When will the other shoe drop with CGC and the 'crack, press, and resub' game? 3 3

[THE_BEYONDER]

6 minutes ago, kav said:

I agree they are NOT aware.  I talk to people at LCS a lot and if I mention pressing even to the employees I get "huh"?

I can barely keep up, and I’ve been reading these forums for 16 years.

[Bookery]

25 minutes ago, RockMyAmadeus said:

In a sense...the work and goal of the Network of Disclosure was successful. Pressing and cleaning is now no longer done "in secret." It is....for better or for worse...completely out of the closet, and an "established" part of the comic collecting industry.

The issue in cards was that this stuff was being done on the sly, without the general public being aware of it. That's not the case in comics. The general comic buying public is aware that these things are happening, and has generally accepted it. That's the difference. Even if a specific seller doesn't disclose it, most buyers are now aware of it and assume it's been done.

As said before, collectors just want the best looking original copy they can get. Whether the book survived that way for 60 years, or was pressed and cleaned into it, the market doesn't really mind, generally speaking. I totally sympathize with the guys who want to leave everything exactly like it is...but if I have a beautiful Crime Suspenstories #22...say a Gaines file copy...that is perfect in every way EXCEPT for a slight 1/2" NCB bend in the upper right corner....that bend is going to eat at me every time I look at that book, especially if I caused it. So I'll fix it. And it will make me happy. And the book will have MOSTLY survived the years in perfect condition. My happiness at undoing that slight damage far, far outweighs...in my mind, by my way of thinking...the fact that it's no longer 100% original...but only 97% original.

It used to break my heart to discover books that I had spent a considerable amount of effort and time and money in preserving perfectly, only to have a tape indentation in the front cover, or a folded bag corner indentation, or worst of all, a board indentation. All my effort was for naught. When I discovered that I could undo that damage...it completely changed how I view comics. If I had discovered pressing in 2000, instead of 2008, I daresay my eBay experience, getting tens of thousands of crunched up books because of garbage packaging, it would have saved me a boatload of frustration and annoyance. "No worries...I can just fix it."

That's the best way I can explain it.

 

Maybe it's just my weird way of looking at the world... but I might make just one small amendment here.  It seems to me... once the NCB was introduced... the comic became, at that point, 97% original.  With the bend removed, the comic is once again at its 100% original state.  I think an even stronger case along these lines can be made for dirt removal.  The dirt is not original.  It removes the comic from its original state.  Removing the dirt, as long as no new foreign material is introduced, actually returns the covered portions to view again, as they originally were.  This is restoration in the true sense of the word.  But there exists in collecting a Cult of Damage wherein once a corner has been blunted, let no man unblunt it lest he receive the wrath of the Order.

[James J Johnson]

11 minutes ago, THE_BEYONDER said:

It was a huge scandal when news got out that CGC was secretly pressing books in-house for select clients.

Did it end the hobby? Did it end CGC? Did everybody make a bonfire and burn their CGC books? Every system has ripples

[wombat]

I'm not sure the general public of comic collectors is aware of pressing. Or how prevalent it might be. Serious collectors? Sure. CGC collectors? Not as sure. I never heard of it until I joined the boards here. 

[THE_BEYONDER]

I think someone that managed to  preserve their books in pristine condition should be rewarded more so than someone that couldn’t. 

[kav]

4 minutes ago, THE_BEYONDER said:

I can barely keep up, and I’ve been reading these forums for 16 years.

There's a lot of "Oh everybody knows about that" that is used to justify stuff in the world.  Thats why judge judy screams at people when they say "He knew-"

[James J Johnson]

13 minutes ago, kav said:

I agree they are NOT aware.  I talk to people at LCS a lot and if I mention pressing even to the employees I get "huh"?

In today's society, you'll get that same answer if you ask the man in the street "who's buried in Grant's tomb?"..

[Bookery]

1 minute ago, THE_BEYONDER said:

I think someone that managed to  preserve their books in pristine condition should be rewarded more so than someone that couldn’t. 

I'm an old-fashioned book person.  Sometimes I think someone who preserved their books in pristine condition and didn't read them should be horsewhipped.  But I digress...

[kav]

1 minute ago, James J Johnson said:

In today's society, you'll get that same answer if you ask the man in the street "who's buried in Grant's tomb?"..

So, today's collectors as a whole are NOT aware of pressing.

[Rip]

THE_BEYONDER, I'm all up for educating people. How best do we do it?

[James J Johnson]

2 minutes ago, kav said:

So, today's collectors as a whole are NOT aware of pressing.

I don't know if they're aware of pressing. I'm just not impressed by the answers I hear when college kids are stumped by the simplest of questions that most 5th graders could answer lucidly 30 years ago.

 

[THE_BEYONDER]

2 minutes ago, Rip said:

THE_BEYONDER, I'm all up for educating people. How best do we do it?

Once upon a time, I posted about creating a CGC handbook that would help collectors navigate this age of encapsulation.  Soon after I got a strike for “failing to foster productive discourse”.

[VintageComics]

24 minutes ago, kav said:

I agree they are NOT aware.  I talk to people at LCS a lot and if I mention pressing even to the employees I get "huh"?

Does your LCS sell slabs?

Go peek into a Facebook group that talks about slabs. 'Cleaned and Pressed' is said so often it annoys me.

It's pressed folks, PRESSED! Not 'cleaned and pressed'.

 

[Rip]

1 minute ago, THE_BEYONDER said:

Once upon a time, I posted about creating a CGC handbook that would help collectors navigate this age of encapsulation.  Soon after I got a strike for “failing to foster productive discourse”.

I like it.

As they say.... I wish I knew then what I know now. 

[VintageComics]

13 minutes ago, THE_BEYONDER said:

I think someone that managed to  preserve their books in pristine condition should be rewarded more so than someone that couldn’t. 

But a collector still prefers the book WITHOUT the dent than the one with it.

It's a curse.

[kav]

5 minutes ago, James J Johnson said:

I don't know if they're aware of pressing. I'm just not impressed by the answers I hear when college kids are stumped by the simplest of questions that most 5th graders could answer lucidly 30 years ago.

 

Saying 'most collectors are aware of pressing', as judge judy would say, calls for the operation of their minds.  I do not think there are any mass mind readers on the planet.

[comicwiz]

55 minutes ago, James J Johnson said:

But they did that too (spine revision, bends, and wrinkles).

The first post poses a question as to if shoes will be dropping in comics as they are in cards. We've lost track of that. But let's backtrack and compare.

Comics big debate is pressing, a non-invasive remedy to rolls, wrinkles, bends, non-colorbreaking creases, puffiness, etc.

If we wanted to compare that to what's going on in cards, CGC would have to be slabbing as unrestored:

trimmed comics

stretched comics so new edges can be created using similar machinery to factory standards

bleached comics

fake comics

and more

These are the shoes that are dropping in the card hobby and why no shoes are dropping in this hobby with CGC graded comics. There's none of that in blue label CGC slabs, thus no shoes to fall.

First off, you don't get to dictate the comparisons, or the level of deceptive practices that constitute foul play. I've already told you there are trimmed comics that WERE NOT taken out of circulation. Those comics have been in play in blue labels ever since that scandal happened. Comparing work done on a two-sided, two-dimensional card is never going to be the same as the invasive work being done on comics. You couldn't compare for instance the disassembly of a comic with interior pages, and staple replacement on a collectible that doesn't have those characteristics, and yet disassembled comics with staples being replaced is pretty much top down restoration depsite what CGC says, who awards them with blue labels.

I've aleady explained naphtha is being used as well to clean comics, and the braintrust who are using it are doing it believing the accelerated drying rate of a fuel blender won't cause damage or leave residue, but it's yet another restorative practice which vandals have been successful getting through a grader that's asleep at the wheel. The part which has never made sense to me is that many of these invasive, and tactics to make a quick buck are more destructive than restorative, and the entire reason for CGC to exist was to eliminate guys like Dupchak, and the exact opposite happened. Now everyone circling around these deceptive practices need to be tarred and feathered, and you can continue to draw on the differences in card tampering to comics until you're blue in the face, the fact remains that CGC turning a blind eye to it means a blue label is only worth something when the people issuing them are actually capable of detecting tampering.

Edited July 24, 2019 by comicwiz

[Bookery]

17 minutes ago, James J Johnson said:

Did it end the hobby? Did it end CGC? Did everybody make a bonfire and burn their CGC books? 

In hindsight, I might have over-reacted when I did that.  But I regress... 

[kav]

2 minutes ago, VintageComics said:

Does your LCS sell slabs?

Go peek into a Facebook group that talks about slabs. 'Cleaned and Pressed' is said so often it annoys me.

It's pressed folks, PRESSED! Not 'cleaned and pressed'.

 

What evidence do you have that 'most collectors' are on facebook slab groups?  None of my LCS sell slabs.  I havent been in A1 for a while but its one of the largest LCS in the country-no slabs.

[Rip]

1 minute ago, kav said:

What evidence do you have that 'most collectors' are on facebook slab groups?  None of my LCS sell slabs.  I havent been in A1 for a while but its one of the largest LCS in the country-no slabs.

Brian has tons of slabs. Just ask. Or check out his E-bay page.

Edited July 24, 2019 by Rip