GA COMIC BOOK Collecting in the Financial crisis of 2020 3 3

[Moondog]

On 4/18/2020 at 12:32 AM, Tri-ColorBrian said:

I see SDCC crashing and burning within 5 years.  Smaller comic-oriented cons like Terry's SoCal Con are what collectors want...and to make it safe I predict Terry will rent 10 times the space so we can social distance as we buy...

As a non-profit entity SDCC doesn't need to make a huge profit to sustain itself.  If they make less money they will just spend less on other pop culture programs (their charter).  Plus they had millions in the bank during the mid-90s.  That nest egg has to be huge now.

[N e r V]

6 hours ago, Cat-Man_America said:

Staple replacement used to get a green label designation, which some folks here view green as worse than purple.  Personally, I dislike punitive color coding of labels as it paints all efforts at restoration with a broad brush while implying that fans are too self-absorbed to bother reading labels.  Nevertheless, I understand the controversy since manipulation has the potential to artificially inflate grades, ergo values.  Truth is, early on ...before third party grading... OSG had a reasonable guideline in place allowing staple replacement via staples from the era.  The important point here is that staple replacement under these guidelines didn’t stigmatize books.  

However, there is a fair counter argument that has to be considered as well.  If disassembling and reassembly becomes noticeable due to increased wear around staple holes it may leave the impression of other kinds of unwanted manipulation.  If that’s really the case, then it is certainly food for thought.

I’m in agreement with Mitch on rust.  Rust never sleeps ...just ask Neil Young... and is something to be avoided whenever possible, but that opinion is entirely subjective,  OTOH, rust isn’t the same thing as tarnish.  Over time tarnish can turn shiny staples gray or blue-gray, perhaps even dark gray or black.  Some oxidation is considered normal, occurring naturally or through human handling.  Tarnish is more akin to a patina. Conversely, rust is caused through staples having been exposed to moisture, either through storage in a damp environment or books having been exposed to chemicals in some fashion perhaps in an effort to store books in a neutral pH environment.  But proper book storage is a totally different thread topic that could potentially derail the equally important economic discussions.  So, let’s save that one for another day.

I don’t know whether any of these shared thoughts will move the conversation along, but there you have it.

I’m not a fan of most restorative work but since I avoid rusty staple books like the plague for the reasons mentioned above like a bad tooth they need to be removed and replaced before they poison the rest of the book. Rust will never stop. Having a book with rusty staples is like saying I’m fine keeping the cancer without any treatment.

So staple replacement for rusty staples should be the best choice of a bad situation...

[fifties]

55 minutes ago, N e r V said:

I’m not a fan of most restorative work but since I avoid rusty staple books like the plague for the reasons mentioned above like a bad tooth they need to be removed and replaced before they poison the rest of the book. Rust will never stop. Having a book with rusty staples is like saying I’m fine keeping the cancer without any treatment.

So staple replacement for rusty staples should be the best choice of a bad situation...

Can't agree with you, little buddy.  How exactly can paper continue to rust?  Here's a book I bought about 20 years ago, and it looks today just the same as it did back then, AFA rust stains.

[lou_fine]

3 hours ago, jimbo_7071 said:

10 hours ago, lou_fine said:

Definitely blew the doors wide open to another whole range of undisclosed manipulated activities as flippers and speculators saw how a book could go from CGC 4.0 right up to CGC 9.0 just like that.  

 

4.0 to 9.0? Was that a Boy Comics 17 reference, perhaps?

 

Yes, you must be on the ball and guilty as charged based upon a post in a thread talking about books going from 9.4 to 9.6 to 9.8 which I had made last summer:  

On 9/5/2019 at 8:23 PM, lou_fine said:

 

Richard;

I guess this book doesn't actually belong here since it hasn't made it anywhere close to a CGC 9.8 graded level yet.  Then again, I giess we should never say never as there's still lots of time left to play before the game is over.  I guess it probably belongs more appropriately in your "Why So Many CGC 6.0's " thread which you started since it blew right past this condition grade like there was no tomorrow.  

I think we all remember this now classic Edgar Church Mile High book which started life out as a CGC 4.0 graded copy:

 

and then graduated to become a CGC 7.5 graded copy:

 

before finally acheiving its current CGC 9.0 graded honors, all while residing in a Blue Universal unrestored slab:

 

Not only did we learn all about undisclosed pressing and what had been happening behind the scene at the time from this book amongst many others, but we also learned for the first time that "disassembly and reassembly of a comic book in and of itself does not constitute restoration" and this was how a book could go from a grade of 4.0 right up to a grade of 9.0.    Why, how absolutely silly of the hobby place to have thought otherwise for all those long decades before CGC finally opened our eyes to thankfully let us see the light at long last.      

I also noticed that Heritage must be making more money as they are apparently putting stronger and stronger light bulbs in their buildings as the years go by.  

 

[N e r V]

1 hour ago, fifties said:

Can't agree with you, little buddy.  How exactly can paper continue to rust?  Here's a book I bought about 20 years ago, and it looks today just the same as it did back then, AFA rust stains.

Well you can slow it down depending on the storage conditions but unless you treated the metal staples it won’t stop the rust. The book you posted is beyond the point of return since the rust is already in the paper as stains. Personal choice but I wouldn’t buy a book with rust stains on it. I was saying I’d rather have a book with replaced staples if the staples were rusty and had not yet affected the paper yet rather than leaving them on only to ultimately damage the paper.

Fyi, there are a number of people that have replaced rusty staples on books with staples of the same era and received CGC blue labels since if done right most if any can tell the difference if you used the correct period staples. I’m fine with that too if I’m the buyer vs not having rusty staples...

[Cat-Man_America]

7 hours ago, batman_fan said:

Could blue labels be considered as punitive given the new color for pedigree books 

Blue ribbons almost always suggest first place, ...it's a perception thing.  Blue wins over purple or green as a mental image.  But gold, now we're talking Olympic medal class! 

[Tri-Color Brian]

29 minutes ago, N e r V said:

Well you can slow it down depending on the storage conditions but unless you treated the metal staples it won’t stop the rust. The book you posted is beyond the point of return since the rust is already in the paper as stains. Personal choice but I wouldn’t buy a book with rust stains on it. I was saying I’d rather have a book with replaced staples if the staples were rusty and had not yet affected the paper yet rather than leaving them on only to ultimately damage the paper.

Fyi, there are a number of people that have replaced rusty staples on books with staples of the same era and received CGC blue labels since if done right most if any can tell the difference if you used the correct period staples. I’m fine with that too if I’m the buyer vs not having rusty staples...

There is a simple fix for rusty staples...Photoshop...

[N e r V]

There’s only one kind of rust I’ll buy in my comics....

[lou_fine]

4 hours ago, Mmehdy said:

Does anyone know what exactly was done to get the grade up by 5 points...it looked like a but under graded at 4.0...wow that really is playing the system at all of its weakest points. The value difference must be at least double or triple going from 4.0 to 9.0 as well as increased desirability.

Mitch, Mitch, Mitch;

This is such old news but it looks like you joined the boards only as far back as 2011, so I guess you missed all of the wild fun and gangbuster controversy that took place back in 2005 or thereabouts when the whole micro-trimming and pressing fisacso first came to light on these boards here.  Those were definitely the days with multi-hundred page threads and this one here with Boy Comics 17 as the poster child for the opening of the kimono to see what was actually taking place behind the scenes at CGC was certainly no exception.  Especially when board members like Danny Dupchak himself   , Masterchief, Red Hook, etc. led the charge at the time with before and after scans of books to detail how certain people in the know had been making scads and scads of money by laundering undisclosed manipulated books into an unsuspecting marketplace.    

This is where CGC with their undisclosed grading standards finally after days (if not weeks of     and angst) had to retroactively declared (as opposed to proactively when they first opened their doors years earlier) that "disassembly and reassembly of a book, in and of itself, does not constitute restoration" and hence how a book could go from a grade of CGC 4.0 up to CGC 7.5.  Of course, by then it was a no-brainer as to how a book could go from a grade of CGC 7.5 up to CGC 9.0 as boardies were still smarting at the time from just being schooled on the whole "maximization of potential" concept as we had seen books going from CGC 6.5 up to CGC 9.0, so going from 7.5 up to 9.0 was really nothing at all if you simply gave it a bit of a helping hand.     

As for the value difference, the CGC 4.0 graded version first sold for $368 in the summer of 2002 and then a year later in the summer of 2003 as a CGC 7.5 graded version for $552 with apparently nobody the wiser at the time.  We were all so young and innocent   in those first few years thinking that CGC had our best interest at heart and were making sure that the old shenanigans were not taking place anymore.  Definitely not the case a couple years later in 2005 when the Church Boy Comics 17 became the poster child and outed on these boards as a "maximized to its full potential" CGC 9.0 graded version where it got stuck at something like the $200+ or $300+ price point before Heritage finally pulled the book due to all of the controversy at the time.  Fast forward to May of 2018 where it sold for $1,135.25 with nobody bringing up the controversy, most probably because they figured the book had already served its 15 year sentence in the sin bin by then.  There was some talk about the book after the sale though, and this might have accounted for the fact that this same Church copy came back to market 2 more times in 2019 at a continuous lower price point each time.  

 

 

Edited May 7, 2020 by lou_fine

[Tri-Color Brian]

13 hours ago, lou_fine said:

 

Did he call the Lone Ranger the "Long Ranger" at the beginning of the video? 

[Cat-Man_America]

8 hours ago, lou_fine said:

Mitch, Mitch, Mitch;

This is such old news but it looks like you joined the boards only as far back as 2011, so I guess you missed all of the wild fun and gangbuster controversy that took place back in 2005 or thereabouts when the whole micro-trimming and pressing fisacso first came to light on these boards here.  Those were definitely the days with multi-hundred page threads and this one here with Boy Comics 17 as the poster child for the opening of the kimono to see what was actually taking place behind the scenes at CGC was certainly no exception.  Especially when board members like Danny Dupchak himself   , Masterchief, Red Hook, etc. led the charge at the time with before and after scans of books to detail how certain people in the know had been making scads and scads of money by laundering undisclosed manipulated books into an unsuspecting marketplace.    

This is where CGC with their undisclosed grading standards finally after days (if not weeks of     and angst) had to retroactively declared (as opposed to proactively when they first opened their doors years earlier) that "disassembly and reassembly of a book, in and of itself, does not constitute restoration" and hence how a book could go from a grade of CGC 4.0 up to CGC 7.5.  Of course, by then it was a no-brainer as to how a book could go from a grade of CGC 7.5 up to CGC 9.0 as boardies were still smarting at the time from just being schooled on the whole "maximization of potential" concept as we had seen books going from CGC 6.5 up to CGC 9.0, so going from 7.5 up to 9.0 was really nothing at all if you simply gave it a bit of a helping hand.     

As for the value difference, the CGC 4.0 graded version first sold for $368 in the summer of 2002 and then a year later in the summer of 2003 as a CGC 7.5 graded version for $552 with apparently nobody the wiser at the time.  We were all so young and innocent   in those first few years thinking that CGC had our best interest at heart and were making sure that the old shenanigans were not taking place anymore.  Definitely not the case a couple years later in 2005 when the Church Boy Comics 17 became the poster child and outed on these boards as a "maximized to its full potential" CGC 9.0 graded version where it got stuck at something like the $200+ or $300+ price point before Heritage finally pulled the book due to all of the controversy at the time.  Fast forward to May of 2018 where it sold for $1,135.25 with nobody bringing up the controversy, most probably because they figured the book had already served its 15 year sentence in the sin bin by then.  There was some talk about the book after the sale though, and this might have accounted for the fact that this same Church copy came back to market 2 more times in 2019 at a continuous lower price point each time.  

 

 

Hey, this means my old label 9.0 books should amp all the way up to 11! 

 

 

[Mmehdy]

12 hours ago, lou_fine said:

Mitch, Mitch, Mitch;

This is such old news but it looks like you joined the boards only as far back as 2011, so I guess you missed all of the wild fun and gangbuster controversy that took place back in 2005 or thereabouts when the whole micro-trimming and pressing fisacso first came to light on these boards here.  Those were definitely the days with multi-hundred page threads and this one here with Boy Comics 17 as the poster child for the opening of the kimono to see what was actually taking place behind the scenes at CGC was certainly no exception.  Especially when board members like Danny Dupchak himself   , Masterchief, Red Hook, etc. led the charge at the time with before and after scans of books to detail how certain people in the know had been making scads and scads of money by laundering undisclosed manipulated books into an unsuspecting marketplace.    

This is where CGC with their undisclosed grading standards finally after days (if not weeks of     and angst) had to retroactively declared (as opposed to proactively when they first opened their doors years earlier) that "disassembly and reassembly of a book, in and of itself, does not constitute restoration" and hence how a book could go from a grade of CGC 4.0 up to CGC 7.5.  Of course, by then it was a no-brainer as to how a book could go from a grade of CGC 7.5 up to CGC 9.0 as boardies were still smarting at the time from just being schooled on the whole "maximization of potential" concept as we had seen books going from CGC 6.5 up to CGC 9.0, so going from 7.5 up to 9.0 was really nothing at all if you simply gave it a bit of a helping hand.     

As for the value difference, the CGC 4.0 graded version first sold for $368 in the summer of 2002 and then a year later in the summer of 2003 as a CGC 7.5 graded version for $552 with apparently nobody the wiser at the time.  We were all so young and innocent   in those first few years thinking that CGC had our best interest at heart and were making sure that the old shenanigans were not taking place anymore.  Definitely not the case a couple years later in 2005 when the Church Boy Comics 17 became the poster child and outed on these boards as a "maximized to its full potential" CGC 9.0 graded version where it got stuck at something like the $200+ or $300+ price point before Heritage finally pulled the book due to all of the controversy at the time.  Fast forward to May of 2018 where it sold for $1,135.25 with nobody bringing up the controversy, most probably because they figured the book had already served its 15 year sentence in the sin bin by then.  There was some talk about the book after the sale though, and this might have accounted for the fact that this same Church copy came back to market 2 more times in 2019 at a continuous lower price point each time.  

 

 

Thanks for the heads up and info, 2011 and above is the best I can do. I find something very interesting that you said when this copy came back to the market 2 more times in 2019 and sold for lower prices.... Can anybody call these actions of "pump" upgrading 5 points and same year sales on the same website any form or type of GA/SA  comic book collecting at all? If there is anything that could be called a "dark Side" of comic book collecting that would be it. I am glad that CGC could help stop DD and others that would take advantage of GA/SA collectors. LF it is still shocking today, let alone back then and these jacking up the points on a book, or pressing a GA book  like a pancake go to the very heart of keeping GA/SA comic book collecting honest and healthy.

 I for one, would pay less for a book that has undergone grade manipulation. If I recall correctly the Marvel comics #1 which sold this recently on Ha.com  for a record price was also a upgrade?

Edited May 7, 2020 by Mmehdy

[pemart1966]

14 hours ago, N e r V said:

Well you can slow it down depending on the storage conditions but unless you treated the metal staples it won’t stop the rust. The book you posted is beyond the point of return since the rust is already in the paper as stains. Personal choice but I wouldn’t buy a book with rust stains on it. I was saying I’d rather have a book with replaced staples if the staples were rusty and had not yet affected the paper yet rather than leaving them on only to ultimately damage the paper.

Fyi, there are a number of people that have replaced rusty staples on books with staples of the same era and received CGC blue labels since if done right most if any can tell the difference if you used the correct period staples. I’m fine with that too if I’m the buyer vs not having rusty staples...

 

NerV - I understand that you're saying that a party removes the rusty staples from Golden Age comic A and then replaces them with the good staples from Golden Age comic B is that correct?

Do they currently make staples that are identical in gauge, length, look etc to those used in the Golden Age?

[N e r V]

43 minutes ago, pemart1966 said:

 

NerV - I understand that you're saying that a party removes the rusty staples from Golden Age comic A and then replaces them with the good staples from Golden Age comic B is that correct?

Do they currently make staples that are identical in gauge, length, look etc to those used in the Golden Age?

Not sure how others have done it but if the book was worth getting its staples replaced I know that some have taken good staples from a like book (say a Timely from same period) and just swapped them out. So in that case they would be identical. Just like some have replaced missing centerfolds at times without CGC figuring out the book is really married. 
 

So if you have a copy of Captain America Weird Tales #74 that has some rust on its staples that hasn’t damaged the book yet and you have a low grade Little Lizzie #3 for example you simply cannibalize the less expense book. 
 

Again I am aware that has taken place at times and I as a buyer would rather have the staples swapped out than deal with future rust issues. But again every buyer is different...

[Cat-Man_America]

41 minutes ago, Mmehdy said:

Thanks for the heads up and info, 2011 and above is the best I can do. I find something very interesting that you said when this copy came back to the market 2 more times in 2019 and sold for lower prices.... Can anybody call these actions of "pump" upgrading 5 points and same year sales on the same website any form or type of GA/SA  comic book collecting at all? If there is anything that could be called a "dark Side" of comic book collecting that would be it. I am glad that CGC could help stop DD and others that would take advantage of GA/SA collectors. LF it is still shocking today, let alone back then and these jacking up the points on a book, or pressing a GA book  like a pancake go to the very heart of keeping GA/SA comic book collecting honest and healthy.

 I for one, would pay less for a book that has undergone grade manipulation. If I recall correctly the Marvel comics #1 which sold this recently on Ha.com  for a record price was also a upgrade?

While this kind of thing is optically bad on several levels, at least it seems to be recognized for what it is and addressed by the collecting community.  If a high graded book from a prestigious collection hammers in at just over 1K and change in 2018 then it is still receiving penance for a prior life of sin.  While triple OSG prices always seemed like overkill for Church copies ...double Guide was what Chuck originally sold these treasures for back in the 70’s (when the Mile High collection was just an insert catalog in Alan Light’s Buyer’s Guide)... nearly all of the Church copies were pristine unadulterated books.

My biggest concern about lax or strict grading ...next to the whole crack-out and press shell game... is that variations can lead to questions about someone having a thumb on the scale.  By that, I mean the perception ...or misperception... that grading results may be based on other criteria than the actual grade of the book.  

The most egregious malfeasance charge that can be leveled at any appraisal business is that grade results can be bought and sold or that if you want to keep the poll position you have to pony up and resubmit your books in order to play the game.  While I’m not insinuating that anyone is guilty of this practice ...and would never do so without unequivocal evidence... there have been occasions when books of questionable grade were bumped over books which looked much better. Nevertheless, grades are based on judgment calls, so regardless of how much anyone differs with a third party assessment, that too is just an opinion.

The problem with raising concerns such as this is that everyone automatically assumes the party raising the issue has an agenda.  That’s why I don’t want to raise this issue about specific books.  If anyone can point to other specific examples of grade discrepancy it ought to be a fair discussion topic in Mitch’s thread about financial investment in 2020.

Leaving the micro-trim issue aside, at least no one thinks manning up for the Church BOY Comics is a good idea, ...that would be a grade bump too far.  

 

[fifties]

1 hour ago, pemart1966 said:

 

 

Do they currently make staples that are identical in gauge, length, look etc to those used in the Golden Age?

I believe the short answer is no.  I've replaced missing staples to a few '40's - '50's books, and current day staples appear different.  The originals were longer and thinner than what's available now, plus of course a shiny new staple is obviously a replacement.

[pemart1966]

2 hours ago, N e r V said:

Not sure how others have done it but if the book was worth getting its staples replaced I know that some have taken good staples from a like book (say a Timely from same period) and just swapped them out. So in that case they would be identical. Just like some have replaced missing centerfolds at times without CGC figuring out the book is really married. 
 

So if you have a copy of Captain America Weird Tales #74 that has some rust on its staples that hasn’t damaged the book yet and you have a low grade Little Lizzie #3 for example you simply cannibalize the less expense book. 
 

Again I am aware that has taken place at times and I as a buyer would rather have the staples swapped out than deal with future rust issues. But again every buyer is different...

If you did the staple replacement that you refer to, would that land the book a "Restored" label?

Marrying the centre fold without anyone noticing sounds near impossible at least on vintage books as books don't necessarily age at the same rate.  i.e.  getting a replacement centrefold in most cases can be done, but having the colour of the pages match so well that no one can tell sounds...well, near impossible.

[jimbo_7071]

3 hours ago, Cat-Man_America said:

While this kind of thing is optically bad on several levels, at least it seems to be recognized for what it is and addressed by the collecting community.  If a high graded book from a prestigious collection hammers in at just over 1K and change in 2018 then it is still receiving penance for a prior life of sin.  While triple OSG prices always seemed like overkill for Church copies ...double Guide was what Chuck originally sold these treasures for back in the 70’s (when the Mile High collection was just an insert catalog in Alan Light’s Buyer’s Guide)... nearly all of the Church copies were pristine unadulterated books.

My biggest concern about lax or strict grading ...next to the whole crack-out and press shell game... is that variations can lead to questions about someone having a thumb on the scale.  By that, I mean the perception ...or misperception... that grading results may be based on other criteria than the actual grade of the book.  

The most egregious malfeasance charge that can be leveled at any appraisal business is that grade results can be bought and sold or that if you want to keep the poll position you have to pony up and resubmit your books in order to play the game.  While I’m not insinuating that anyone is guilty of this practice ...and would never do so without unequivocal evidence... there have been occasions when books of questionable grade were bumped over books which looked much better. Nevertheless, grades are based on judgment calls, so regardless of how much anyone differs with a third party assessment, that too is just an opinion.

The problem with raising concerns such as this is that everyone automatically assumes the party raising the issue has an agenda.  That’s why I don’t want to raise this issue about specific books.  If anyone can point to other specific examples of grade discrepancy it ought to be a fair discussion topic in Mitch’s thread about financial investment in 2020.

Leaving the micro-trim issue aside, at least no one thinks manning up for the Church BOY Comics is a good idea, ...that would be a grade bump too far.  

 

I see many, many books coming to market that are not only pressed but obviously pressed, meaning that you can tell at a glance that they've been pressed—they look, to paraphrase one of the previous posts, flat as pancakes, and there's extra newsprint showing along the right edge and sometimes the bottom edge, which means that the cover has shrunk. The books that were getting pressed circa 2008—2012 did not look that bad. Back then I usually couldn't tell whether a book had been pressed unless there were before and after pictures floating around the web. Are these über-pressed books products of the "quick-press" service that CCS is offering, with higher temperatures and higher humidity used in the process in order to reduce cycle time?

Edited May 7, 2020 by jimbo_7071

[N e r V]

12 minutes ago, pemart1966 said:

If you did the staple replacement that you refer to, would that land the book a "Restored" label?

Marrying the centre fold without anyone noticing sounds near impossible at least on vintage books as books don't necessarily age at the same rate.  i.e.  getting a replacement centrefold in most cases can be done, but having the colour of the pages match so well that no one can tell sounds...well, near impossible.

Ok, if you say so. Then believe what you wish...

[Primetime]

3 hours ago, fifties said:

I believe the short answer is no.  I've replaced missing staples to a few '40's - '50's books, and current day staples appear different.  The originals were longer and thinner than what's available now, plus of course a shiny new staple is obviously a replacement.

if it took 80+ years for the rust to get that way, it certainly won't worsen (unless one is using poor storage conditions) over the course of the owner owning it for the rest of their life. That said, unlike vintage cars or bikes, where performance and clean metal is ideal for showmanship, some people don't mind a little rusty gold parts on their vintage comics. I'm not saying buying comics with rusty staples is ideal, but a little rust on the outside of the staple isn't a deal breaker on rare gold. When the rust migrates to the prongs (@ CF) and interior paper, that could pose a larger issue for any owner.