Unrestored Blue Label

[JiveTurkeyMoFo]

Superb points Lighthouse, and ones I will take to heart. I was thinking of submitting 50 books to CGG, but now I am left to wonder if it would be worthwhile.

[qualitycomix]

Don't submit 50 books at first. I did that but wouldn't recommend it to others for any newer grading company. Submit 10 books and get a feel for their procedures, their customer service, their product and their grading. Then submit more if you feel comfortable with all of the above.

[RS]

They basically just leech off CGC for their business model.

 

Chevrolet leeched off Ford?

[Mr. Zipper]

Superb points Lighthouse, and ones I will take to heart. I was thinking of submitting 50 books to CGG, but now I am left to wonder if it would be worthwhile.

 

I have used CGG and have been happy with their service, yet I will admit Lighthouse makes some very good points.

 

I agree that the points he makes are valid, but bear in mind that these same scenarios could apply to ANY company including CGC. No matter how well funded and "public" CGC is, they could still be susceptible to a scandal that would rock the industry in the way Lighthouse describes. This is a risk with ANY third party authentication company, albiet MORE of a risk when dealing with a company staffed by unknowns.

 

So, what I would take from Lighthouse's missive is that CGG should be more upfront about their ownership and staffing, which could be accomplished through the website with biographical information on their graders, resto experts, etc. Also, information on their grading and resto detection processes should be made public through their website. These steps, along with others, would go a long way toward alleviating consumer apprehension regarding CGG. (Taking a page from Lighthouse, if CGG wants a more detailed Marketing Plan, PM me and I'll be glad to consult )

 

Lastly, the matter of the "crooked" dealer(s) somehow associated with CGG. I think this is flogging a fallen horse, and I've yet to see anything other than supposition on this issue. To me, the worst that may have happened here is that they missed a clean and press on an Avengers and they give fast service to a local dealer that sends them a lot of books. Not anything we haven't seen with CGC as well.

[Illiterati-migration]

I own a CGG book. So it's not as though I am unfamiliar with the grading or the holder.

 

[RS]

Lighthouse you do make some very good points in you post. I hope Daniel reads your post and can answer your questions.

[lighthouse]

Lighthouse you do make some very good points in you post. I hope Daniel reads your post and can answer your questions.

 

I hope so too. And I am curious. When I came by his table with my buddy, did he think I was the guy in the black shirt, or the guy in the red shirt?

[lighthouse]

Lighthouse, that was a great post--and don't worry, I know it wasn't "aimed" at me. You and I, we're cool with each other so no problems. I agree that your posts are informative, it's just that it appeared until now that you had plenty to say about CGG, and then when they went to you directly it seemed you got really quiet all of the sudden. Thanks for breaking that silence with such a reply.

 

A couple of observations and questions in general...

 

1) we do know who does the restoration checks for them; he's been named here. Heck, one person here even called him directly and talked about the ASM 122, and the man agreed to FUND a resubmission to CGC. But that still leaves some questions: is he still the same guy as when they started and missed that Avengers cleaning? Is he an expert? Is he a CGG man, or do they truly contract work out in the Eugene area as you say you'd heard Daniel comment? (he states nothing like that was said by him).

 

I didn't say that they were handing books to any random person in Eugene for a restoration check. Daniel said they contracted out with a local guy to do that for them on the books where it was needed. My flippant comment about Eugene being the veritable epicenter of restoration technology was a criticism of the effort they went to in finding the best expert they could. Being willing to give the name if people ask for it is very different from being proud of who is doing the work. A plumbing company or a roofing contractor won't shut up about how qualified their guys are. Again, this falls under the category of "giving free business advice that really shouldn't be free" but to have any chance of convincing the marketplace to accept your authentication as reliable, you have to be a lot more open with your disclosure and a lot more transparent.

 

2) Has CGG refused to disclose who their graders are? Or is this a case where it's just that nobody's bothered to ask? I recall several times here when people discussed certain conspiracies, and after 2 or 3 pages I was the first to just email CGG, and got an answer within a day. What about in this case?

 

Second verse same as the first. I joke in one of my current eBay auctions that if you plan to use a company that doesn't disclose its graders you might as well send your books to Daniel Dupcak for grading. If I go to the CGC website I can see pictures and bios of the grading team. A couple of the pre-graders have changed in the last couple years, but it's pretty much the same grading team as it was in the beginning. Making that information public goes a long way toward establishing credibility. And if the marketplace accepts CGG without transparency about its grading team, then it would also accept a company where Daniel Dupcak is the lead grader.

 

3) Have some problems been actually verified here (and I missed it), or just discussed among us forumites like the tdcomix case? As best I can recall, there has been much speculation but ZERO actual conclusion about the conspiratorial curiosities many of us have had. Did we reach some point at which we can say "at least one [of CGG's customers] is a crook," rather than saying "we've wondered about it but can't prove it?" Likewise, we've tossed around speculation about missed restoration--but so far, there have been ZERO provable cases, as far as I am aware (I'll forgive the cleaned Avengers because I'm not troubled by cleaning, and that happened the same week someone cracked a CGC slab and found slashed out pages inside a Daredevil that got missed, so we're left with human errors at WORST, and not poor work).

 

The conspiracies aren't proven, and I hope there aren't any. But I have no doubt that tdcomixncards is a crook. I know for an absolute fact that he sold a copy of All-American Comics on eBay as unrestored that used to be listed as the top census 9.6 PLOD. As far as missed restoration I am aware of one significant case, but without the permission of the collector I can't speak about it in good conscience. If the books come available for sale then it may become public knowledge, but until then chalk it up to "lighthouse being a jerk and acting like he knows something but not telling anyone".

 

Human error is fine. If the rate of error is low enough, the marketplace won't be affected. CGC books didn't take a sudden drop after that Daredevil incident. But if the error rate is above a certain threshold it's no longer error, it's a lack of competence. And if that comes to pass, everyone who owns a CGG book will suffer.

 

4) I agree that CGG ought to do more to improve their reknown among collectors--advertising in Wizard, for example (take that advice for what it's worth). I've seen, what--ONE book they've done in the Heritage auctions? But I gotta hand it to them, too, that offering a free, shipping-paid submission to a bunch of us here was a classy step in that direction.

 

Please... The fact that my local crystal meth dealer will give me a fix for free says nothing about class, and nothing about the safety of buying his product. The cab driver with the bald tires and no seatbelts would likely give free rides as well. That's not to say everyone who gives away free product is bad. AOL and PayPal have both done it and both of them are well-respected... um... maybe those were bad examples...

 

And I stand behind my previous assessment. If you can judge the value of the CGG product based on one submission, you aren't judging the product they really sell. The real product you buy, liquidity, comes from the present and future marketplace perception of the company. CGG doesn't need to prove the quality of the holder to me. I own one of their books already. They don't need to prove the quality of their grading, and couldn't with one book anyway. When you buy a graded 9.6 you aren't just buying that book in 9.6, you are buying an assurance that the other 300,000 books that have been graded were graded the same way. It doesn't matter one bit if your 9.6 is graded accurately unless the 9.4s are consistently worse, the 9.8s are consistently better and the 9.6s are consistently comparable. Seeing one book and how it is graded tells you nothing.

 

If I were to take 100 Bronze Age books, 30 of them with known restoration, 30 of them with unusual production flaws that could be mistaken for restoration and 40 unrestored... and I sent those to CGC for grading, I feel confident that Chris Friesen would be accurate on at least 99 of them, more likely 100. If I sent those same books to our own forumites PovertyRow or fantastic_four, I feel confident that they would each be accurate on at least 98 of them, maybe all 100. There are a few other forumites that I would absolutely put in the 96-97+ category. I don't know CGG's restorer well enough to know where he belongs on that spectrum. But for a third-party grading company, even 97 out of 100 isn't good enough. That kind of error rate in authentication will bury the company, and damage the customer base in the process. If you can't find a guy that will get it right better than 99% of the time, you need have two guys that each get it 97% and hope they don't both miss the same flaws...

 

I do not personally expect CGG to survive. But as concerned as I am about the number of collectors who may leave the hobby after being burned by the experience, I am even more concerned about CGG leaving the door open for truly horrible firms to think they can join the party. Ten grading companies run by felons wouldn't hurt CGC, their primary customer base wouldn't view any of those as true competition. But companies like that would hurt the collecting community in a big way. There are a lot of gullible people out there who buy comics. And having them leave the hobby because of a bad experience with third-party grading would be bad even for sellers like FlyingDonut. And I don't believe CGG is setting the bar high enough to prevent that from happening.

 

Still sounds like a garage band. Needs to sound like a bank.

 

Lighthouse

[lighthouse]

I think (hopefully) the Marketplace is a long way from accepting CGG, but you do raise some good points about the possible harm they may do to the hobby. I wouldn't like to see collectors disappearing from the hobby after getting burned by an unreliable product. On the other hand I would like to think that new and returning collectors, when dipping their feet into the graded comics market, would get themselves as informed as possible first.

 

This website and these forums are a great place to start.

 

You didn't really just post that did you? You didn't really suggest that the rank and file customers who buy hyped products would get themselves as informed as possible first, did you? You don't honestly believe that the people who buy my 9.8s of Secret War 1 have spent a lot of time educating themselves about the graded comics market?

 

The guys buying a 9.8 Batman 232 probably have done their homework...

 

The guys buying a 9.8 Batman 608... um... no...

 

There are exceptions, but the vast majority of entry-level customers for graded comics come into the process pretty much blind... They trust that CGC must be okay because any company that can afford to advertise that much is probably alright, and that's as far as it goes.

[lighthouse]

They basically just leech off CGC for their business model.

 

Actually you insult CGC by saying that...

 

They leeched off CGC's product. But anyone who understands business models can tell you that CGG didn't do a very thorough job leeching off that...

[garthgantu]

They basically just leech off CGC for their business model.

 

Chevrolet leeched off Ford?

 

It's common knowledge that when Burger King first got started, they had little money for market research. So they just opened franchises within eyesight of McDonald's, knowing that Mickey D's had spent tons of $ figuring out the best locations around the country. If that's not leeching, I don't know what is... copy the concept, copy the format, copy the pricing, copy the location...

[s-man]

It's common knowledge that when Burger King first got started, they had little money for market research. So they just opened franchises within eyesight of McDonald's, knowing that Mickey D's had spent tons of $ figuring out the best locations around the country. If that's not leeching, I don't know what is... copy the concept, copy the format, copy the pricing, copy the location..

 

I hate to say this...but that is F'ing brilliant on BK's part!! I always wondered why you see a McD's next to a BK!

[lighthouse]

It's common knowledge that when Burger King first got started, they had little money for market research. So they just opened franchises within eyesight of McDonald's, knowing that Mickey D's had spent tons of $ figuring out the best locations around the country. If that's not leeching, I don't know what is... copy the concept, copy the format, copy the pricing, copy the location..

 

I hate to say this...but that is F'ing brilliant on BK's part!! I always wondered why you see a McD's next to a BK!

 

And now, the research would also show that as being the correct strategy. The game theory of firm location suggests that for firms selling largely indentical goods, it's best to locate as close as possible as long as there is enough business for both firms. That's why auto dealerships are frequently clustered and so are gas stations...

 

Mention a hot dog stand on a round island and you spot the economists immediately...

[garthgantu]

They basically just leech off CGC for their business model.

 

Actually you insult CGC by saying that...

 

They leeched off CGC's product. But anyone who understands business models can tell you that CGG didn't do a very thorough job leeching off that...

 

Lighthouse: I respect your stance on the issue at hand, to a degree... but do you really think that submitting one book to CGG will lend them that much credibility?

 

Further, I'm wondering how many submissions you feel would be necessary to learn something more about CGG's practices and expertise - or maybe from where you sit, there is NO number of submissions that would enable this? (This is not meant facetiously, I'm seriously wondering.)

 

I'm of the opinion that more than one grading service is a good thing (within reason, of course - 10 such companies would be far too many). I'm also of the opinion that CGG will be with us for at least a fair while going forward. Your decision to accept the free submission or not accept it won't change CGG's fortune all that much either way, will it? It's more of an interesting experiment than anything else. Or perhaps you feel that simply submitting a book to CGG will further legitimize them in some way, in the eyes of other board members?

 

Or is it simply that you feel this offer is disingenuous on CGG's part, and that CGG has ulterior motives for extending this offer?

 

If you were to submit a book to CGG that CGC had found to be restored, or had a missing page, or etc., and CGG missed that 'defect', wouldn't that prove something ? Or if CGG came back with a grade that was, say, more than .5 different from CGC's grade on the same book, wouldn't that at least add to the growing "bin" of information we have that directly compares the two companies?

 

Just seems like too good an opportunity to pass up...

[deathlok]

Lighthouse: I respect your stance on the issue at hand, to a degree... but do you really think that submitting one book to CGG will lend them that much credibility?

 

Further, I'm wondering how many submissions you feel would be necessary to learn something more about CGG's practices and expertise - or maybe from where you sit, there is NO number of submissions that would enable this? (This is not meant facetiously, I'm seriously wondering.)

 

I'm of the opinion that more than one grading service is a good thing (within reason, of course - 10 such companies would be far too many). I'm also of the opinion that CGG will be with us for at least a fair while going forward. Your decision to accept the free submission or not accept it won't change CGG's fortune all that much either way, will it? It's more of an interesting experiment than anything else. Or perhaps you feel that simply submitting a book to CGG will further legitimize them in some way, in the eyes of other board members?

 

Or is it simply that you feel this offer is disingenuous on CGG's part, and that CGG has ulterior motives for extending this offer?

 

If you were to submit a book to CGG that CGC had found to be restored, or had a missing page, or etc., and CGG missed that 'defect', wouldn't that prove something ? Or if CGG came back with a grade that was, say, more than .5 different from CGC's grade on the same book, wouldn't that at least add to the growing "bin" of information we have that directly compares the two companies?

 

Just seems like too good an opportunity to pass up...

 

'House because of posts like this...why do you bother trying to explain yourself. Obviously most of these guys never bother to read your posts. Perhaps you can just cut and paste your reponse to Garth.

[lighthouse]

Lighthouse: I respect your stance on the issue at hand, to a degree... but do you really think that submitting one book to CGG will lend them that much credibility?

 

First off, you did read my 83-page treatise from last night, right?

 

Further, I'm wondering how many submissions you feel would be necessary to learn something more about CGG's practices and expertise - or maybe from where you sit, there is NO number of submissions that would enable this? (This is not meant facetiously, I'm seriously wondering.)

 

I think there is a fundamental misunderstanding here. The product they are selling is not a holder for your comic with a grade attached. I have no doubt they can provide that product. And I do own an example. The product they are truly selling is the future marketplace perception of the holder with a grade attached. That's a product that can't be evaluated with one submission, or even twenty.

 

If you were to submit a book to CGG that CGC had found to be restored, or had a missing page, or etc., and CGG missed that 'defect', wouldn't that prove something ? Or if CGG came back with a grade that was, say, more than .5 different from CGC's grade on the same book, wouldn't that at least add to the growing "bin" of information we have that directly compares the two companies?

 

If I were to do that, do you honestly think I would do it with a free submission that was trackable to me? Does anyone here believe that a book lighthouse submits as his "free" submission will be treated exactly the same way as every other book in the pipeline? Anyone? How foolish would CGG be to not spend three or four times as much effort and time on getting that grade as "right" as they could?

 

If I were going to truly "test" the quality of their authentication, it wouldn't be part of this offer. It wouldn't come from my address. It wouldn't even come from this state. It would be as blind of a test as I could possibly make it.

 

But because of the lack of transparency, even if they "passed" it would be meaningless. How would the community know that the guy who caught 8 out of 8 restored books is still the guy doing the checking?

[chrisco37]

The guys buying a 9.8 Batman 608... um... no...

 

 

Hey! I bought mine from you, ya [!@#%^&^]!

[lighthouse]

The guys buying a 9.8 Batman 608... um... no...

 

 

Hey! I bought mine from you, ya [!@#%^&^]!

 

Yeah, but you also bought 100 Bullets from me... so we're even...

[OldGuy]

I think there is a fundamental misunderstanding here. The product they are selling is not a holder for your comic with a grade attached. I have no doubt they can provide that product. And I do own an example. The product they are truly selling is the future marketplace perception of the holder with a grade attached. That's a product that can't be evaluated with one submission, or even twenty.

 

21? Just kidding man. I read your manifesto and I like that it's a "big picture" kind of view of the issue. I tend to not always look at the big picture. I don't fully agree with your view, but I do understand it and there are several valid points that I do agree with. Thanks for taking the time to write it.

[lighthouse]

I think there is a fundamental misunderstanding here. The product they are selling is not a holder for your comic with a grade attached. I have no doubt they can provide that product. And I do own an example. The product they are truly selling is the future marketplace perception of the holder with a grade attached. That's a product that can't be evaluated with one submission, or even twenty.

 

21? Just kidding man. I read your manifesto and I like that it's a "big picture" kind of view of the issue. I tend to not always look at the big picture. I don't fully agree with your view, but I do understand it and there are several valid points that I do agree with. Thanks for taking the time to write it.

 

Disagree with me at your peril! For I am the great and powerful LIGHTHOUSE. I can't be stopped, I can't be contained. Worlds tremble at the mention of my name. Know now that today you will witness a grand... wait a minute... what's that smell... gasoline?... gasoline!... Who put gasoline in my gasoline?!?!