Bleeding Cool's shot at HG CGC collectors?

[miraclemet]

Anyone else see Bleeding Cools OpEd piece (Im not gonna call it an article since its definately an opinion).

 

You can read it here.

 

Basically deriding people for buying and or selling the 9.9 and 10.0 super high grade moderns that are on the market or on ebay...

 

Now I'm not the market for the super high grade comics (Im more of a 9.4-9.6 guy myself, in the pretty but not pricey zone), but if there are buyers out there, you cant fault someone for selling.

 

It does sound like the author may have read this message board though since he does paraphrase the "buy the book not the grade" mantra that gets passed around here.

 

The author says he's not criticizing CGC (but instead the HG buyers & sellers) but you can read between the lines since CGC recently added the 9.9 grade (at least thats my understanding being relatively new here) and he does criticize that grade chase...

 

Thoughts?

[Waylander]

Hey Miraclemet,

 

I have well over 11,000 comics and only one slabbed and the main reason is that I want to read my books. I am very careful when it comes to grade - however money talks at the end of the day and if I cannot afford a grade then hey I drop down a peg or two. But back to the article - why oh why are people buying modern slabs - don't get me wrong I understand the need to get the near perfect comic, but a comic is there to be read... surely. If you want slabbed books - stop inflating the market and buy cards - there are no pages to read.

 

For the higher end comics (SA and GA), then CGC can be a safety gauge for independent agreeing of grade and thus price, but for moderns... come on!

 

I could rant all day about the pros and cons of slabbing (especially the signature series), but won't bore the Boardies. And yes, I have bought SA CGC graded comics and 'de-slabbed' them so I can read it - example Daredevil 1.

 

That's my penny's worth - on to someone else to add or disagree.

 

 

 

[Weird Paper]

Thanks for the link. I enjoyed that read, and thought his comments were spot on. Slabbing moderns is, more than anything, an inconvenience, since we'll have to break them out of their slabs to burn them for heat after the apocalypse.

[seanfingh]

 

What (or how) you collect sucks, and what (or how) I collect is awesome. It never loses its appeal, does it.

[jools&jim]

 

This statement is patently false:

 

"Before the existence of CGC, no one would look at the racks in comic shops for comics in perfect condition, just to buy them for their perfection..."

 

My friends and I knew guys who were doing this as early as 1977 (before we'd ever seen a real Direct Market comic shop!)...they read their comics, too, and sometimes even bought multiple copies (scandalous!). Likewise when I worked for Diamond in the early '90s and we were able to pull our own books each week via the company's internal subscription service: high grade never meant much to me, but there were several employees who pored through the assorted weekly stacks to find perfect copies. I'm sure older boardies here could cite similar examples, so I doubt that such behavior was non-existent "before CGC" (though there's no doubt that it's more common now).

 

In both cases, I thought those folks were a little... at the time, but I'm sure at least a few of them laughed all the way to the bank...

[gregreece]

This statement is patently false:

 

"Before the existence of CGC, no one would look at the racks in comic shops for comics in perfect condition, just to buy them for their perfection..."

 

My friends and I knew guys who were doing this as early as 1977 (before we'd ever seen a real Direct Market comic shop!)...they read their comics, too, and sometimes even bought multiple copies (!). Likewise when I worked for Diamond in the early '90s and we were able to pull our own books each week via the company's internal subscription service: high grade never meant much to me, but there were several employees who pored through the assorted weekly stacks to find perfect copies.

 

In both cases, I thought those folks were a little...off at the time, but I'm sure at least a few of them laughed all the way to the bank...

 

+1 I had many customers in the early '90's doing this.

[Boba]

Back in the late 70's when Conan, Shadow and other titles began, I used to buy at least 2 of everything and keep one "mint, unread" for my set.

A lot of people I know did the same.

[jonjesper]

Maybe he could also write an article that the price guide artificially inflated prices of Valiant comics as certain people within the Wizard company were sitting on MASS amounts...

[marvelcollector]

The author says he's not criticizing CGC (but instead the HG buyers & sellers) but you can read between the lines since CGC recently added the 9.9 grade (at least thats my understanding being relatively new here) and he does criticize that grade chase...

 

Thoughts?

 

The 9.9 and 10 grades are not "recently added".

 

At least no more so than 9.6/9.8...

[callipygian-migration]

The author says he's not criticizing CGC (but instead the HG buyers & sellers) but you can read between the lines since CGC recently added the 9.9 grade (at least thats my understanding being relatively new here) and he does criticize that grade chase...

 

Not sure where this misunderstanding comes from, but CGC has neither added nor subtracted any grades since they opened in 2000. The only new grade they made "on the side" was the Wizard Fist 9.5, and that was a spectacular failure.

[miraclemet]

The author says he's not criticizing CGC (but instead the HG buyers & sellers) but you can read between the lines since CGC recently added the 9.9 grade (at least thats my understanding being relatively new here) and he does criticize that grade chase...

 

Thoughts?

 

The 9.9 and 10 grades are not "recently added".

 

At least no more so than 9.6/9.8...

 

thanks for letting me know... as I said I'm pretty new to the HC/CGC world and for some reason I thought that CGC had not used the 9.9 grade until recently...

 

as always I learn from those who have been here longer

 

[USArmyParatrooper]

I'm a 9.8 guy myself. I think once you get to the point where you have strain to see any flaws, that's good enough for me. Is a 10.0 really more presentable than a 9.9?

 

That's not to say I will never buy something in those grades. I have to admit I am attracted to the "cool" factor in owning a comic that's graded above 9.8 But more than happy with 9.8's

[RockMyAmadeus]

This statement is patently false:

 

"Before the existence of CGC, no one would look at the racks in comic shops for comics in perfect condition, just to buy them for their perfection..."

 

 

Absolutely, unequivocally, undeniably false. *I* did this, and have hundreds (and could have THOUSANDS, if they were worth slabbing) of CGC 9.8 copies of books that I very carefully cherrypicked every single Friday for years. I frequently got for doing it, but I did it anyways. Grab that stack, turn to the spines, and start rejecting.

 

Yet ANOTHER example of people who don't know what the hell they're talking about posting things that aren't true on blogs which (apparently) influence thousands of people, people who then, "because they read it on Bleeding Cool's blog" regurgitate it years down the line as "fact."

 

And some of you wonder...you really wonder...

[MrBedrock]

 

And some of you wonder...

...and some don't.

[RockMyAmadeus]

By the way....I'm not a lawyer (though I play one in my head), but I suspect Barrington would have SOME cause of legal action against Bleeding Cool for interferring with his current items for sale.

 

Thoughts..?

[RockMyAmadeus]

Reading the comments, it's painfully clear that these people really have no understanding of CGC, why it exists, and why people "pay money for high grade books."

 

I'm sure they're nice enough people, but they simply have no concept of the idea that something can survive for 10, 20, 30, 50 years in "really nice shape" and why that matters to people.

 

Sigh.

[DrWatson]

 

And some of you wonder...

...and some don't.

Wonder what?

[bluechip]

By the way....I'm not a lawyer (though I play one in my head), but I suspect Barrington would have SOME cause of legal action against Bleeding Cool for interferring with his current items for sale.

 

Thoughts..?

 

On this particular board, sales of HG CGC comics are, without question, the items least intefered with.

 

If you're looking for examples of people interfering with items for sale, I suspect you might find more than a few in other places. In some cases, the items interfered with turn up later in "better" slabs, offered for sale at much higher prices, by the same people who interfered with the original sale.

 

 

[markseifert]

Reading the comments, it's painfully clear that these people really have no understanding of CGC, why it exists, and why people "pay money for high grade books."

 

That will change. BC is already doing regular market reports and does a ton of vintage comic, comic market, & original art coverage, and will be expanding that -- and including a number of different viewpoints on various matters.

[Logan510]

This statement is patently false:

 

"Before the existence of CGC, no one would look at the racks in comic shops for comics in perfect condition, just to buy them for their perfection..."

 

My friends and I knew guys who were doing this as early as 1977 (before we'd ever seen a real Direct Market comic shop!)...they read their comics, too, and sometimes even bought multiple copies (!). Likewise when I worked for Diamond in the early '90s and we were able to pull our own books each week via the company's internal subscription service: high grade never meant much to me, but there were several employees who pored through the assorted weekly stacks to find perfect copies.

 

In both cases, I thought those folks were a little...off at the time, but I'm sure at least a few of them laughed all the way to the bank...

 

+1 I had many customers in the early '90's doing this.

 

I've been personally doing this since the late 1970's when I would pull the best 1-2 copies off the racks at the 7-11 ( or local drugstore if the 7-11 copies were ratty ).