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A-DONIS

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Posts posted by A-DONIS

    role of CGC witnesses at conventions?

    in The Signature Room

    Posted

    11 hours ago, WaltG12 said:

    Bumping this because I've only just seen it.

     

    I'm not sure how this can get anyone in trouble, when, as stated, this is how bigger signings have been handled for a while now.

    Did you ever participate in one of Stan's while he was alive? I don't know how it was wherever you are, but at Wizard in Chicago, the CGC facilitator handling the signing was generally set up across an aisle from the actual signing.

    You'd leave Stan's area and walk your book across that aisle to their booth.

    What nobody really talked about, though, was that the aisle you had to walk across was often populated with people trying to catch a glimpse of Stan--volunteers tried to keep people moving, but it wasn't the most effective process. If anyone at that booth was trying to monitor people coming off Stan's line, they wouldn't have had a line of sight to do it, thanks to the massive crowd of lookie-loos.

    But, due to the "efficiency" of Stan's line, combined with the amount of time it took for them to take your books & get the paperwork & money thing all sorted, they were never well staffed enough to monitor the line, even if they could have. They usually had a line themselves, a few people deep, while their heads were down trying to get everyone sorted as quickly as possible.

     

    I harbor no illusions that it'll do any good.

    As was stated above, it's a trade off that CGC chose to make/allow for the sake of efficiency, as anything else would've created longer lines and more backups in areas where people needed to move. The only viable alternative would be to handle it the way that MLB (and, therefore, Star Wars Celebration) does--put the person at the end of the table, so they can watch what's signed (not that they necessarily do, but there's a lot less room for error & a lot more eyes consistently on everyone involved) and so anyone who walks past them is guaranteed to have gotten something signed.

    But, the intricacies required here, with the paperwork & the payment & actually taking the signed piece, are a lot more involved than simply putting a sticker on something and/or scanning a barcode. So they can't do it anywhere near as smoothly as MLB can, and when you have a line like Stan did, you want to get people in and out of it, not create a bottleneck at the end of it.

    So, they did what they could to eliminate that bottleneck and moved that hand-off point further out to its own line. I can't say I blame them for it, as there's really no other way to keep up the necessary pace. (Personally, I always wondered why, with regard to Stan's line, nobody was sealing the CGC bound books in a tamper proof bag like they use at Best Buy at the end of the line, so there'd at least be some level of security, but I figured that even that would cause a moderate bottleneck that nobody wanted to deal with.)

    With all that, at the end of the day, I trust the facilitators but look at second-hand CGC yellow labels the same way I look at sports signatures with "In the Presence" stickers on them. Is it real? Probably. 99.99% even.

    Is it the rock-solid, iron clad, no wiggle room at all whatsoever guarantee that it purports itself to be? Not when it comes to big name show signatures. It's why my only CGC yellow label books come from trusted sources directly or verifiable signings with trusted sources. If I can trace a signature back to a private signing with someone like Doug or Rich, then it's as good as gold, as far as I'm concerned. Anything signed on the show floor acquired by a random collector under unknown circumstances has too much wiggle room, as far as I'm concerned--at least too much with regard to the premium that CGC SS commands (or that sellers try to get) over their (also very likely to be good) raw counterparts.

    Of course, I trust the other guy's yellow label even less, ever since the head of their program defended the choice to appoint a guy as his own witness showed up at a con and went to their booth to request a witness by claiming that he first asked the guy "a series of questions", as though people intent on committing fraud don't lie in pursuit of that fraud.

    Put simply, I trust most of the people involved, but have little regard for the program itself or its reputation. And CGC doesn't really care about that.

    You seem to have taken the elitist approaching not knowing how the program works.  And since you have little regard for the program itself, you should have kept your over-rated opinion to yourself. 

    Bob Layton

    in The Signature Room

    Posted

    On ‎6‎/‎4‎/‎2019 at 5:33 AM, Brooklynmet said:

     Good morning Rich. I was really looking to make contact with Mr. Layton concerning the sketch. He did a sketch for me last year that I picked up at the Tampa bay comicon and I was looking for another one. Thank you anyway, Richard 

    I work directly with Bob with sketch covers.  Shoot me a message and I can have it arranged.

     

    CGC needs to break out signatures in all grades

    in The Signature Room

    Posted

    On ‎11‎/‎27‎/‎2018 at 12:13 PM, Donutsdad said:

    I am tired of not knowing how many books in grades are either signed or not.  For example...if I want to buy an X-Men 94 in CGC 9.4 grade but want it signed by Claremont...I have NO IDEA how many are out there...but of course...CGC DOES.  Why doesn't CGC give us this info since it clearly collects this information?

    Must be the new guy post syndrome.  He'll get over it.

    new batch of CGC books - no inner well :(

    in Comics General

    Posted

    34 minutes ago, 427Impaler said:

    14 books back 2 days ago, all 13 had the inner tray.  One had obviously shifted in transit for some reason, impacting the top corner heavily and causing the corner piece to detach.  This was the only book in the box to do this, the other 13 are nicely squared in the slab.  The book is now on its way back to CGC customer service (they were great on the phone BTW)

     

    IMG_1552.jpeg

    IMG_1551.jpeg

    What's the grade?