Where in the world was the Quality Control at CGC??? 43 43

[Ride the Tiger]

On 8/21/2023 at 10:53 AM, GeeksAreMyPeeps said:

I assumed that page were basically the leaders of various teams of graders, not all of the graders.

Just going by the info given. They only list those 16 names. Team leaders aren't mentioned. 

[Get Marwood & I]

On 8/21/2023 at 5:45 PM, ExNihilo said:

The problem with this is CGC's advertised service is that grading is being looked at by two graders.  If it turns out they're not doing this, then it opens them up to legal action for false advertising.

You could say the same about this...

...and this:

On 8/21/2023 at 5:45 PM, ExNihilo said:

When I harp on CGC for all the dumb mistakes that get posted here, it's not because I'm trolling them, it's because I wish they would hold themselves to the same high standard we expect from them.

That's how a lot of people feel, I suspect. Like you, I want them to do the right thing. I believe they can still be a successful, profitable company by doing the right thing. Telling people that Newton Rings are normal isn't the right thing. Giving people two weeks remediation windows isn't the right thing, and so on. I want to use my grading credit and feel that I'm using a company that is acting to the highest standards and in good faith. I want to visit this forum without being reminded of how many times they appear not to.

 

[BlowUpTheMoon]

 

[Ryan.]

On 8/21/2023 at 12:45 PM, ExNihilo said:

The problem with this is CGC's advertised service is that grading is being looked at by two graders.  If it turns out they're not doing this, then it opens them up to legal action for false advertising.

 

My personal position is it kind of is everyone's business.  If there are enough dumb issues that slip through QC to the point that CGC's reputation takes a hit, then that affects everyone who has a CGC book.  Look at PGX, they no doubt had books that were graded fine, but all the bad grading or outright lies ruined the label for everyone.  I realize that's an extreme example, but that's the sort of thing that worries me about CGC.  It takes years to build a reputation.  It only takes one bad day to bring it all down.  When I harp on CGC for all the dumb mistakes that get posted here, it's not because I'm trolling them, it's because I wish they would hold themselves to the same high standard we expect from them.

CGC was caught selling grades twice. We all willfully moved on.

[707comics]

On 8/21/2023 at 1:25 AM, Get Marwood & I said:

Right, thanks. If correct, your process timing calculations strengthen my theory that AI might be grading a lot of the books. Maybe the human graders just do the pre-moderns which seem to represent a much smaller part of the overall volume if BCs extracted data is correct. If you were running a grading company, and got a human to count the pages, do a resto check and look for internal issues on every submission, and the statistics then showed that 99.8% of moderns always had the right number of pages, no resto and no internal structural issues, what would you do? Carry on doing that, or accept the risk of that tiny percentage of books with issues getting through and then being discovered?

Carney's AI might be sorting the books into work queues and sending everything before a given date to the humans for grading and grading the rest itself - probably at the same time - based just on the covers. It then directs those to encapsulation having populated the records. AI may even then do some QC. If it can identify any title from a possibility list of millions, it could match the cover title to the label etc. There are lots of opportunities for it to add value, I'm sure.

Anyway, it's not our business what CGC do or how they do it. It's fun to speculate, but all we can do is decide whether to pay for the end service. If we're happy, we carry on submitting. If we're not, we have the option of not using them (although most seem to carry on if this thread is any indicator). When the process works, the end product looks fabulous. When it doesn't, it gets posted about here and in other places online. Mike says that CGC has a very low failure rate. That's probably true. When greggy does one of his 98 thousand graded book acquisition posts they all look fine to me. So maybe this thread and others do only represent a very small failure rate. Thousands of happy people, who say nothing, scores of unhappy people, who post here. Who knows. Those kinds of figures would be acceptable in most industries though, I'll bet. 

I've only joined in here because, once again, I've come to the forum looking for fun and interaction and this thread stands out. CGC don't pay attention to it. They don't change their practices or anything because of it or any other thread. They have their model and it's working for them. Use it, don't use it. If you complain, Mike may send examples of systematic failure through, and then nothing will happen. Five years in, and the solution to Newton Rings - after all that debate - is that they can't / won't fix them and they're now normal. For me, that is why I pause before submitting. It's not because I fear being in the tiny failure rate group (although I'm lucky like that). It's because if the failure rate is very low, then CGC should be remediating customers. The cost of doing so would be low, as the failure rate is low. But they're not. They're trying to normalise failure and have you pay for it. That's the reason I'm hesitant to use them.

I asked this question a while back (i.e does CGC use any type of A.I. in the grading process) but never got a concrete answer. 

IMO, It is the only way to really scale rapidly and in a cost effective way. As the volume increases and the demand for "humans" goes up to keep T.A.T.s somewhat reasonable, consistency becomes a big issue. Come to think of it, so do cost and talent availability (only so many graders / those interested in becoming one, training time, training cosr, etc.). With A.I. books can be graded anyplace, anytime. The training process is always ongoing and scaling is a much different scenario. Instead of being bound by how many human graders you have, it quickly becomes how many photos can you provide the A.I. with a day to score, etc. I can see how Computer Vision could also be beneficial in the Q.A. procedure. It could quickly check centering in the encapsulation, maybe look for newton rings (hard to see on camera though), labeling issues, etc.

There are all kinds of arguments for and against A.I. that are probably more geared for the water cooler but speaking strictly from a business perspective I can see how an operation like CGC would be investing heavily in A.I. and computer vision to streamline / scale their operations. I would love to hear more about if / what / thoughts on AI / CV from the CGC team but not sure how likely that is to happen.

 (FWIW, I just submitted another batch of books last week)

[zzutak]

On 8/21/2023 at 9:45 AM, ExNihilo said:

The problem with this is CGC's advertised service is that grading is being looked at by two graders.

This is NOT what CGC guarantees. 

To quote, "The collectible has been inspected by at least two (2) professionals."  Word choice matters, especially when those words are part of a guarantee approved by a corporate attorney.  "Inspect" does not have the same meaning as grade, and a "professional" in CGC's world is not necessarily a grader.  To the best of my knowledge, a CGC principal has never precisely defined what this guarantee actually means.  For example, does one of the "professionals" only count pages and/or check for interior cut-outs during his/her "inspection"? 

[Gaard]

A janitor is a professional.

[ExNihilo]

On 8/21/2023 at 5:19 PM, 707comics said:

I asked this question a while back (i.e does CGC use any type of A.I. in the grading process) but never got a concrete answer. 

IMO, It is the only way to really scale rapidly and in a cost effective way. As the volume increases and the demand for "humans" goes up to keep T.A.T.s somewhat reasonable, consistency becomes a big issue. Come to think of it, so do cost and talent availability (only so many graders / those interested in becoming one, training time, training cosr, etc.). With A.I. books can be graded anyplace, anytime. The training process is always ongoing and scaling is a much different scenario. Instead of being bound by how many human graders you have, it quickly becomes how many photos can you provide the A.I. with a day to score, etc. I can see how Computer Vision could also be beneficial in the Q.A. procedure. It could quickly check centering in the encapsulation, maybe look for newton rings (hard to see on camera though), labeling issues, etc.

There are all kinds of arguments for and against A.I. that are probably more geared for the water cooler but speaking strictly from a business perspective I can see how an operation like CGC would be investing heavily in A.I. and computer vision to streamline / scale their operations. I would love to hear more about if / what / thoughts on AI / CV from the CGC team but not sure how likely that is to happen.

 (FWIW, I just submitted another batch of books last week)

I 100% think AI should form the first layer of grading as it provides consistency of grading.  It also, in theory automates the notation system so customers get more accurate notes.  Let's face it, we're all sick and tired of getting 9.4 and 9.6s with no explanation as to why they didn't get 9.8s.  From the business side, it's also more cost effective as in their view, it would reduce the number of graders you would need to have on staff.

[Ride the Tiger]

I always wanted to seek a career in the custodial arts.

[RockMyAmadeus]

On 8/21/2023 at 9:45 AM, ExNihilo said:

The problem with this is CGC's advertised service is that grading is being looked at by two graders.

[Beastfeast]

Here's something that's new to me: 

Ever wonder why your newsstand books aren't broken out on the census even though the notation is correct on your CGC label?  Look up your cert number and notice that the Newsstand designation is going under "pedigree" instead of "variant".  

 

[Get Marwood & I]

On 8/22/2023 at 1:19 AM, 707comics said:

I asked this question a while back (i.e does CGC use any type of A.I. in the grading process) but never got a concrete answer. 

IMO, It is the only way to really scale rapidly and in a cost effective way. As the volume increases and the demand for "humans" goes up to keep T.A.T.s somewhat reasonable, consistency becomes a big issue. Come to think of it, so do cost and talent availability (only so many graders / those interested in becoming one, training time, training cosr, etc.). With A.I. books can be graded anyplace, anytime. The training process is always ongoing and scaling is a much different scenario. Instead of being bound by how many human graders you have, it quickly becomes how many photos can you provide the A.I. with a day to score, etc. I can see how Computer Vision could also be beneficial in the Q.A. procedure. It could quickly check centering in the encapsulation, maybe look for newton rings (hard to see on camera though), labeling issues, etc.

There are all kinds of arguments for and against A.I. that are probably more geared for the water cooler but speaking strictly from a business perspective I can see how an operation like CGC would be investing heavily in A.I. and computer vision to streamline / scale their operations. I would love to hear more about if / what / thoughts on AI / CV from the CGC team but not sure how likely that is to happen.

 (FWIW, I just submitted another batch of books last week)

There's nothing wrong with using technology to improve things if it works, I agree. The possibilities are indeed intriguing.

I've just posted elsewhere about CGC's branding and when you look around their various web pages you see the scale of the operation. They have an extremely impressive portfolio of activities and for the most part their presentation of them is slick and professional. You can only imagine the amount of things that are vying for the management's attention on a daily basis and it's easy to forget how impressive CGC are as an overall proposition.

Can you imagine the boss sitting at their desk on any given morning. They have staffing, premises, operations, advertising, web presentations, research, financials, product line development, media relations etc etc. It must be staggering. So it's easy to see how they could take their eye off the ball on one of the basics. Look at all the razzmatazz that surrounds a graded comic. Look at all the things you have to juggle for the proposition to exist. And somehow, in that whirlwind of activity, you find yourself with a slab that generates Newton Rings which, no matter what anyone at CGC says, destroys one of the fundamental selling points of their product - crystal clear presentation. And you find yourself with an operation that struggles with the volume and allows faulty products to go out. As important as all the elements are, none are more important to a grading company than accuracy, competence and clarity. Those are the things I would want the leadership team to focus on. 

[lostboys]

On 8/22/2023 at 5:08 AM, Get Marwood & I said:

There's nothing wrong with using technology to improve things if it works, I agree. The possibilities are indeed intriguing.

I've just posted elsewhere about CGC's branding and when you look around their various web pages you see the scale of the operation. They have an extremely impressive portfolio of activities and for the most part their presentation of them is slick and professional. You can only imagine the amount of things that are vying for the management's attention on a daily basis and it's easy to forget how impressive CGC are as an overall proposition.

Can you imagine the boss sitting at their desk on any given morning. They have staffing, premises, operations, advertising, web presentations, research, financials, product line development, media relations etc etc. It must be staggering. So it's easy to see how they could take their eye off the ball on one of the basics. Look at all the razzmatazz that surrounds a graded comic. Look at all the things you have to juggle for the proposition to exist. And somehow, in that whirlwind of activity, you find yourself with a slab that generates Newton Rings which, no matter what anyone at CGC says, destroys one of the fundamental selling points of their product - crystal clear presentation. And you find yourself with an operation that struggles with the volume and allows faulty products to go out. As important as all the elements are, none are more important to a grading company than accuracy, competence and clarity. Those are the things I would want the leadership team to focus on. 

Yeah, im imagining the boss... and its Michael Scott.

[Get Marwood & I]

On 8/22/2023 at 1:00 PM, lostboys said:

Yeah, im imagining the boss... and its Michael Scott.

David Brent 

[Tec-Tac-Toe]

On 8/21/2023 at 8:46 PM, Gaard said:

A janitor is a professional.

At my grammar school their title was Custodian. They were all good people, especially a gentleman named Pat who, unfortunately, likely passed long ago.

[lostboys]

On 8/22/2023 at 8:02 AM, Get Marwood & I said:

David Brent 

 

 

Edited August 22, 2023 by lostboys

[Get Marwood & I]

On 8/22/2023 at 3:02 PM, lostboys said:

 

 

“If you want the rainbow, you’ve got to part with the rain. Do you know which philosopher said that? Dolly Parton. And people say she’s just a pair of tits.”

 

[lostboys]

On 8/22/2023 at 10:11 AM, Get Marwood & I said:

“If you want the rainbow, you’ve got to part with the rain. Do you know which philosopher said that? Dolly Parton. And people say she’s just a pair of tits.”

 

You can type tits but I cant type id i ot?

 

[Get Marwood & I]

On 8/22/2023 at 3:43 PM, lostboys said:

You can type tits but I cant type id i ot?

 

Tits are birds, lostboys. You can't block tits!  Why, that would be as silly as blocking Philip K MR. or MR. Grayson!

 

 

Oh. Hang on. 

[Sigur Ros]

On 8/22/2023 at 10:43 AM, lostboys said:

You can type tits but I cant type id i ot?

 

To be fair, you can't show your id i ots either.