LMFAO!

[Lockjaw]

Should I expect him to ask for royalties everytime I use the word

[hammer-migration]

Oddly enough, according to the US copyright office, he CAN!!!!

[ArAich]

Pay up , Sucka...

[ArAich]

Thanks for watching out for my interests hammer....by the way...your commision check is in the mail...

[chrisco37]

That comic is a frikkin joke! Usually CGC does a good job, but that book is trash! My Hulk #181 looks 10x better than that and it got a 6.0. It had no water stain (and that one is huge!) and no date stamp either. I don't mind date stamps if they are small and inconspicuous, but that one is ugly and rather large.

 

Chris

[allto1-migration]

I send a copy of Uncanny X-Men 158, which have a heavy watermark on the back cover too and I got a 6.0 on it. No way that issue could have gotten a 9.0. Maybe next time, I should try and leave a Lincoln inside the comic book, maybe that will get it a higher grade.

[Bonds25]

I don't think it is a water stain. I have several comics with that pink on the back cover, but it's not a stain. That being said, the comic has a horrible eye appeal, and that should definitely factor into the final grade. Not to mention the date stamp and store stamp. A 9.0??? HAHAHAHAHAHAHA

[hammer-migration]

Not taking sides, just an observation. In all fairness, Heritage is SOOO Big that all of their offerings fall under vast scrutiny so grading discrepencies are going to be blatant on THEIR books. Folks are going to yell, "FOUL!", and I'm not saying that their right or wrong to do so. If you scan Ebay, even just your average steady seller, you'll see the SAME TYPE OF DESCREPENCIES, BOTH WAYS (books that should have graded MUCH higher). They're just not going to hit you with impact that Heritage auctions do because they're the biggest and have the highest visibility. They're scans are probably accessed 10X as much as any other seller. The point is that grading ISN'T a science, and beyond that, the first judgement you should trust as a consumer, above and beyond anything else, is your own. It's YOUR money. ANYONE can bobble the ball on a simple play. From a little leaguer to a guy like Graig Nettles who won Playoff and World Series games with his glove alone for his team. Is it a VF/NM? In my opinion, When pigs fly! But I've also seen 7.5s that mystified me as to why they weren't graded 9.0. It says it right on the label, "Grading is NOT a science". Not mine, not yours, not CGCs. It also says, "a best effort has been made to grade and detect restoration". If it were a perfect world, every professional would NEVER make a mistake and that just isn't possible.

[drbanner]

Good point...and I sure wish folks would point out to me which books appear undergraded!! Alas, I think those are all being kept under wraps until AFTER the auction ends. The other thing to remember is that nobody provides better scans than Heritage, nobody provides as many scans as Heritage, and nobody has the quality AND quantity of books that Heritage does. I would guess for every overgraded book, there is an equal number of undergraded books...now I just need to go find 'em!

 

Concerning this book, the front cover might be VF/NM, but the back cover...uh, don't think so...

[ArAich]

I understand your argument but I cannot agree with it. The whole basis of CGC to the buyer as well as the collector is that when you see a certain grade given to a book then that's a reasonable assesment of what the standard for that particular grade is.

CGC is being paid and is in business for the sole reason of applying a grade to a book based on (there) written criteria. We as buyers/collectors, dealers/sellers need to have a certain degree of confidance in this professional grading service otherwise it would be folly to even use it.

As a customer I expect my book to be graded accuratly since that is what I pay for. This business of it being an art as much as a science is malarky. CGC must have a certain criteria that they use and if it were followed precisely on each and every book that they grade then the margin of error should not exceed that which the book in this discussion has exceded.

In my opinion guidelines should have been (and probably were) set up since the inception of CGC to accuratly grade a book based on stringent criteria. This book , and others that I have seen have shown me that there is a quality control issue that needs to be addressed.

 

[blowout]

I don't neccessarily think that the grade has anything to do with Heritage in this case.

 

There are two other reasons why this book has recieved special treatment grading wise:

1. Golden Age book

2. Pedigree

 

Have seen several other books not offered by Heritage that fall into these categories being blatantly over-graded.

As you guys know I am no fan of Heritage's practices, but I don't think this one is their fault.

 

We have to call out CGC on this one.

[blowout]

It had no water stain (and that one is huge!) and no date stamp either. I don't mind date stamps if they are small and inconspicuous, but that one is ugly and rather large.

 

There is no water stain on this book. The stain on the back cover looks like an ink transfer stain caused by the book being stored on top of another in a stack. The date stamps are typical of GA books and in this case help to identify the Bethlehem pedigree.

I don't think the book desrves a 6.0 as you suggested, but a 9.0 is certainlty way overboard. I would say the book was a 7.5-8.0.

[hammer-migration]

That's just it. Without a stipulated criteria; in this case: "VF/NM books cannot have ink or filth on the back cover that looks like it was imprinted by a stilletto point boot", who's to say? 95% of the books offered on Ebay have NO accompanying back cover scan (I'm guilty of this too, but it is more time consuming, and some just don't have the time). I've been surprised myself on many an occassion on a CGC graded book, either by an unmentioned back cover flaw that in my mind should have, as a whole, lowered the grade a half or a full tic, and also by a PERFECT back cover on a VF front cover book that should have pulled the grade up a notch overall. Heritage exposes both sides thereby giving us more to work with even though I personally feel that the scanner/software settings DO somewhat "morph" the appearance of the book.

The major confusion is this dichotomy that exists between systems. I grade by Overstreet definitions. When I buy or sell CGC graded books, I tend to grade more by COMPARISON to OTHER graded CGC books. I have an idea what the "average" 8.0, 9.0, 9.4, 9.6, etc. look like comparatively by noting a majority of graded examples. When I see a book labeled 8.0 that has FAR more in common with the typical 9.0, I have to believe that it may be "lowball-graded", not deliberately but because scientific definitions, to MY knowledge, don't exist for grading comics. And when I see a VF/NM withe a back cover flaw like the example we're talking about, I have to believe that it's OVERCOOKED because I've NEVER seen a 9.0 with a back cover like that, no matter HOW sharp the front cover may have been.

[Guest]

agreed...theres no excuse for that Boot mark on the back cover. Should have been graded much lower.

[Lockjaw]

Nah...sue me!

[seank]

There are two other reasons why this book has recieved special treatment grading wise:

1. Golden Age book

2. Pedigree

 

Pedigree should affect the value, not the grade. If I batter a Mile High book from NM to VG*, it's still a VG book. It shouldn't be upgraded to VF because it's from the Mile High collection. Grading should be standard across the board, whether the book is pedigreed or not pedigreed. Special treatment for pedigree smacks of cat show judging.

 

I can see some special treatment for golden age just because the inevitability of aging, but the book in question here is clearly not a 9.0, no matter when it was printed.

 

* Hypothetical only. I would never in real life mistreat a Mile High book in that way.

[ArAich]

[greggy]

[Lockjaw]

You know my so sue me response was intended to be flip/humorous...I am as to why you are by my response.

 

 

[blowout]

Pedigree should affect the value, not the grade.

 

I absolutely agree with you. Unfortunately I have seen far too many examples of pedigree books recieving the benefit of the doubt from CGC, so I can only assume that they don't.