Origins Of Comic Book Grading 0

[RockMyAmadeus]

I was thumbing through a copy of the Overstreet Update #7 (which would have been out in the late fall of 1988), and I again came across these comments by Jon Warren, editor at the time of the OPG. I thought people might be interested in seeing what people in the hobby thought of comic book grading, particularly Overstreet's stance. It's a fascinating glimpse into what the market was thinking at the time, nearly 12 years before CGC would open its doors, and only a year after the introduction of NGC for coins. 

Without further ado:

Quote

 

In as much as a number of Advisors have brought up the subject of some sort of grading and appraisal service over the last couple of Bulletins, I thought I might make a few observations as a footnote to Roger's (Roger Smyth, of Funny Business in NY) market report. First of all, although the idea of a grading and authentification service sounds wonderful in theory, unfortunately for our hobby, it fades quickly when placed under the harsh light of reality. How many dealers are actually going to pay a fee to a service bureau in order to be told what they don't want to hear, i.e., that they have mis-graded the book and it is worth much less than they had thought? Second, as Roger points out, there would be cries of Conflict of Interest from people who felt that no publisher or dealer or collector should have the power of say-so over the service. Also, there is the question of profitability of such a venture. Since it could not be a non-profit venture, it would have to generate enough revenue to cover expenses and salaries of staff experts without the non-profit cushion of "tax deductible gifts." How much would a collector or dealer pay to have a grading certificate and appraisal document for a specific book? In coins they pay around $25. Would comic collectors pay that much? Would there be enough demand for the service to create a real business or would it have to be a sideline? I don't think a service of this sort would be beneficial to anyone if it were merely a "part-time" venture for somebody.

There are grading and appraisal services in both stamps and coins. In stamps it is the American Philatelic Society, a respected trade association which does not deal in stamps but does sponsor trade events such as conventions. In coins there are a number of grading services, the most respected of which is probably the Professional Coin Grading Service (PCGS). The PCGS is a group of respected dealers who organized their service to help promote the growth of the coin market to uninitiated investors.

I don't think that conflict of interest should be a question in this matter. Regardless of who organizes a grading service, and I agree that the time is near, the experts will - must - be either collectors or dealers. How else would they have the experience to accurately grade and appraise a book? A case could be made for conflict of interest whether the expert was a collector or a dealer. I think a more realistic concern is the reputation of the "staff experts." They must be above reproach. Their reputations in our business must be un-blemished. There must be a sense of trust among the people who would use the service. I think that is why several Advisors are looking to Overstreet, who defined the grading standards in our hobby, to lead the way. Who could be more above reproach?

I'm not saying that an Overstreet Grading Service is in the works. But it has been discussed. Both Bob and I agree that choosing and training the staff experts would be very time consuming. And we are snowed under already. But for a project that is worthwhile, needed, and wanted by our industry we would have to look for a way to implement. - JW.

 

 

Pretty interesting, huh? Full of all sorts of interesting insights, things that eventually came true, things that didn't. I do not know what, if any, influence Jon and Bob had over the formation of CGC, but this is what the collecting hobby was talking about, a full 30 years ago, in regards to the future of comic book grading.

For anyone...if any...who has wondered why I refer to what the coin hobby was and is doing so often, and how and why it does or does not translate to comics, it's because these guys were doing it first. 

Edited August 26, 2018 by RockMyAmadeus

[DanCooper]

Gawd, I miss those Jon Warren Overstreet updates!

If you go a few issues more to Overstreet update #12 (1989) Keith Contarino goes into a detailed structure of a grading service in his market report and how it would work

A small sampling from Keith's market report:

"The service will follow coin guidelines with 2 or 3 graders and a finalizer (either me or Jon). Books will be given a letter and a number grade. The books will be placed in Mylar and then slabbed in UV light proof Lucite or something comparable. The slab will be sealed. A certification certificate will also be issued. The book will be described and entered into a computer which will aid insurance claims."

Further along in the report:

"Graders will have to have a minimum of three years experience and will be trained by me or Jon. Eventually, we hope to set up at shows and grade books while you wait. To avoid conflict of interest, we will not offer to buy any book shipped to us to be graded. Nor will we appraise or value any books. If the grading service takes off like it should, I may stop retailing comics altogether. We will be very strict with our grading from the beginning. If we don't start this service soon, someone else will."

All this from 1989. A decade before CGC starts.

 

[RockMyAmadeus]

For context, here's what Roger Smyth, of Funny Business in NYC, was saying, to which Jon was responding:

Quote

 

COMMENT STUFF- Now, I'd like to raise an issue which more and more seems to be a problem, and a confusing one to all of us, dealer, collector, and investor alike - the issue of grading. I'm not simply talking about the extremes, where a dealer I know grades the covers, and the pages separately, so meticulous is he, or the other extreme which you see so often at conventions, where a book with a large chunk out of the front cover is described as Pristine Mint, and scarce (I think it was an early issue of Blip). Rather, to give an example of the real issues involved, recently a young fellow came into the store, said he was a "dealer" from the mid-west, and wanted to sell some books. I was interested in an early All-Star, and asked his price. He quoted me over $600. Well, I checked the Guide, and asked how he came up with that figure. He responded that the book was NM. Now, the book had gloss, but it also had a large lower right corner crease, and much more seriously, an extensive spine split at the top, which had been crayoned in (I think by a three year old), to try to cover the split. Well, how do you grade this? Perhaps a VG being generous, G-Vg more strict (Editor's note: Sounds more like a G to me - JW) This brings the retail of the book down to $225-$300.

Being a teacher by profession, I went over the guide condition with the "dealer" (it may have been the first time he ever saw that section), and step-by-step, showed him why the book didn't qualify for the higher grades. I'm sure he left the store feeling he was being conned by a New York slicker. But, this really underscores a much more serious, prevalent problem. How do we grade, why, based on what?The guide, our experience, whether we are buying or selling a book. Allied to this issue, of course, are other areas which provide a source of chronic problems, let alone raising the spectre of ethics, such as selling repaired books without informing the purchaser of the repairs, or foisting British Editions at full American guide, and not letting the customer know they are purchases British (or Canadian in the case of earlier material) editions. In some cases ignorance is the culprit, but it's no excuse. The customer who is conned (and they find out quickly) looks upon all dealers as potential con artists. There are always a few bad apples, but we need to police, and educate ourselves.

I worked for a dozen years in the stamp collecting profession, and we had external consultants who would authenticate a stamp, who would detect repairs, and who were generally considered to be true authorities. They neither bought nor sold stamps; what they did was provide a standard of excellence for the profession. We have nothing like this in our profession (although we have many self-proclaimed "experts"). Until we, as concerned individuals, can face these problems we shall still have books without covers graded as: "Mint, no cover". In line with other update contributors, who also seem to favor the establishment of some type of expert committee, I strongly believe that no one connected with the profit sale of comic books should be involved with this area. This makes the task more difficult, but provides ethical security which we need as professionals. Unfortunately, this would eliminate several obvious candidates (as noted in the last update), but a conflict of interest keeps us in the field of dealers, and shop keepers, not professionals, who have spent much time and money, and obtained our knowledge from hard experience, reading, and sharing with others. Vested interests, whether dealer, editor, publisher, or artistic collector, is a request for trouble. 

 

(slightly edited for typos and adding paragraph breaks for ease of reading.)

All very fascinating to me, and it amazes me to see just how much these dealers and Jon Warren heavily influenced my formative years as a collector.

Hey @valiantman...I thought this would be of particular interest to you, as well.

Some of the questions I have are: What issue of All-Star is Roger referring to? ##13-20 and #33 are the only ones that come close to that "$600 in NM" figure in the 1988 OPG, but that could be the "half of Guide" figure that was common at the time.

What really fascinates me is the idea that a NM copy would be $600...but a book that would grade, what, 2.5-3.5, restored, would be worth 1/3 to 1/2 the NM price!

 

[RockMyAmadeus]

2 minutes ago, DanCooper said:

Gawd, I miss those Jon Warren Overstreet updates!

If you go a few issues more to Overstreet update #12 (1989) Keith Contarino goes into a detailed structure of a grading service in his market report and how it would work

A small sampling from Keith's market report:

"The service will follow coin guidelines with 2 or 3 graders and a finalizer (either me or Jon). Books will be given a letter and a number grade. The books will be placed in Mylar and then slabbed in UV light proof Lucite or something comparable. The slab will be sealed. A certification certificate will also be issued. The book will be described and entered into a computer which will aid insurance claims."

Further along in the report:

"Graders will have to have a minimum of three years experience and will be trained by me or Jon. Eventually, we hope to set up at shows and grade books while you wait. To avoid conflict of interest, we will not offer to buy any book shipped to us to be graded. Nor will we appraise or value any books. If the grading service takes off like it should, I may stop retailing comics altogether. We will be very strict with our grading from the beginning. If we don't start this service soon, someone else will."

All this from 1989. A decade before CGC starts.

 

Yeah, Keith was REALLY dedicated to the whole process from a very early start. I wonder how much input he had into the formation of CGC, if any?

Thanks for the response!

[RockMyAmadeus]

There is a LOT still to be told about CGC, and how it came to be, who, what, where, when, why. 

Maybe it's time to start making offers of interviews?

[The Lions Den]

13 minutes ago, DanCooper said:

If we don't start this service soon, someone else will."

[valiantman]

11 minutes ago, RockMyAmadeus said:

Hey @valiantman...I thought this would be of particular interest to you, as well.

Some of the questions I have are: What issue of All-Star is Roger referring to? ##13-20 and #33 are the only ones that come close to that "$600 in NM" figure in the 1988 OPG, but that could be the "half of Guide" figure that was common at the time.

What really fascinates me is the idea that a NM copy would be $600...but a book that would grade, what, 2.5-3.5, restored, would be worth 1/3 to 1/2 the NM price!

 

I read the description as stating that the grade is about 3.0 to 4.0 unrestored, since the crayon coloring sounds like it is being included at that lower grade.  Still, that's a great question even in this best case scenario.  What book at $600 (9.0 to 9.4) is worth $300 in 4.0?  Was that the standard in the late 1980s?

[DanCooper]

8 minutes ago, RockMyAmadeus said:

Yeah, Keith was REALLY dedicated to the whole process from a very early start

Both Keith and Jon Warren were way ahead of their times!

Jon was way ahead of the auction format, before eebay was even a pipe dream, with his American Collectibles Exchange auctions. The premise that Comic Connect uses today of allowing time after an auction ends to counter bid can be traced back to Jon's ACEX auctions (he did it via phone bidding in the late 1980s)

Jon was also instrumental in helping Heritage with a prices realized database years ago when Heritage hired his firm to assist with this.

[RockMyAmadeus]

1 minute ago, valiantman said:

What book at $600 (9.0 to 9.4) is worth $300 in 4.0?  Was that the standard in the late 1980s?

Strange as it sounds, it was. And the book would still get a purple label, too.

What about the concept that Jon and Roger laid out with regards to a "comic grading bureau"?

[RockMyAmadeus]

Just now, DanCooper said:

Both Keith and Jon Warren were way ahead of their times!

Jon was way ahead of the auction format, before eebay was even a pipe dream, with his American Collectibles Exchange auctions. The premise that Comic Connect uses today of allowing time after an auction ends to counter bid can be traced back to Jon's ACEX auctions (he did it via phone bidding in the late 1980s)

Jon was also instrumental in helping Heritage with a prices realized database years ago when Heritage hired his firm to assist with this.

Definitely. I go back and read what Jon says, nearly 30 years after *I* first read it, and say "oh, yeah. That's where I got that idea!"

Even more than the Big OPG, the Updates were just filled with all sorts of fascinating information on the state of the comics market of the time, written by dealers at the time it happened, who were doing this every day.

It's an incredibly invaluable resource to understanding he evolution of the comics market. 

[RockMyAmadeus]

23 minutes ago, DanCooper said:

Eventually, we hope to set up at shows and grade books while you wait.

Look at that. Did Keith merely PREDICT what would happen, or did he INSPIRE it?

 

[valiantman]

4 minutes ago, RockMyAmadeus said:

What about the concept that Jon and Roger laid out with regards to a "comic grading bureau"?

Sounds exactly like the earliest description and explanation of CGC. It is interesting to think about whether CGC would have worked as well (or maybe as quickly) prior to Ebay and visible public sales easily accessible for everyone.  It worked for cards and coins earlier, but I wonder if there would have been significantly more pushback against CGC if the sales results weren't immediately apparent (on Ebay) for those who wanted to see how it was going.

[PUNYHUMAN]

If I remember correctly,the late Bruce Hamilton and Steve Fishler got the ball rolling with CGC grading. It was time they felt for a grading service.Esp. with the internet. It was the wild west before that.

[lou_fine]

22 minutes ago, PUNYHUMAN said:

If I remember correctly,the late Bruce Hamilton and Steve Fishler got the ball rolling with CGC grading. It was time they felt for a grading service.Esp. with the internet. It was the wild west before that.

Yes, I believe it was Steve that came up with the initial concept of the 10-point condition grading system which CGC ended up adopting.  

It was unfortunate that they did not come up with a similar 10-point restoration rating system at the same time, as this would have avoided the unintended consequences of stigmatizing restored books that immediately took place once the multi-color label system was adopted.  

Edited August 26, 2018 by lou_fine

[PUNYHUMAN]

I totally agree.  10 point resto rating system would be great .  To all  grading companies are you listening? 

[lou_fine]

46 minutes ago, RockMyAmadeus said:

49 minutes ago, valiantman said:

What book at $600 (9.0 to 9.4) is worth $300 in 4.0?  Was that the standard in the late 1980s?

Strange as it sounds, it was. And the book would still get a purple label, too.

Those kinds of price guide spreads would probably have been back in the late 70's when Overstreet still had his spreads of 1:2:3 for books in Good/Fine/Mint.

I took a quick look at the guide from '88 and by that time his spreads for virtually all of his books had increased to 1:3:7 by then.  Interesting to note that restored books back in the latter part of the 70's were deemed to be worth more than their copies in their original unrestored grade due to the value of the additional work done to them.  

Similar in a way to how undisclosed pressed books after they have been manipulated are now worth a whole lot more money in today's marketplace as compared to unpressed books in their original grade.    

[RockMyAmadeus]

I remember there being such tentativeness when CGC first came around. And there were A LOT of dealers who were saying "this will never work, it will never last."

I don't even remember when I bought my first slab, but I do remember, from the period of about 2000-2005 or so, that it was a fluke, an anomaly, to see things slabbed at a convention, never mind a store. There would have been a couple hundred slabs on eBay in total.

I mentioned a Showcase New England eBay sale a couple days ago, which included every Marvel SA key. This was in mid 2001. I have the results somewhere, I'll scan then if I run across them.

There were a handful of slabs...but only a handful. AF #15 was one. The FF #1 was NOT slabbed. 

I cannot imagine such a sale now taking place that would include ANY raw copies of those keys.