Raw vs. CGCed?

[mlovest]

 

Lots of good points, but it still comes down to why pay huge inflated prices for CGC books versus finding a trusted dealer to sell you high-grade raw books, especially if they are for your personal collection. Surely most of you have a couple of dealers you trust to sell raw books. Or as I've done before, buy a bunch and cull through for the NMs and return the rest. This works great for dealers like MileHigh which have lots of comics, but who don't have a clue what a NM comic looks like from a hole in the ground.

 

Of course, many of the more savvy dealers are sending all their choice high-grade comics to CGC to get the multiples. So, is a truely NM raw book worth as much as the CGCed book, aside from the protective case and the cost of grading? If you would pay $1,500 for an Amazing Spider-Man #50 in CGC NM 9.4, would you pay say $1,400 for a raw NM 9.4? If not, why not?

 

Mike

[supapimp]

i'd pay $700 for a raw NM 9.4 TOS 49 if hypotheticaly it was unrestored and NM 9.4.

[blowout]

Lots of good points, but it still comes down to why pay huge inflated prices for CGC books versus finding a trusted dealer to sell you high-grade raw books, especially if they are for your personal collection.

 

That makes perfect sense.

The only reason to pay a premium for a CGC book for your own collection would be the piece of mind that the book is the advertised grade and not restored. It is the unbias third party opinion you are paying extra for, this is uneccessary if the dealer you are buying from is trustworthy.

[COI]

That may or may not work depending on what you collect. Please point me to a "trusted" dealer who has a decent stock of Raw NM 9.4 silver Marvels(pre-66').

 

And what is a "trusted" dealer? I've heard good and bad things about the grading of just about EVERY major dealer, including guys like Showcase New England and Metropolis. And any dealer who knows what he'd doing either slabbed his NM Silvers already, or charges slabbed prices for them(Marnin Rosenberg). And no one is perfectly consistent, including CGC. Therefore, I might as well just buy slabbed copies for that money, and be done with it. This way, even if I get an over-graded slab, at least I have the liquidity of the label.

 

 

[COI]

I totally agree(see my above post). But the premise of this question was hypothetical in the first place, so I was answering hypothetically, even though it was unrealistic.

[blowout]

Therefore, I might as well just buy slabbed copies for that money, and be done with it. This way, even if I get an over-graded slab, at least I have the liquidity of the label.

 

Sure, the main benefit of CGC is that they are not bias in any way.

In the buyer/seller transaction both parties are serving their own needs, so even the dealer who is your best friend has to make a profit.

It comes down to a personal choice really, as you said AK even CGC are not infalable and neither are the big dealers.

[archangel-migration]

Replying to the first post, I'd pay more for a CGC'd Amazing Fantasy #15 unrestored at 7.5 than for a copy that someone CLAIMED was a 7.5, as well. Why? The saying goes that one person's NM is another's VF. CGC is highly accurate (though I think they messed up by giving my Amazing Spider-Man #45 vol 1 an 8.0 when I think it could have received a 9.2 or higher). But that's my point-not all ppl see a grade the same way as others. I think a copy that's proven to be a 7.5 would be better than a copy that the owner BELIEVES is of the said grade .

[murph0]

Just curious as to why you think that CGC should be given the benefit of the doubt on your ASM 45 and that your opinion is lesser then theirs? If I think a book is under or overgraded I don't just think to myself, well they must be right and I must be wrong..?

 

Brian

[12c_Comic]

Well when you are looking at a investment, you would like to know with some confidences that what you bought is what you get with a CGC copy.

[PovertyRow]

Found a post FROM me so replying to it as a general post. I really think that folks who are really concerned with grades and restoration owe it to themselves to learn as much as they can. I started teaching myself restoration in the early-mid 80's. Before the internet was widely used. Now, with the internet, the task is easier. I actually spent money to spend a few days studying with a restorer in their studio, working on my own books under supervision. I tell you this was both a good thing to do restoration knowledge-wise and a hell of a lot of fun!

 

In these days, when restoration is perceived as anathema, I suggest those who are really interested just call up a restorer if one is in your area, explain you want to learn more about restorartion and detection, bring some of your old books and spend a relatively few dollars (versus the price of a single CGC hi grade key) to really learn some things. It would be a great experience and probably cheaper now than when I did it (when restoraiton was advertised in Sotheby auctions as a benefity with the right restorers).

 

Even without a restorer's guidance you can do things. I bought a variety of junk books - you know you can get GA books for a few buck or less if they are in sufficiently bad shape and things like Funny Animals. Same for SA - you can get junk S books cheap, BA books cheap. Etc. So what do you end up with? Ultra-cheapie books that no one wants that represent the same stock that higher end books were printed on.

 

So you start to experiment. You have many pages and covers to try things out on and then see how things looks. Try the dreaded magic marker color touch and see the front/back result. Then graduate to color touches with acrylics and water colors. All the paints and brushes can be had VERY cheaply, especially considering the educational value. Get a black light and see how the color touches look. Try different colors/mediums under the black light as the various pigments/bases have differing properties. Try some plain old Elmers glue on a tear - if your book doesn't have enough tears tear it more - it is junk anyway! Then examine the tear. Try to make it the cleanest seal you can do and re-examine. Get a white eraser and try erasing some dirt. Write your name on a white area in pencil and then try to erase it. Use the magnifier and see how the paper fibres look after erasure. Hold it under a light and see if any reflectiveity changes occur. Do weird things. I remember tearing off pieces of edge interior paper (no inks - just the white paper) from junk GA books and putting them in a blender with some water. I was hoping to make some sort of paste to re-form pages. Didn't work. but while talking to a restorer it turned out that restorer and their teacher did the exact same thing a few years earlier. Sure it didn't work but at least the brain was on the right track

 

Just play with junkies books. Do the most outlandish thing you can thing of. Soak pages in clorox bleach ::shudder::. Press them with a clothes iron (not recommended but these are junk books so you can).

 

The real key - educate yourself by first-hand experience. There is nothing like it!

[murph0]

I'm speaking about receiving a book and then not agreeing with the grade and then just saying "oh well, I'm obviously wrong then since CGC thinks it's something else". I just don't understand that PoV. Despite the fact they get paid for doing it, I see no reason to hold CGC's opinion above all else.

 

Brian

[blowout]

Despite the fact they get paid for doing it, I see no reason to hold CGC's opinion above all else.

 

The key point about CGC's grading is that they are impartial and have no stake in a possible transaction for the book.

The seller will always (maybe subcontiously) overgrade, and the buyer will always undergrade. CGC's grading is not tarnished by a personal involvement in the books grade.

Of course they still make mistakes.

[murph0]

For the upteenth time I am not saying anything about selling the book, I'm talking about owning a book from CGC where you don't agree with the grade and instead of saying well maybe they're off, that person just goes ahead and says well it's CGC so it must be right. There's way too much of that type of attitude going on in current CGC buyers minds. It just doesn't make sense. I know that the grade is what someone else is going to look at if they were to buy..but I've begun looking for nice books that I think are NM, whether or not the label says it.

 

Brian

[blowout]

but I've begun looking for nice books that I think are NM, whether or not the label says it.

 

I fully agree, it has been said over and over that it is always better to buy the book than the label. Every smart collector who knows how to grade will be doing that.

 

One thing to remember with slabbed books though, for those who have not seen many to compare, is that it is hard to grade a book acurately through the holder as some defects just don't show up.

 

 

[fantastic_four]

One thing to remember with slbbed books though, for those who have not seen many to compare, is that it is hard to grade a book acurately through the holder as some defects just don't show up.

Another thing to remember is that the most common reason that books are overgraded by anybody--whether it's a CGC grader, a dealer, or a collector--is because the grader simply didn't notice one or more defects. Even if you're trying to be objective and have a high attention span and a tight focus on grading a comic, you will still sometimes miss defects. I believe this to be a fundamental truth in grading, and it's why I favor CGC's grade over my own. It's not necessarily because I think they're more exceptionately skilled at grading than I am, it's because they had 3 people with 3 pairs of eyeballs looking the comic over, and one of those pairs of eyeballs may have spotted a defect which I inadvertently overlooked.

 

Note that I'm not disagreeing with Murph; I agree with his point about not just blindly accepting CGC's judgement over your own, because CGC does make mistakes. And they know they make mistakes; they're human. There's just no getting around the possibility of human error. But that's the exact reason I favor their grading over mine; I'm human too, and there's a lower margin of error when three people look over a book than when one does. I've noticed some people in these forums have been reading comic books too long and think they're SUPER-human and never make mistakes.

 

One thing I've been wondering about their process is how often the final grader overrides the grades from the previous two graders. For anyone reading who isn't familiar with CGC's grading process, this is my rough understanding of how it works:

 

• Pre-grader jots notes about condition into computer and assigns a grade
• Second grader reviews pre-grader's notes but not the grade itself and assigns his own grade.
• Final grader review's notes from the first two grader but not their final grades and assigns his own grade. After assigning his grade, he then looks at all three grades and makes the final call as to what the grade should be. If the three grades have a "significant enough" variance, then the final grader talks to the first and second graders to try to figure out why their graders were so different.

So I wonder how often that final grader ends up trusting his own opinion over the others? Ideally they'd collaborate to work the grade out as much as possible, and Steve says they do it, but I'll bet when the final grader is working their 10th or 11th hours of the day collaboration tends to go out the window. That's what concerns me the most about their backlog--since they don't guarantee anything beyond the fact that three graders have looked the book over, it's hard to say how consistently all three grades are given equal weights by the final grader.

 

Whenever I see an obvious overgrade, I'm always wondering whether the final grader overlooked the defect I'm seeing that appears to violate the grade and whether that final grader didn't bother to talk to the other graders due to a time rush. Not that CGC overgrades are plentiful; in my experience their consistency is extremely good. But continuous improvement is something every process needs.

[joe_collector]

>>Note that I'm not disagreeing with Murph; I agree with his point about not just blindly accepting CGC's judgement over your own, because CGC does make mistakes.

 

But it's not always about mistakes. I beleive murph and I agree on this, given his comments in the past, but I don't accept CGC's grade when one or more of the following defects are present, but due to CGC's grading process, are not taken into account:

 

1) Distro Ink Overspray

2) Off-center or White Border covers

3) Writing of any kind.

4) Obtrusive date stamp

 

CGC has made a business choice in the case of the above defects, and chose not to downgrade for these. I don't personally agree with their stance, and toss their grades out the window when I see these sorts of defects on a CGC book.

 

As far as their structural/wear-based grading goes, I think CGC does a super job, but they loose marks big-time for not taking production and distribution defects into consideration, especially as they bowed to seller pressure and deleted the label notes.

[fantastic_four]

CGC has made a business choice in the case of the above defects, and chose not to downgrade for these. I don't personally agree with their stance, and toss their grades out the window when I see these sorts of defects on a CGC book.

I mostly agree, although I wouldn't just pin the blame on CGC for not downgrading on these defects. A lot of dealers and collectors share their opinion on the insignificance of the defects you highlighted. I'm with you--I've seen a bunch of CGC 9.8s with the defects you mention that I wouldn't want to buy and that shake my confidence in CGC's grades. At least, it shakes my confidence with respect to buying CGC books sight-unseen without seeing the book in person or via high-res scans. It doesn't shake my overall confidence in their grading or their restoration check; even though I don't agree with all of their standards, they seem to be rather consistent in what they take off for and what they don't. Not 100% consistent, but highly consistent.

 

The Overstreet Grading Guide doesn't comprehensively take the factors you address (and that I've addresses in the past also) into account either, so these "eye appeal" defects aren't simply an issue for CGC to fix, it's an issue for the back issue industry as a whole to address and agree upon in a written standard. If you're so inclined, you could write a detailed article on how the defects you listed should affect grade and get it published somewhere such as the next Overstreet Grading Guide, Comic Book Marketplace, or someplace else if you prefer. On a related side note--what do you think of the descriptors Overstreet proposes in the glossary of the 1992 and 2002 Grading Guides for describing cover miswraps/miscuts?

 

Or we could just keep whining about it here in the forums; both you and I are really good at that and it seems to have had a major positive impact on the world!

[joe_collector]

>>Or we could just keep whining about it here in the forums; both you and I are really good at that and it seems to have had a major positive impact on the world!

 

Actually, I think I should stop with my "advice" since I'm quite happy to have other collectors spend their money on "original owner scrawled, date stamped, blue ink spattered, white border CGC 9.6 beauties" while I concentrate on the high-quality books.

 

If everyone got a clue, I'd have to pay more for my comics.

[murph0]

Totally agreed, I wouldn't even tough a book with any of those things on it. And for the most part, I don't agree with their grades on books with some of this stuff. A perfect example is Marvel Spotlight 5. Of all the CGC 9.4 copies I've owned there's only been 2 that I'd consider an actual 9.4, most were 9.2 if not 9.0

So that's the flip side of what I've been saying, CGC simply is not the end to all ends. If you disagree with their grade, don't just write yourself off.

 

Brian

[hammer-migration]

On what planet, in which alternate universe do you summize that CGC has THREE graders, wasting their time, compiling and deliberating individual key data on why a submitted Amazing Spider-man 45 is a Good+ or a VG? Taking an overview from the CGCed books offered on Ebay, I would gather that the GREAT MAJORITY of books submitted for grading to CGC have an actual value of $50 or less (RAW....not taking into consideration the mystical value multiplication that takes place by being offered with a few oz. of plastic). How many of these $1.00 to $50.00 value books do you imagine that ALL THREE graders are wasting their eyesight, collective resources, and TIME on, with piles of REAL COMICS (with actual value) are awaiting their services?