Batman 1 CGC 9.4!!!! 6 6

[bluechip]

1 hour ago, Mmehdy said:

Using restoration and "getting away with it" before, during or after the grading process misses the real issue here. What true GA/SA comic book collectors are objecting to it changing something from its ORIGINAL condition or modifying it..of course adding additional profit on the CGC reward system grading scale. Why should a 8.0 Action #1 become a 9.0 highest value comic book over a "true" and UNRESTORED , unpressed 8.5 That is unfair putting it mildly  . This is grade and greed madness and not motived by the real issue here. The true comic book collector in reality what to purchase the GA/SA comic book in ORIGINAL CONDITION...just like in coins if you cleaned them, it decreased the value. That is why we have a purple label to begin wtith...I do not buy in to you  theory as to timing before labeling or grading  to eliminate conversations as to what is right and wrong in this collecting world. Why have a purple label at all, if these grade manipulations are allowed, encouraged and rewarded  which change the  original appearance and grade of the GA book..where does that leave us in the end?... Should CGC create another label saying " Original "Answer please.

I would be fine with them adding the word "original" if they use the word correctly, but creating another label would compound the problems already created by the colored labels, which may have started with the idea of identifying books which "aren't actually as nice condition as they appear to be" and quickly devolved into identifying books that are, in some purists' opinion, "desecrated" by actions which are "disapproved of".   That's why we find ourselves in the arguments posited here, where the discussion is less than it should be about how good or bad a book appears, hardly at all about what's been done to a book since it was published, and almost entirely about what thoughts (good or bad) went through the mind of a previous owner.  

That has become such a dominant factor that books are judged as tainted even when what's been done was clearly not done with an intent to improve the book but simply is SIMILAR to what other people have done with bad intent.  Even though razor thin trimming is not restoration by any commonly accepted definition, I get why people want to call it that -- because it can make a book APPEAR to have naturally unblunted edges, IF the trimming is expertly and subtly done. 

But then it was decided to put the same label on books which were trimmed so a kid could put it in a folder or a librarian could put them all in bindings.  And that's just one example of how some labels make you want somebody to step out of the "Princess Bride" and say "that word does not mean what you think it means."

 

Edited December 5, 2020 by bluechip

[Mmehdy]

13 minutes ago, LDarkseid1 said:

But how is pressing and dry cleaning, neither of which alter the book in any way whatsoever, just enhance it, comparable to color touch? CT which adds actual substances to the book that were not original to it.

not all restoration is created equal...but its the intent that counts, the GA comic book was never intended to be pressed like a pancake to make a higher label grade..cleaning in the coin world is a no-no, it should be the same with GA comics...original condition as found...

[LDarkseid1]

3 minutes ago, Mmehdy said:

not all restoration is created equal...but its the intent that counts, the GA comic book was never intended to be pressed like a pancake to make a higher label grade..cleaning in the coin world is a no-no, it should be the same with GA comics...original condition as found...

I guess, it seems to me all the collectible industries sometimes have different standards and perceptions for restoration. I mean I get what you’re saying but I personally have no issues with pressing and cleaning. I definitely understand you older guys were used to it being considered I believe full on restoration pre-CGC. So I get why it’s less acceptable to you.

[buttock]

1 hour ago, Mmehdy said:

How about disclosure on the label that the book as been permissibly restored or altered..that would be a way of saying its not original...I agree with waaghboss the grading label should disclose it if known...

Define "original".  

[buttock]

8 hours ago, tth2 said:

There's a reason so many collectors have moved into OA over the past decade.

Ah yes, original art, where nothing shady ever happens. 

[RareHighGrade]

Those who think that pressing has no adverse impact on a book should compare the first and second rounds of the Billy Wright book auctions.  Many of the best books were pressed between the two auctions and the adverse consequences are evident.  Even though some of the books went up in grade, their spines were damaged, in some cases with spine splitting or loss of very small paper chips.

Even after the pressing, the BW books are still very nice, but they originally were nicer.

Not all pressing damages books, but when the spine gets pressed, it's often a problem.

Edited December 5, 2020 by RareHighGrade

[comicdonna]

11 minutes ago, RareHighGrade said:

Those who think that pressing has no adverse impact on a book should compare the first and second rounds of the Billy Wright book auctions.  Many of the best books were pressed between the two auctions and the adverse consequences are evident.  Even though some of the books went up in grade, their spines were damaged, in come cases with spine splitting or loss of very small paper chips.

Even after the pressing, the BW books are still very nice, but they originally were nicer.

Not all pressing damages books, but when the spine gets pressed, it's often a problem.

I remember paying a pretty good premium for the white paged Action #5 the first time around.  I no longer own it but, it was a real nice book.  

[Gotham Kid]

19 minutes ago, RareHighGrade said:

Those who think that pressing has no adverse impact on a book should compare the first and second rounds of the Billy Wright book auctions.  Many of the best books were pressed between the two auctions and the adverse consequences are evident.  Even though some of the books went up in grade, their spines were damaged, in some cases with spine splitting or loss of very small paper chips.

And why several of the books sold for less (second round) even though grades bumped.

Edited December 5, 2020 by Gotham Kid

[Mmehdy]

1 hour ago, buttock said:

Define "original".  

from the newsstand to collector / buyer to new buyer or collector all the way down the chain...it is what it is...REAL

 

 

 

 

[buttock]

15 minutes ago, Mmehdy said:

from the newsstand to collector / buyer to new buyer or collector all the way down the chain...it is what it is...REAL

 

 

 

 

Gotcha, no mention of pressing at all.  Good to know you're ok with it.  

[Mmehdy]

2 hours ago, LDarkseid1 said:

I guess, it seems to me all the collectible industries sometimes have different standards and perceptions for restoration. I mean I get what you’re saying but I personally have no issues with pressing and cleaning. I definitely understand you older guys were used to it being considered I believe full on restoration pre-CGC. So I get why it’s less acceptable to you.

I do not think that this is old guy issue. let me present the real issue...is modification restoration?. the cgc which is in the business of pressing says no and they make the rules. you could under a perfect pressing situation buy a book off the newsstand with 9.6 grade and press it up to a 9.8. That is where the blurring occurs. So you have to have some reference point at which you can say this is the original comic book intended for the newsstand. Looking at pure reality..when you alter something you change it...whether you call it restoration, modification, green, purple or whatever. I think doing that in my mind DECREASES the value and of course the modification/restoration is 99.9% the increase value factor....One label,disclose everything including any history of pressing etc and lets get our GA/SA comic book community on one page....this I getting ridiculous when you cannot replace a rusted metal staple which is destroying the book having your label decreased, the staple has nothing to do with the book itself or its contents and its condition....the lines are too blurred and the price differences to great...the greed factor is resulting in Top of the census becoming meaningless. Short term a few profit, long term we all pay for this greed.

Edited December 5, 2020 by Mmehdy

[PopKulture]

13 hours ago, buttock said:

Let me play a little devil's advocate.  Before CGC you'd often look at a book like this -- prior to it being pressed -- and you'd say clearly that it was nicer than the technical grade.  One thing this discussion has fleshed out is that when comparing these 3 books, the one that's currently a 9.4 was the nicest of the three prior to any manipulation.  25 years ago if you put all 3 out in front of someone and asked them to grade them you'd get a clear hierarchy, but you wouldn't have needed to press out NCB wear to do so -- that would be factored into the grade.  At current you now have a grading company that has decided to make that NCB wear a greater part of the technical grade.  As a consequence of this, in order for the grades on the label to accurately reflect the degree of niceness of these books, you have to monkey with them.  (and let's be fair, pressing likely has zero consequence on the lifespan of the paper)  So all of this to say, that (as least as we're hearing in this thread) CGC actually got the hierarchy of the books right, which should be applauded.  It's just the way that the rules were defined that sits so poorly.  

Taking this a little further, if we wanted CGC to ignore that NCB wear and not factor it into the grade, then you'd get on a slippery slope where a 5 mm thumbnail crease is factored the same as a book length NCB reading bend.  I don't think any of us would be happy with that scenario either.  

But the take home message is that the books appear to have been sorted out accurately by grade, which means that the system actually worked.  

So bottom line is, pressable wear is a factor in grading.  CGC has to take it into account.  The only way to not have it taken into account is a) to not have books certified or b) press it out.  If anyone has any 7 figure books that they're willing to leave that money on the table on principle, then please reach out to me first before selling.  Going forward I just ask that anyone who is going to have a big book graded just have its potential maximized before ever getting it certified so that we no longer have to have these conversations.  

I appreciate your devil's advocacy, as it's well presented and I believe well-intentioned. What I find fascinating, however, is your parenthetical note dismissing the main premise of my post, the crux of which is the systemic manipulation of some of the hobby's most hallowed books. I asked if anyone seriously believed that pressing didn't have a deleterious long-term effect on comics, and you are admittedly in the camp that it likely has "zero consequence" on its lifespan.  Now, since neither of us has offered any scientific evidence specifically regarding pressing, we are each offering up a slice of our intuition, to which I freely admit.

Proceeding from an extreme case, however, I lightheartedly offer that enough heat and pressure create a diamond from what is essentially worthless carbon. In practice, pressing utilizes enough heat and pressure to cause observable structural changes to the paper. I find it to be a stretch of the imagination that those structural changes shall be limited to wholesale and observable macro-changes (and decidedly beneficial). Do you think it so improbable that structural changes are also happening on a less observable, micro-level, or even a chemical level? That's a little like saying leaving a comic in the attic for the summer will have no effect. Oh, but that's ridiculous: I'm comparing months to hours you could offer in response. Yes, and I'll reply that my attic is cooler than your press. If we plot temperature as a function of time, at some point we will throw our hands up and the argument will collapse to a delta dirac function, for the math geeks among us, and truth be told we don't yet have enough information to declare pressing to be harmless. Until we do, I think it prudent to err on the cautious side. 

(Further, I propose the following experiment: find two or three nearly identical copies of an unlucky issue of Looney Tunes, and press one of the books ten times - heck, twenty times if it has zero effect - and leave the other as found, with any additional copies pressed a few times and one only once. Place the books in mylar and store them together under the same conditions, then revisit the books at regular intervals as time passes to see if there's any discernable differences. I suspect Ernie Gerber would've happily done something like this or likely grander.) 

 

Edited December 6, 2020 by PopKulture

[Aman619]

11 hours ago, tth2 said:

There's a reason so many collectors have moved into OA over the past decade.

Out of the fat, into the fire? 

[pemart1966]

4 hours ago, LDarkseid1 said:

But how is pressing and dry cleaning, neither of which alter the book in any way whatsoever, just enhance it, comparable to color touch? CT which adds actual substances to the book that were not original to it.

Pressing and dry cleaning DO alter books.  If they didn't, no one would have it done...

[adamstrange]

6 hours ago, buttock said:

It's nothing more than an opinion.  

A certified subjective opinion.

[pemart1966]

6 hours ago, buttock said:

There are 2 Action 1 9.0s.  One was formerly an 8.0, and it's by far the nicer of the two.  The issue is that the CGC grade isn't the be-all arbiter of which copy is truly the nicest in a collector's eyes.  A CGC grade is a shortcut to try and give someone an idea of what a book looks like using a number.  Obviously that's going to have inadequacies.  And obviously it's a system that has flaws that people can take advantage of.  The error you're making is in giving WAY more power and credence to that simple number.  As virtually every other seasoned collector is aware, you judge the book on its own merit beyond the number on the label.  In this world of information, none of this is a secret, it took the boards a few hours to identify this book's history.  The sooner you can lose the hangup on the label number, the sooner you'll be able to move on.  It's nothing more than an opinion.  
 

Oh, and should CGC make an "original " label?  No.  That's a ridiculous idea.  Just no.

Maybe a partial answer to all of this is not to assign a numerical grade to any book - just list the descriptive facts about the book.  Agreed, a grade is an opinion.  It's totally subjective.  Ask 10 guys to grade the same book and you might get 8 different answers.

Notations like:  rusty staples; tanning pages; coupon missing; writing on cover and interior etc are not subjective.  They're made based on factual observation.  The same 10 guys that gave 8 different grades would all agree with these facts.  There's no disputing a missing coupon.

If you engage a trained professional to inspect a house that you're thinking of buying, he/she will give you a report outlining any shortcomings that they find.  They don't then grade the house on a scale of 1 to 10.  Same scenario with a used car:  you get "this is good; this is OK; this needs immediate attention".  It's not then followed up with a grade from 1-10.

Assigning a comic a grade from 1-10 inserts a psychological effect that should not and cannot be ignored.  Both buyers AND sellers are guilty of trying to chase the number and not the book err cover.  

Should there be an "original" label?  In theory "yes".  Is it practical? - no.

Pressing is sometimes so good that it's hard to tell.  Current owners may not truly know a book's history.  Even if a book's history is known, with some few exceptions, once it's cracked from a case, that history goes out the window.

 

 

 

Edited December 6, 2020 by pemart1966

[PopKulture]

37 minutes ago, pemart1966 said:

Pressing and dry cleaning DO alter books.  If they didn't, no one would have it done...

Yes, it's restoration by definition. You are literally trying to restore the book to a former state, a more favorable state. 

What we refer to as restoration is often repair (ex. tear seals, pieces added), or at the most mindful, conservation (ex. staples cleaned to prevent staining) .

The semantics of this was not as well thought out at the dawn of third party grading as it might have been, but let's be honest: by now it would have probably... evolved.  

 

[adamstrange]

27 minutes ago, pemart1966 said:

Maybe a partial answer to all of this is not to assign a numerical grade to any book

Heresy!

[LDarkseid1]

3 hours ago, Mmehdy said:

I do not think that this is old guy issue. let me present the real issue...is modification restoration?. the cgc which is in the business of pressing says no and they make the rules. you could under a perfect pressing situation buy a book off the newsstand with 9.6 grade and press it up to a 9.8. That is where the blurring occurs. So you have to have some reference point at which you can say this is the original comic book intended for the newsstand. Looking at pure reality..when you alter something you change it...whether you call it restoration, modification, green, purple or whatever. I think doing that in my mind DECREASES the value and of course the modification/restoration is 99.9% the increase value factor....One label,disclose everything including any history of pressing etc and lets get our GA/SA comic book community on one page....this I getting ridiculous when you cannot replace a rusted metal staple which is destroying the book having your label decreased, the staple has nothing to do with the book itself or its contents and its condition....the lines are too blurred and the price differences to great...the greed factor is resulting in Top of the census becoming meaningless. Short term a few profit, long term we all pay for this greed.

Ehh, I disagree and think it’s partly an older collector thing. I’ve heard a number of the older boardies on here complain about pressing and cleaning, and because CGC changed the perception when they decided to make it ok. Just my personal opinion. It was restoration pre-CGC, and suddenly wasn’t. I think accepting that change can be tough, and I can understand that. I don’t disagree about some of the points you make though and that greed clearly plays a role. I don’t mind subscribing to Mr. Gecko’s motto though, “greed is good” 😁. Anyway, I don’t have a problem with it, and there’s no guarantees it will make a book’s grade go up. There’s always the risk it could go down. Unlikely, but possible. I guess what I’m saying ultimately is I personally like the system of what is considered restoration/modification and have no problem with it. Totally fine if you or others don’t though of course. We can’t all agree on everything all the time 🙂.

[tth2]

12 hours ago, buttock said:

Let me play a little devil's advocate.  Before CGC you'd often look at a book like this -- prior to it being pressed -- and you'd say clearly that it was nicer than the technical grade.  One thing this discussion has fleshed out is that when comparing these 3 books, the one that's currently a 9.4 was the nicest of the three prior to any manipulation.  25 years ago if you put all 3 out in front of someone and asked them to grade them you'd get a clear hierarchy, but you wouldn't have needed to press out NCB wear to do so -- that would be factored into the grade.  At current you now have a grading company that has decided to make that NCB wear a greater part of the technical grade.  As a consequence of this, in order for the grades on the label to accurately reflect the degree of niceness of these books, you have to monkey with them.  (and let's be fair, pressing likely has zero consequence on the lifespan of the paper)  So all of this to say, that (as least as we're hearing in this thread) CGC actually got the hierarchy of the books right, which should be applauded.  It's just the way that the rules were defined that sits so poorly.  

Taking this a little further, if we wanted CGC to ignore that NCB wear and not factor it into the grade, then you'd get on a slippery slope where a 5 mm thumbnail crease is factored the same as a book length NCB reading bend.  I don't think any of us would be happy with that scenario either.  

But the take home message is that the books appear to have been sorted out accurately by grade, which means that the system actually worked.  

So bottom line is, pressable wear is a factor in grading.  CGC has to take it into account.  The only way to not have it taken into account is a) to not have books certified or b) press it out.  If anyone has any 7 figure books that they're willing to leave that money on the table on principle, then please reach out to me first before selling.  Going forward I just ask that anyone who is going to have a big book graded just have its potential maximized before ever getting it certified so that we no longer have to have these conversations.  

Nathan, is that you?