Raw Grading 1 1

[Aweandlorder]

13 minutes ago, mschmidt said:

Give me a break.

If the service makes it easier than normal for the scammer to operate then the service is most definitely to blame as well.

If a website isn't secured and your CC info gets stolen when you purchase something, you do bear some responsibility for not having done your own due diligence - but the site is definitely not blameless in this equation either.

A. Not everyones a scammer. Dismissing a service because 1-10% of its userbase will use it to exploit it is irrelevant. 

B. It is protected with an unbreakable seal. So not so easy to remove without a trace.

[mschmidt]

55 minutes ago, Aweandlorder said:

A. Not everyones a scammer. Dismissing a service because 1-10% of its userbase will use it to exploit it is irrelevant. 

B. It is protected with an unbreakable seal. So not so easy to remove without a trace.

A. I'm dismissing it because of how easy it is to exploit the service.

B. It's protected by a sticker. If it's anything like the DF "seals", it'll probably only take a bit of heat for the sticker to come off cleanly.

[Aweandlorder]

40 minutes ago, mschmidt said:

If it's anything like the DF "seals", it'll probably only take a bit of heat for the sticker to come off cleanly.

Spoken like a pro

 

 

[lou_fine]

10 hours ago, Readcomix said:

10 hours ago, mschmidt said:

If that's correct, that's insane - I guess they have zero problems providing legitimacy to scammers passing off restored books as unrestored.

Good point....how's that a complete grading service?

If you are looking for the full complete grading service with the restoration check, then you should be sending it in for the regular service that includes the resto check.  Sounds as though you guys are asking for the full regular service and yet only expecting to pay for the discounted raw grading service. 

Unfortunately, the real world doesn't work like that. 

[Readcomix]

6 minutes ago, lou_fine said:

If you are looking for the full complete grading service with the restoration check, then you should be sending it in for the regular service that includes the resto check.  Sounds as though you guys are asking for the full regular service and yet only expecting to pay for the discounted raw grading service. 

Unfortunately, the real world doesn't work like that. 

I get that. I'm just thinking most of the cost is in slabbing materials and labor to slab safely. Whatever the price point is for complete check, that's the right # to make raw grading work is all I'm saying. That said, I have pretty narrow and infrequent use for slabbing; some guys will slab anything. There's a whole range of perspectives. Even with 2 levels of service it's hard to please everyone. But there's certainly room for it.

[mschmidt]

2 hours ago, lou_fine said:

If you are looking for the full complete grading service with the restoration check, then you should be sending it in for the regular service that includes the resto check.  Sounds as though you guys are asking for the full regular service and yet only expecting to pay for the discounted raw grading service. 

Unfortunately, the real world doesn't work like that. 

Since when does grading not include a restoration check? What's next - offering a grading service that only gives you a "ballpark" estimate with the caveat that it may be off by a couple of grades either way?

[kav]

3 minutes ago, mschmidt said:

Since when does grading not include a restoration check? What's next - offering a grading service that only gives you a "ballpark" estimate with the caveat that it may be off by a couple of grades either way?

It's not like this service offers nothing of value whatsoever.  I think most people would rather have a raw that a grading company graded at 8.5 than a raw that just some random ebay seller said was 8.5.  It may not be a 100% resto checked grade but it's something.

[01TheDude]

Seems like what is needed is more than the expert grading opinion is a service that checks for restoration. It seems much more difficult to be an expert at restoration checking than grading a book.

That would make more sense to me. Unless you are clueless how to grade a book -- not sure what this service provides other than some sort of half-arsed verification of what grade the book might be to someone buying remotely.

Mylar bags with stickers? sorry-- but that seems like a waste of time to me. Hard pass. Good luck to those who want it though. If I am struggling to assign a grade or see if something has restoration, I ask a friend to give their opinion.

Edited February 27, 2017 by 01TheDude

[Aweandlorder]

Again, this service would be great for moderns and non keys, books which most likely would make for great flips but not mega key PC candidates.

Unfortunately, the state of the market is such that dedicates a big portion of grading to such books. I doubt that scammers would waste time tempering with such books but thats just me

[Tony S]

The Voldemort price for this service is $10 for moderns, $15 for books pre 1975.  There is a FMV limit of $250.  So this is not intended for expensive books and it is my belief  Voldy will be fairly strict on enforcing the value limit.  They have no reason to cannibalize the encapsulated market. BTW - this is $10 and $15 period. Voldemort offers no dealer or member discounts on their "raw graded" book service.  This will be a deal breaker for most, as it is just not all that much cheaper that encapsulated for most comics. 

It seems unlikely to me that dealers and large volume submitters will have much interest in the service.  Dealers cost for moderns with either company is about $14. So for just four bucks more you get a restoration check and encapsulation. For older books it's a bit more mixed. Dealers, larger volume submitters and economic minded individuals take advantage of CGC's Value tier. Dealer price $20. Again, $5 isn't much of a savings. However, for those that pay full retail it might be worth a look. It might be Penny wise and pound foolish - or maybe not. Depends on "why" you are getting the book graded. 
 

IMHO, where the service has some real potential is magazine and treasury sized comics.  For magazines  the cost is less than  1/2 CGC's least expensive services. Obviously there is not - and may never be - any encapsulated competition for Treasury size books.  I also - this just speculation on my part - would not be surprised if Voldy looks the other way at magazines and Treasury size value limits, since this service wouldn't steal any encapsulated business from them.

As for value on the selling market, time will tell. Only one seller I'm aware of on eBay had any stock - and the results were rather mixed. A lot of common books didn't meet the opening bid of $20 last week. Decent, minor key stuff sold for about 65% of what slabbed averages on GPA.  The few really "better" books actually came close to GPA prices.  

Edited February 27, 2017 by Tony S

[Tony S]

14 hours ago, Readcomix said:

 

Good point....how's that a complete grading service?

There is a FMV of $250. My understanding is that they will reject any books with obvious (call it amateur)  restoration - but will not be performing a professional restoration check.  With the value limit, there isn't going to be much economic incentive or opportunity to pass off professionally restored books.

All that said, the service would offer more value if it included a restoration check  

[Readcomix]

5 minutes ago, Tony S said:

There is a FMV of $250. My understanding is that they will reject any books with obvious (call it amateur)  restoration - but will not be performing a professional restoration check.  With the value limit, there isn't going to be much economic incentive or opportunity to pass off professionally restored books.

All that said, the service would offer more value if it included a restoration check  

You raise a good point that at fmv $250 there's not a lot of incentive, perhaps with the rare exception of a highly skilled archivist who happens to be a collector,  with low enough principles to not disclose their work! Hopefully, that's a narrow slice of the hobby.

[lou_fine]

3 hours ago, mschmidt said:

5 hours ago, lou_fine said:

If you are looking for the full complete grading service with the restoration check, then you should be sending it in for the regular service that includes the resto check.  Sounds as though you guys are asking for the full regular service and yet only expecting to pay for the discounted raw grading service. 

Unfortunately, the real world doesn't work like that. 

Since when does grading not include a restoration check? What's next - offering a grading service that only gives you a "ballpark" estimate with the caveat that it may be off by a couple of grades either way?

This discounted service is really geared much more towards the new fresh books right off the shelves and/or books with limited dollar value.  These are most likely the types of books that collectors would never ever give a thought to doing any type of hidden resto work on.  Any true vintage book that has any real value at all would be going through the regular grading service that does include the restoration check. 

From my point of view, it's most likely being geared towards all of those "worthless" drek books that should never have been graded at all in the first place, and yet is creating a huge backlog at the grading companies.  

[Pitboss]

16 hours ago, mschmidt said:

If that's correct, that's insane - I guess they have zero problems providing legitimacy to scammers passing off restored books as unrestored.

That's a fact.With a grading company backing said product,there will be an expectation of "Full disclosure".

Edited February 27, 2017 by Pitboss

[Jeffro.]

On 2/25/2017 at 10:05 PM, VintageComics said:

On 2/25/2017 at 8:43 AM, thirdgreenham said:

I think it's a good idea that definitely fills a void in the marketplace.  

It's a brilliant idea.

Not everyone wants a book in a slab. Not everyone sees a comic as a commodity.

If you're a raw collector who doesn't know how to grade and simply want to know what you have it's perfect.

It's also perfect for cheaper books that aren't worth grading at $20 or $40 a pop.

I suppose it's a good idea for the lazy. If you want to pay a grading company to do what you could do yourself  and for less money then yeah I guess it's a great idea.

It really isn't that tough to learn to grade. Just takes some practice. I'll stick to grading myself and save the money. Money which could be used to buy more comics. 

[chrisco37]

10 minutes ago, Jerkfro said:

I suppose it's a good idea for the lazy. If you want to pay a grading company to do what you could do yourself  and for less money then yeah I guess it's a great idea.

It really isn't that tough to learn to grade. Just takes some practice. I'll stick to grading myself and save the money. Money which could be used to buy more comics. 

It's probably been created for those "I'm not a professional grader" types that throw that out on any sales listing.   Also, maybe for those that would like a rough estimate of what their book is (people that bought the books off the rack and know there isn't any reason to check for resto) at a lesser cost. 

I agree with someone earlier that said maybe this is a way to cut down the backlog on books that never should've been graded in the first place.  

[VintageComics]

12 hours ago, kav said:

12 hours ago, mschmidt said:

Since when does grading not include a restoration check? What's next - offering a grading service that only gives you a "ballpark" estimate with the caveat that it may be off by a couple of grades either way?

It's not like this service offers nothing of value whatsoever.  I think most people would rather have a raw that a grading company graded at 8.5 than a raw that just some random ebay seller said was 8.5.  It may not be a 100% resto checked grade but it's something.

That's exactly the point.

If you want to buy an E Class benz but can't afford one, but the C class was too cheap and lowly you could buy a CLK at one time, which was an in between model.

This isn't about all or nothing. It's about degrees of market share. CGC would have been smart to offer something similar.

 

[VintageComics]

4 hours ago, Jerkfro said:

I suppose it's a good idea for the lazy. If you want to pay a grading company to do what you could do yourself  and for less money then yeah I guess it's a great idea.

It really isn't that tough to learn to grade. Just takes some practice. I'll stick to grading myself and save the money. Money which could be used to buy more comics. 

You're just assuming everyone wants to have the same skills. Some people just don't want to be bothered. Or can't. Or won't.

That's why life is full of services being offered for every facet of life.

I was a mechanic for 22 years but I can't be bothered to fix my own car anything beyond simple things so I pay for someone else to fix it. It's more profitable for me to have my car repaired by someone else so that I can keep doing my thing.

[Aweandlorder]

I didnt start this thread to promote other companies services that CGC doesnt offer. Thats just wrong thinking. There are many things CGC wisely doesnt offer which make perfect sense to me.

I started this thread because its been something Ive been thinking about for a long time after seeing exuberant amounts of slabbed drek poured into the market that NO ONE benefited from. Not the seller submitting the books, not the buyer, not the collector society, not CGC.. NO ONE.

Driving a car to work 2 minutes away from you in a busy district serves NO ONE any good when you have cheap public transportation available. Same logic applies here.

 

Edited February 27, 2017 by Aweandlorder

[chrisco37]

49 minutes ago, Aweandlorder said:

I started this thread because its been something Ive been thinking about for a long time after seeing exuberant amounts of slabbed drek poured into the market that NO ONE benefited from. Not the seller submitting the books, not the buyer, not the collector society, not CGC.. NO ONE.

I tend to agree with you, but I've been baffled by comments I've seen over the years (mostly on FB).   My favorite one ever was "I slab everything. That's my business model".  

I'm sure CGC (or Voldy) loves that kind of customer.   But when you're routinely posting pics of 9.0 coppers and the like, I have to wonder.   Of course, these are the very same people that complain about TAT's being too long.