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

[THE_BEYONDER]

5 minutes ago, Logan510 said:

You shouldn't be. There's a great big world of comic book collectors / readers who don't use third party grading and don't understand / know about pressing.

I wish I was still one of them.

 

Ignorance is bliss

[kav]

Just now, VintageComics said:

90% of the world probably doesn't know what the New York Times is but those that read newspapers do.

It's all about context.

so the statement "most collectors know about pressing" is incorrect.

[comicwiz]

Show me one "comics as an investment" article published by one of the mainstream newspapers - mentioning anything about pressing. I'll wait..... with baited breath.

[Logan510]

2 minutes ago, THE_BEYONDER said:

I wish I was still one of them.

 

Ignorance is bliss

I had never heard of pressing before I joined this forum for what that's worth. I think it's silly for anyone to claim that "most" collectors know about pressing. Slab collectors...I could agree with that, but the $2 box divers looking to fill runs, maybe not so much.

[James J Johnson]

54 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. 

For books to have survived perfectly enough that 50 years or more later they are in pristine condition, the environment in which they were stored plays a significantly larger role in that like new preservation than pressing could ever hope to achieve. Pressing will not make colors appear factory fresh, nor improve paper quality or abate toning through off-gassing and heat exposure, or moisture damage. Pressing is not a magic bullet for creating pristine comics. These are usually called Pedigrees, and have an overall quality due to perfect storage that is pristine, slight bend here and there or not. .

[VintageComics]

On 7/22/2019 at 7:35 AM, comicwiz said:

On 7/22/2019 at 12:00 AM, Randall Dowling said:

I really dislike chiming in on threads like this but it feels like there’s a couple of critical concerns that are being missed.

1.  Contrary to what everyone that presses books will espouse, the entire market does not accept pressing as a harmless intervention that magically improves every book without consequences. In fact, there are many cases in which it looks like continuous vertical color-breaking creasing along the spine may be just one of the many hazards of pressing.  But CGC doesn’t downgrade for this.  This can happen in many other ways outside of pressing but it’s still as much of a concern as stress on staples, shrinkage, and all the other signs that have been identified as consequences of pressing.  It’s something I didn’t even notice until a friend pointed it out to me.

2.  The real concern for the long term health of any and all collectible market is doubt.  Doubt that the item in question is legitimate creates an environment of risk that is to the greater collecting public, undesirable.  I’ve been collecting for over 40 years now and remember when all restoration was considered “beneficial” and unnecessary to disclose.  The consequence was that for the last 30 years, collectors have been finding out the hard way that their prized copy was altered and less valuable than believed.  Essentially, they were tricked and left feeling disenchanted and bitter as a consequence.  The primary value of the introduction of CGC grading was to remove doubt.  Doubt of grade, doubt of restoration, doubt of undisclosed alterations.  And yet, increasingly, this game of allowing certain alterations but not others, not disclosing grading standards, and encouraging resubmittal, has only institutionalized doubt into all books that have been graded by CGC.  I personally, would rather purchase an ungraded book than one graded by CGC and would pay more for the ungraded copy.  Because right now, as crazy as it sounds, it’s probably less likely to have been messed with.  I get why CGC does this.  It’s all money and more grading fees.  Why get paid once to grade a book when you can get paid over and over and over again?  I consider it an obvious conflict of interest.

3.  I keep reading people post analogies between pressing and the way that books were reportedly stored by Edgar Church.  Please stop.  There is absolutely no similarity whatsoever and I’m pretty sure the people that post that know it.  There was neither a humidity bath nor intense heat introduced to alter the structure of those books.  I get how associating pressing with the most prestigious pedigree in comic collecting makes pressing sound more legitimate.  But it really is a disingenuous analogy.

Many people are fine with the current environment of non-stop CPR (usually those that are profiting from it).  But others aren’t.  That’s fine but it should be discussed accordingly. 

Well stated. Particularly the part about how third-party grading was meant to stop the climate of nervousness around buying comics with undisclosed tampering. But the opposite has happened now, and CGC has not only enabled these deceptive practices, but rewarded it, and have monetized it for themselves. I hadn't seen anyone use the comparison to the Church books in this thread, and agree 100% with you. It is without question not only the dumbest analogy I have ever heard, but a very dangerous statement to perpetuate. I had hoped anyone with half a brain would have long ago stopped spewing this nonsense, but if people insist, then be prepared to take the heat for it, because frankly you become the sewage waste in the cesspool this hobby has become by stating such falsehoods.

Nobody is saying that the Church books were pressed the way CCS presses books.

People who say that are missing the context that the reference is used in.

What they are trying to state is that there are varying degrees of pressing (encyclopedias, irons (ie. evil children), storing in stacks, etc)

I have recounted this story a few times, but here goes again.

I found an original owner collection in Hawaii years ago. It would have even been a slam dunk for a pedigree but much of the collection was destroyed after being stored improperly after the owner passed.

The books that did survive in high grade were spectacular. They almost all had white pages and the grade of the mid 60's Marvels averaged 9.4

Do you know how the books were stored? In tall stacks over along period of time in a humid environment. and they all looked 'pressed'. The books were perfectly flat because of it even though there were crumbs of food on them, etc.

That is not meant to mean that CCS pressing is equatable to Hawaii-stored-in-stacks pressing.

But it's one of the reasons I don't have a problem with pressing. It can and does occur naturally (both humidity and pressure are natural phenomenon), it's non-invasive, it's generally not harmful (unless either done improperly or on in improper candidate and you are always going to have damage on comics no matter how much care one takes - even the Curator collection, which was stored by a museum curator in a museum still had some wear on them) and is generally not detectable (at least not with a great enough degree of accuracy to make detection consistent).

So to me it's a non-factor.

[James J Johnson]

5 minutes ago, comicwiz said:

Show me one "comics as an investment" article published by one of the mainstream newspapers - mentioning anything about pressing. I'll wait..... with baited breath.

Why should that be included in an article? That's the type of coverage that a specialty paper or forum should discuss, like this one. The nuts and bolts of a hobby aren't usually delved into in general articles. Just that so and so sold X comic for a million dollars, and telling the story of how they got it, and a generalized overview of the hobby from a layman's standpoint.

[kav]

Shoes are dropping like crazy around here

[James J Johnson]

43 minutes ago, THE_BEYONDER said:

@Rip

 

 

The word out about what? A warning? About pressing? About CGC?  

The marketplace of this hobby was stagnant. On life support when CGC breathed new life, new interest, new money into it, like Prometheus breathing life into a lump of clay. And it hasn't been stagnant, nor like the Wild West since..

 

 

[James J Johnson]

8 minutes ago, kav said:

Shoes are dropping like crazy around here

What's next to drop? 

[kav]

Just now, James J Johnson said:

What's next to drop? 

knickers.

[Rip]

I'll be honest I think the biggest thing that ruffled my feathers during the early CGC years was feeling like I didn't get the full rules of the game.

I subscribe to the idea that knowledge is valuable and at times should be rewarded. But with pressing it felt like they were cheating. I think those were some hard times for quite a few people.

One guy on the boards burned some of his HG books. That kind of stuff is never good for a hobby. 

It would be nice to see some kind of informational guide helping a new collectors out. I would think everyone would want to encourage a positive introduction into this crazy hobby.

 

[ADAMANTIUM]

[James J Johnson]

29 minutes ago, kav said:

knickers.

 

 

Edited July 24, 2019 by James J Johnson

[comicwiz]

 

22 minutes ago, James J Johnson said:

Why should that be included in an article? That's the type of coverage that a specialty paper or forum should discuss, like this one. The nuts and bolts of a hobby aren't usually delved into in general articles. Just that so and so sold X comic for a million dollars, and telling the story of how they got it, and a generalized overview of the hobby from a layman's standpoint.

But everyone knows about it, right? Which is it? Does everyone know about pressing, or don't they?

I'll add that the money being thrown around on comics now is still being bandied about in the most positive manner possible. Everything is in a constant upward trajectory with "blue chip" books.

What do you think happens when "comics" are hyped in this manner by mainstream news? Who have covered every record breaking sale of our hobbies pinnacle comic book.

You get people who aimlessly start seeking out these books. I'd need at least another 8 hands to count how many people were messaging me late last year just from these forums when Heritage was auctioning off that collection of Star Wars toys.

The kicker is that the consignor took a $50K+ bath from buying them less than a year earlier from Hakes. I didn't care if they didn't understand the terminology - I explained why they should avoid select pieces, and gave them specific details that the Heritage listing didn't.

What wasn't as widely known is the owner was taking the early exit strategy after paying a record price on the AFA 90 Luke because... wait for it... he lived in a climate that was too hot, and he was noticing the collectibles degrading right before his eyes. Who spends a quarter of a million dollars on collectibles and doesn't have AC or can keep their collection in a climate-controlled environment?

So while you might think it's not going to get covered because people's eyes would glaze over the words "pressed and cleaned," when people are dropping 5, 6 and 7 figures on comics, you better believe there should be disclosure that those comics received inflated grades, and were helped to look better than they actually were, through reconditioning techniques. Especially when you could just explain it as the same thing that's done to their shirts and pants.

Let the market really decide with the information they need to make an informed choice. Don't just use it as self-justification for letting people continue to make money from it.

Do you know what constitutes fair market value? The plain Jane dictionary definition requires a willing buyer and seller to enter into a deal with all relevant facts known to each party.

So which is it? Do you invest in a big money comic and not make the buyer aware of what's been done to it? In some people's eyes, that's a deceptive deal, and it will be a matter of time before a stock market investor wanders over here to "invest" a good chunk of money, and finds out the hard way how people operate in this hobby.

 

Edited July 24, 2019 by comicwiz

[THE_BEYONDER]

10 minutes ago, James J Johnson said:

The word out about what? A warning? About pressing? About CGC?  

The marketplace of this hobby was stagnant. On life support when CGC breathed new life, new interest, new money into it, like Prometheus breathing life into a lump of clay. And it hasn't been stagnant, nor like the Wild West since..

 

 

 

 

You joined these forums in 2017.  Where were you learning about pressing and such before that?   Where were you when CGC was pressing books in secret for select clients?  Where did you learn about SCS?

Edited July 24, 2019 by THE_BEYONDER

[comicwiz]

1 minute ago, THE_BEYONDER said:

Where were you when CGC was pressing books in secret for select clients?

That alone would be worth the cost of admission if it were revealed.

[ADAMANTIUM]

my only post in this thread doesn't have substance so here goes....

pressing gets done, so were saying not by many people because not too many people know about it?

and it's a bad thing by even fewer people?

[James J Johnson]

1 minute ago, comicwiz said:

But everyone knows about it, right? Which is it? Does everyone know about pressing, or don't they?

I'll add that the money being thrown around on comics now is still being bandied about in the most positive manner possible. Everything is in a constant upward trajectory with "blue chip" books.

What do you think happens when "comics" are hyped in this manner by mainstream news? Who have covered every record breaking sale of our hobbies pinnacle comic book.

You get people who aimlessly start seeking out these books. I'd need at least another 8 hands to count how many people were messaging me late last year just from these forums when Heritage was auctioning off that collection of Star Wars toys.

The kicker is that the consignor took a $50K+ bath from buying them less than a year earlier from Hakes. I didn't care if they didn't understand the terminology - I explained why they should avoid select pieces, and gave them specific details that the Heritage listing didn't.

What wasn't as widely known is the owner was taking the early exit strategy after paying a record price on the AFA 90 Luke because... wait for it... he lived in a climate that was too hot, and he was noticing the collectibles degrading right before his eyes. Who spends a quarter of a million dollars on collectibles and doesn't have AC or can keep their collection in a climate-controlled environment?

So while you might think it's not going to get covered because people's eyes would glaze over the words "pressed and cleaned," when people are dropping 5, 6 and 7 figures on comics, you better believe there should be some disclaimer in it that those comics received inflated grades, and were helped to look better than they actually were, through reconditioning techniques. Especially when you could just explain it as the same thing that's done to their shirts and pants.

Let the market really decide with the information they need to make an informed choice. Don't just use it as self-justification for letting people continue to make money from it.

Do you know what constitutes fair market value? The plain Jane dictionary definition requires a willing buyer and seller to enter into a deal with all relevant facts known to each party.

So which is it? Do you invest in a big money comic and not make the buyer aware of what's been done to it? In some people's eyes, that's a deceptive deal, and it will be a matter of time before a hedge fund investor wanders over here to "invest" some money, and finds out the hard way how people operate in this hobby.

So to be fair, everybody should only collect the exact same thing as everyone else for investment? And store it in the exact same way? And buy it at the exact same time? For the same price? And sell at precisely the same time, all for the same price?. And all have an equal understanding and equal hobby IQ? And all of these people doing exactly the same thing are all going to profit equally? And this is the only way in which a marketplace is fair? And the stock market should work this way too? everybody has the same info, makes the same decision, buys the same stock at the same price, etc., etc., etc.... and this is the only way a fair marketplace works?

Sounds to me like the "everybody who enters gets a first place trophy" contest. Like whether you come in first or one hundredth, you win. But not really.

[ADAMANTIUM]

2 minutes ago, ADAMANTIUM said:

my only post in this thread doesn't have substance so here goes....

pressing gets done, so were saying not by many people because not too many people know about it?

and it's a bad thing by even fewer people?