Wizard First Program - Not April's Fools

[dam60]

Understood - but if you are in the market for a high grade book with a verified signature this fills that void

 

Assuming you're not a Kirby fan.

 

I like King Kirby!

[awe4one]

I think you're missing the point entirely. CGC has teamed up to mass produce (what exactly is limited anyway?) collectible products IN DIRECT COMPETITION with product that your regular customers pay you for. Also by modifying your grading scale to accommodate Wizard, you've essentially lessened any respect and impact of the original scale that you've worked so hard to gain. What next? 11.0?

 

Jim

[Zanarkand]

This slabbed comic thing has officially gotten out of control.

 

The reason is greed. Pure greed. CGC's antics, first colluding with Overstreet to conceal NM prices and delegitimize all non-CGC'd NM grades, now this absurd deal with Wizard to produce essentially fake grades, have nothing to do with the hobby.

 

All the posts I've read so far bring up excellent points. "9.5" isn't a real CGC grade. The folks in charge of business decisions at CGC know this perfectly well. Yet they intentionally chose to assign this fake grade to Wizard First books.

 

Their business agreement says, in essence, that even if their graders, upon whose impartiality and accuracy all CGC customers rely, think a book is 9.6 - 9.9, they are to lie. Through special agreement with Wizard, they are to knowingly and deliberately assign the wrong grade to the comic.

 

They commit this lie to gain an obvious benefit - money from the agreement. But they are gaining another benefit too, one mentioned by more than one poster so far - resubs. Any collector who buys a comic slabbed with the deceptive 9.5 grade can crack it and resubmit for the real 9.6 - 9.9 grade. The CGC folks are not complete insufficiently_thoughtful_persons, they know lots of people will do this.

 

Know what it's called when someone "knowingly lies to obtain benefit or advantage or to cause some benefit that is due to be denied"? FRAUD.

[Zanarkand]

Read Steve B's comments right after I posted. Also real quick:

 

3: The deal is that Wizard will get a limited amount of copies of only a few titles from Marvel right off the press and they CONTRACTED us to grade their books using WIZARD'S NEW GRADING SCALE. This is stated on the back of the label.

 

4: There is NO change in the CGC grading scale.

 

5: The label says "CGC GRADED" and is red. It does not say Universal like a blue CGC label does. It is a Wizard product that they sell. There should be very little if any confusion in the market place.

 

Cool. Can I contract with you to grade books too? Here's the plan: I send you $16 for every Modern comic I want graded. I will agree to wait twice your advertised turnaround time to get them back, since I will anyway. But since Wizard gets to make up their own freaking grading scale which YOU happily slap on the comics, I should have the same privilege. I would like all comics that are perfect to be 10, and all comic less than perfect to be 9.9. Thank you.

 

Jesus H. Christ...

[richnerd]

Read Steve B's comments right after I posted. Also real quick:

 

3: The deal is that Wizard will get a limited amount of copies of only a few titles from Marvel right off the press and they CONTRACTED us to grade their books using WIZARD'S NEW GRADING SCALE. This is stated on the back of the label.

 

4: There is NO change in the CGC grading scale.

 

5: The label says "CGC GRADED" and is red. It does not say Universal like a blue CGC label does. It is a Wizard product that they sell. There should be very little if any confusion in the market place.

 

Cool. Can I contract with you to grade books too? Here's the plan: I send you $16 for every Modern comic I want graded. I will agree to wait twice your advertised turnaround time to get them back, since I will anyway. But since Wizard gets to make up their own freaking grading scale which YOU happily slap on the comics, I should have the same privilege. I would like all comics that are perfect to be 10, and all comic less than perfect to be 9.9. Thank you.

 

Jesus H. Christ...

good one Jesus

[joe_collector]

Any collector who buys a comic slabbed with the deceptive 9.5 grade can crack it and resubmit for the real 9.6 - 9.9 grade.

 

Do you honestly believe Wizard would release these books, or that they would appear in any great number?

 

The whole scheme revolves around artifically receiving as many 10.0 grades as possible, and if I were in charge of Wizard, I'd burn every 9.5 and lower book that I got back.

 

And of course, the "fixed game" nature of the plan ensures there will be very few of them to begin with.

[Foolkiller]

The deal is that Wizard will get a limited amount of copies of only a few titles from Marvel right off the press and they CONTRACTED us to grade their books using WIZARD'S NEW GRADING SCALE. This is stated on the back of the label.

 

As others have noted... wizard's own grading scale? you're blurring the lines. Too many customers will not get the difference. You're grading the comic and it putting it in your holder with CGC on it. Make no mistake about it, it will cause mass confusion, and there's basically very little press that will clear it up to most people.

 

The label says "CGC GRADED" and is red. It does not say Universal like a blue CGC label does. It is a Wizard product that they sell. There should be very little if any confusion in the market place.

 

You're kidding right? Steve, as I said above, there's going to be total confusion. People will automatically associate this as a CGC grade with their standards. Just consider the furor it's already causing on the boards -- and most of us know CGC and the standards well... think of the general public's perception. Do you know how many ebay resales of these books from wizard will be advertised as "CGC graded"? Whether or not you believe it is clear or not is irrelevant. Your intent with the product is not how it's going to be presented by many dealers.

 

: We are a Business and I would rather grade their product then Wizard going somewhere else or grading it themselves. We like the additional revenue and I would much rather have our team grade the books then someone else who does not know how to grade properly.

 

Would Wizard actually be able to shop around? Consider this... they could go to CGG or whereever, but it would just make Wizard's product less credible. Sure, they could generate money short term, but this will hurt CGC's credibility long term. This is a short term gain, not a long term one.

[AlexH]

Understood - but if you are in the market for a high grade book with a verified signature this fills that void

 

Assuming you're not a Kirby fan.

 

I am also a Kirby fan, and I feel your pain as well. How great would it have been to get a Kirby signature series book done before he passed away.

 

On the up side, there are still a lot of greats out there who can be a part of the signature series for future generations (Irwin Hasen, Joe Simon, Martin Nodell, just to name a few).

[Zanarkand]

Any collector who buys a comic slabbed with the deceptive 9.5 grade can crack it and resubmit for the real 9.6 - 9.9 grade.

 

Do you honestly believe Wizard would release these books, or that they would appear in any great number?

 

The whole scheme revolves around artifically receiving as many 10.0 grades as possible, and if I were in charge of Wizard, I'd burn every 9.5 and lower book that I got back.

 

And of course, the "fixed game" nature of the plan ensures there will be very few of them to begin with.

 

Well, let's think about this. We know how many titles Marvel has. We don't know exactly how many Wizard First submissions there will be, just "a limited number". Even if we assume that Wizard's deal with Marvel is only 2 or 3 copies of each title per month, there could easily be a hundred submissions per month.

 

We also know about how often a perfect 10 turns up with modern comics. What was it, 1 in 300? That adds up to a single 10 turning up for Wizard every three months. Not a good return, unless a) CGC engages in more chicanery, handing out 10s like candy, or b) Wizard intends to cash in on the other 299 not-10s.

[Red Hook]

50,0000,000 is technically a limited number.

[drbanner]

8: This will not affect turn around times. As most of you have probably noticed, turn times are getting better. Not only that, but we have hired a new person in the Modern dept., a new customer service/recieving person, two new people in encapsulation, and the big news is that I have hired a superstar of a grader whose name most of you know and I will announce who he is later today or tomorrow.

 

 

Other than that, this is pretty sad and unless a Wizard 10.0 = a CGC 10.0, Khaos and Konfusion will reign!

[Red Hook]

8: This will not affect turn around times. As most of you have probably noticed, turn times are getting better. Not only that, but we have hired a new person in the Modern dept., a new customer service/recieving person, two new people in encapsulation, and the big news is that I have hired a superstar of a grader whose name most of you know and I will announce who he is later today or tomorrow.

 

Of course Steve didn't mention they are all former CGG staff!

[Marvelous]

Are you going to have a separate census for "Wizard First" comics or is a 10.0 Wizard First comic going to be factored into the normal census?

[drbanner]

8: This will not affect turn around times. As most of you have probably noticed, turn times are getting better. Not only that, but we have hired a new person in the Modern dept., a new customer service/recieving person, two new people in encapsulation, and the big news is that I have hired a superstar of a grader whose name most of you know and I will announce who he is later today or tomorrow.

 

Of course Steve didn't mention they are all former CGG staff!

 

hammer? Based on what he's said about the flood of his books that come back from CGC restored, he seems about as adept at detecting resto as they are!!

[Smokinghawk]

This slabbed comic thing has officially gotten out of control.

 

All the posts I've read so far bring up excellent points. "9.5" isn't a real CGC grade.

 

Sure it is! Steve himself said this new deal isn't changing the grading scale at all!

 

Which means 9.5's have existed all along, it's just that none of us were lucky enough to get one before.

[Smokinghawk]

What next? 11.0?

 

Jim

 

 

Comic Grading by Spinal Tap...

[joe_collector]

We also know about how often a perfect 10 turns up with modern comics. What was it, 1 in 300? That adds up to a single 10 turning up for Wizard every three months. Not a good return, unless a) CGC engages in more chicanery, handing out 10s like candy, or b) Wizard intends to cash in on the other 299 not-10s.

 

But isn't that the whole point of going with a 10.0 to 9.5 gap, to ensure you get a disproportionate amount of 10's back? Otherwise, what's the benefit to Wizard in doing this, as they'd be giving up a ton of 9.9 and 9.8 comics that could be sold for much more than a 9.5.

 

The only way I see it working is that comics grading 9.751 and above (using CGC's "closest whole grade" format) would receive a 10.0 and anything 9.750 and below would receive a 9.5.

 

This effectively turns a Wizard 10.0 into a CGC 9.8 to 10.0 equivalent, which would make sense.

[Clark Khaos-migration]

- only Wizard is doing this, every other submitter gets their books graded the same way, with the regular grading system.

 

So much for impartiality. CGC has just sold out to the highest bidder.

 

 

 

- if you were a buyer, would a Wizard 10.0 - which is not the same as a regular 10.0 - mean anything to you? It's essentially a 9.8 rounded up, just as a 9.5 is a 9.6 or a 9.4 in disguise.

 

Read that again. Are you SERIOUSLY okay with that?? Since when is "rounding" an acceptable practice for a grading service WHOSE BUSINESS IS BASED ON PRECISION and a REPUTATION FOR PRECISE GRADING???

[Clark Khaos-migration]

8: This will not affect turn around times. As most of you have probably noticed, turn times are getting better. Not only that, but we have hired a new person in the Modern dept., a new customer service/recieving person, two new people in encapsulation, and the big news is that I have hired a superstar of a grader whose name most of you know and I will announce who he is later today or tomorrow.

 

 

Other than that, this is pretty sad and unless a Wizard 10.0 = a CGC 10.0, Khaos and Konfusion will reign!

 

Eeeeexcellent. Eeeeeeeeeeeeexcellent.

[Marvelous]

Hey Clark_Khaos! April Fools!!!