been more about it, and that there had been cleverer scheme to free it than the extremely far fetched scenario that actually occurred.

I would like to take another shot at this

Man, I had to do something akin to this when I retrieved my comic collection after 30 years from my mom's house and had to get it to my house in another state. Not 130 short boxes, but it was about 18. I had 4 days to clear out my stuff, and literally just took them to a local shipping company and said "how can you ship me this?" I knew nothing about grading or CGC at the time. Most of the books were in bags. In retrospect, it's a miracle they weren't all completely trashed when they got to me, but that company did a nice job.

People be claiming credit for stuff they didn't do since the beginning of people.

I will see this because it is the only game in town, but I can't say I'm "excited" about it. I will confess to getting a bit tired of watching giant CGI pixels smashing into each other again and again and again. I will be pleasantly surprised if there is an actual decent story that goes along with it.

The other thing that would address concerns would be if they would just SAY WHY THE BOOK GOT THE GRADE IT DID. Like, notes for everything! Why is this a 9.6 instead of a 9.8? There's a reason, yes? TELL US. How many thousands of submissions have people made where they scrutinized the books beforehand as closely as they could and found no flaws, only to receive a 9.6? CGC has trained their audience to expect that if a book is perfect it gets a 9.8, so that's what people are happy with, but it seems likely to me that many of these 9.8 books ought to be higher if there was truly an objective standard being used. Instead we get the whole "grading is subjective" and "graders notes don't cover everything" that they do leaving it all cloaked in a veil of mystery. Which seems entirely so no one can argue with them about the grade. I do not buy that it would be any more work at all for then to clearly document and notate the books - assuming they are strictly grading the books in the first place - as opposed to just giving quick once overs.

The very concept of a 9.9 "pre-screen" makes no sense (is that really something they are going to be offering?) given the historically comically low numbers of 9.9s (and 10s) given. Unless what they are tacitly admitting/saying is that their 9.9 grading has been too stingy in the past and they are now going to be a bit more generous with that grading going forward.

Well, I don't know now, do I? The point is, I'm not making assumptions based on nothing except it "feeling" correct to me. (untrue, I am making an assumption based on it feeling correct to me, which is that CGC gives special consideration - including more favorable grading - to their biggest customers) The book has been submitted over 13,000 times across the years. My suspicion - again, not based on personal knowledge - is that the number of these copies submitted by "not the largest dealers" greatly outnumbers the number of copies submitted by "the largest dealers." But who really knows?

These are just completely made up facts, right?

So, what special friend/prominent member of the collecting community of CGC got this one graded?

I have no idea about the history of these movies and how much re-shooting/re-working was done from their original versions, but to me they are case studies in the "right" way and the "wrong" way to do it. Rogue One is amazing. Great story, and they way they made that film fit seamlessly into the overall Star Wars universe was incredible. Solo, on the other hand, was truly a ham-fisted effort. All their "easter eggs" and callbacks to the larger Star Wars universe were clunky and either way too obvious or just dumb. Plus, the story was pretty lame as well. I have no idea if this new Captain America film will be good. I would have said that extensive re-shoots have never saved a bad film ever, but given you say this happened with Rogue One I will also reserve judgment,

Ah ha! See, you THINK you know the story, but here's the REAL story.... It could be just like the Thing prequel they did about what happened in the Norwegian camp before the first movie! (which, in all honesty, was not in fact the worst film ever, just completely unoriginal and unnecessary)