Impact of "Very Light Bends to Cover" on Grade? 0

[Rhymenoceros]

The following screenshots are all taken from the same recent submission of all modern books.

It seems weird that a book can have this in the notes AND light spine stress, AND light staple rusting and still get the same grade as one with just very light bends... or a higher grade along with light spine stress lines.  

Has anyone received a grade less than 9.4 with "very light bends to cover" in the graders notes?

[Tony S]

18 minutes ago, Rhymenoceros said:

The following screenshots are all taken from the same recent submission of all modern books.

It seems weird that a book can have this in the notes AND light spine stress, AND light staple rusting and still get the same grade as one with just very light bends... or a higher grade along with light spine stress lines.  

Has anyone received a grade less than 9.4 with "very light bends to cover" in the graders notes?

I have some concern I'll take some flack over any comments about this. I mostly avoid any comments that could be taken as criticism of grading standards or grading notes. For me - grading consistency is really the important thing. Someone else wrote the standards and they have never been shared.

With moderns, it appears to me that "light or very light" bends and spine stresses are just very, very common in grading notes. It didn't used to be like this in grading notes. And go to a local comic book store and look at the new issues just out of the box from Diamond. Nearly all have some level of what you could call bends - too much ink, too light of paper. And with the covers a heavier stock, they can't be folded without showing some stress along the fold.  I rarely if ever see these grading notes on older books - especially if the older book has other grading notes of other defects. 

A year ago, two years ago, a decade ago I rarely saw these notes. Now a common note. I cannot say why.  Just as a guess, I think with bends CGC is maybe a bit overly....cautious or sensitive to them because of the issues they had with the Generation 2 slab and no inner well cause some bends or waves. Or maybe it has nothing to do with this. But obviously graders are looking for this. 

I should mention I've unslabbed a couple of books with grading notes of "very light bend" and there was nothing I saw. But that's me - I'm not a Grader - and for all we know the bend went away once encapsulated and held flat for a while. 

If/when you have the books, look at them and see if you see bends. Post back up. 
 

Edited March 1, 2017 by Tony S

[Rhymenoceros]

I'm with you, Tony - I was hesitant to even post my question as to not appear to criticize CGC.. but the more knowledge we can all share with each other on what issues may result in a given grade the better IMO. I'm not going so far as to say I'm "objecting" to the grade - just trying to gain perspective into what can cause such varied multiple issues to yield the same result. Grading consistency is my main concern as well. I too had never seen this in notes until recently. 

The top book I felt had a good shot at 9.8 but I apparently missed a lot on it. it was a late 90's book. The middle one was late 70s. The bottom was from 2012. It's interesting to also see how much the same defect to various ages of "modern" books can affect the impact on overall grade.. assuming this is what happened in my case.

 

[Tony S]

I guess I'll comment on another one of your questions. The question of "how can a book have this and this and this wrong and still get the same grade as one that has just this wrong"

There are two answers that come to mind with that question. There might be more... 

1) It's a mistake for collectors to believe that the grading notes listed on a book are a complete, absolute and total record of every defect the grader(s) saw.  it is simply the defects they wrote down. Entering grading notes is time consuming.  They at best enter the notes that most affected their final given grade.  I've seen other forums where collectors we indignant that would not be guaranteed a 9.9/10 if they had some tiny defect pressed out of a 9.8. No - nearly all the time it would stay a 9.8 and if it had grading notes (not likely) it would just mention something else. 

2)  Defects aren't all equal. A 9.4 can have more than one defect. But one defect might be enough to make it a 9.4. At the NM and higher grades it is hard to illustrate. The lower grades are easier. A perfect book with a 3" spine split is still going to land in the  4.0-5.0 range. A single defect took it all the way to low/mid grade.  BTW. 9.4 is no hard upper limit for a very light bend. I've seen 9.6's with that notation. And who knows, there might be 9.8's that have such.  Hard to say since 9.8 moderns usually don't have grading notes. 

 

 

[Rhymenoceros]

Truth about both. I'm just feeling the sting of my first rocky submission and trying to make sense of it. Don't mind me   I was mainly just curious if anyone's had a submission with that grader's note and hit anything lower than a 9.4. Thanks for all your insights as well.

[crassus]

19 hours ago, Tony S said:

I guess I'll comment on another one of your questions. The question of "how can a book have this and this and this wrong and still get the same grade as one that has just this wrong"

There are two answers that come to mind with that question. There might be more... 

1) It's a mistake for collectors to believe that the grading notes listed on a book are a complete, absolute and total record of every defect the grader(s) saw.  it is simply the defects they wrote down. Entering grading notes is time consuming.  They at best enter the notes that most affected their final given grade.  I've seen other forums where collectors we indignant that would not be guaranteed a 9.9/10 if they had some tiny defect pressed out of a 9.8. No - nearly all the time it would stay a 9.8 and if it had grading notes (not likely) it would just mention something else. 

2)  Defects aren't all equal. A 9.4 can have more than one defect. But one defect might be enough to make it a 9.4. At the NM and higher grades it is hard to illustrate. The lower grades are easier. A perfect book with a 3" spine split is still going to land in the  4.0-5.0 range. A single defect took it all the way to low/mid grade.  BTW. 9.4 is no hard upper limit for a very light bend. I've seen 9.6's with that notation. And who knows, there might be 9.8's that have such.  Hard to say since 9.8 moderns usually don't have grading notes. 

 

 

Both good points. With respect to 1) I had always assumed also that "grader's notes" were not exhaustive but merely a quick summary of the more significant defects that determined the grade. For me one mystery has always been what are the "critical fail" defects that cap given grades. In the OSGG there is an (imperfect obviously) but broadly consistent attempt to list exclusionary defects, i.e. defects a given grade tier cannot possess and still remain that grade. How this works with CGC, or whether they even take this approach I am not sure.