3rd time's the charm? Avengers 4 CGC 7.5: Improper encapsulation, damage by CGC & what to do next? - Updated Conclusion 0

[joeypost]

I noticed you are from Brooklyn. My parents were from Skillman/Myrtle/Kent Avenue area of Brooklyn. 

[Galen130]

7 minutes ago, Phill the Governor said:

I was going to call tomorrow, but to my surprise CGC's customer service just reached out to me first.

I will be sending the book back for a third time, against my better judgement, to hopefully have the situation remedied. 

Best of luck...

[Phill the Governor]

34 minutes ago, joeypost said:

I noticed you are from Brooklyn. My parents were from Skillman/Myrtle/Kent Avenue area of Brooklyn. 

I'm almost literally right on the Brooklyn/Queens line in Ridgewood (technically Queens but don't tell anyone) 

Myrtle is two streets away but Im on the East side, not the West over near Kent. Still, big city, small word!

Edited March 23, 2021 by Phill the Governor

[Old_Man_Adam]

3 hours ago, joeypost said:

I noticed you are from Brooklyn.

Initially placed in prospect park , this is now located in the liberty view industrial plaza ...

 

sorry about the book , it’s a must have in any condition and any diminishment of a slabbed book is disheartening 

[joeypost]

3 hours ago, Phill the Governor said:

I'm almost literally right on the Brooklyn/Queens line in Ridgewood (technically Queens but don't tell anyone) 

Myrtle is two streets away but Im on the East side, not the West over near Kent. Still, big city, small word!

Cool. I was raised in Queens. Howard beach (old side). Less Mafia. 

[Phill the Governor]

Got the book back from CGC about two week ago, but was holding off from posting..

 

Before:

 

After:

 

The book also had some nice scuffs on the inner well, in the center of the book over Cap's face. Can be tough to see in the photo of the whole book, but it is there, and distracting from an arms length away in person.

 

So what do you think? Would you be happy with this, after spending time and energy on emails and 3 times of shipping the book to CGC.. ?

 

Edited April 15, 2021 by Phill the Governor

[Math Teacher]

Personally, I think it's time to cut your losses. If CGC won't pay for the damage, at least ask them if you can get a grading discount on your next submission. Every time you send this book to CGC, you increase the likelihood that it will get damaged in transit. Also, if this is what your book looks like after three submissions, who's to say that it won't end up more damaged on the fourth try?

Even at McDonald's, you're more likely to get a replacement hamburger than a refund. Amazon is good at no-question refunds, though.

[thehumantorch]

On 3/22/2021 at 8:24 PM, Randall Ries said:

Regraded? How much of a hit did you take?

It was graded a 4.0 initially.  I sent it back and they pressed it and regraded it 4.0.  It could be argued that because it stayed the same grade it is worth the same and I'm not out financially, but my book has two significant rips that were caused by CGC.

 

[Bird]

4 hours ago, Phill the Governor said:

Got the book back from CGC about two week ago, but was holding off from posting..

 

Before:

 

After:

 

The book also had some nice scuffs on the inner well, in the center of the book over Cap's face. Can be tough to see in the photo of the whole book, but it is there, and distracting from an arms length away in person.

 

So what do you think? Would you be happy with this, after spending time and energy on emails and 3 times of shipping the book to CGC.. ?

 

no I would not be happy

I would be far from happy

I do agree it is kind of cut your losses time though. If you are upset, sell and the book would do well in the current market even if there is full disclosure I bet. But it if is sentimental, what can you do? 

[thehumantorch]

3 minutes ago, Bird said:

4 hours ago, Phill the Governor said:

Got the book back from CGC about two week ago, but was holding off from posting..

 

Before:

 

After:

 

The book also had some nice scuffs on the inner well, in the center of the book over Cap's face. Can be tough to see in the photo of the whole book, but it is there, and distracting from an arms length away in person.

 

So what do you think? Would you be happy with this, after spending time and energy on emails and 3 times of shipping the book to CGC.. ?

 

Expand  

no I would not be happy

I would be far from happy

I do agree it is kind of cut your losses time though. If you are upset, sell and the book would do well in the current market even if there is full disclosure I bet. But it if is sentimental, what can you do? 

Sorry this has continued Phil.  I wouldn't be happy.  CGC makes mistakes and isn't perfect.  I don't know where you go from here.

[Randall Ries]

I wouldn't be happy, either. It's a pickle. You could certainly file a lawsuit. Thing is it's still graded a 7.5 so technically you haven't lost the value of the book. I have no idea how hard it would be to sell. I am sure someone would buy it for it's provenance. If I could afford it, I would buy it. But it was your Dad's book.

I think if it were me, I would sell the book and make sure I could get another 7.5 graded Avengers 4 in the process. Even if it belonged to my Dad. Owning that specific book after all that would be a downer for me. I wouldn't be able to look at it without getting upset. Upset that I sent it in to be simply graded and slabbed. Not once but 3 times and now it's damaged forever. Upset that it was my Dad's book and now I feel like I have to sell it. Upset because I sent it to them in good faith and they couldn't even get the job done right.

I am sure you could sell it as it is and let the buyer decide whether or not they wanted to purchase it. You wouldn't have to disclose the story. It's a blue label 7.5. I have seen worse looking 7.5's.

After that, I would tell the story over and over again. CGC ain't all they think they are.

 

[Randall Ries]

1 hour ago, thehumantorch said:

It was graded a 4.0 initially.  I sent it back and they pressed it and regraded it 4.0.  It could be argued that because it stayed the same grade it is worth the same and I'm not out financially, but my book has two significant rips that were caused by CGC.

 

I'm sorry, man. Rips on my book caused by employees screwing it up is not acceptable. No one should accept excuses. It also negates the idea that the grade is set in stone. A rip would automatically lower the grade by at least half a point and yet your book and Phillips remained the same grade by their hand. I imagine in your mind, perhaps your book is no longer a 4.0.

I have a Brave and the Bold book where one of the side braces never opened properly so the spine of the book is pressed against it. The braces as far as I can tell are supposed to hold the book like tongs. It isn't hurting the book and yet it's there.

I dunno. We get busy as all get out in our business and mistakes are just not cool. We make them but we take full responsibility when we make them. I wore those ice spikes on my boots a few years ago for the first time. Forgot I had them on and ruined someones kitchen floor. I never even noticed. The client did when she came home. She simply asked "What are we going to do about this?"

My reply was "WE aren't going to do anything. I'M going to replace your floor. Get an estimate at the flooring shop of your choice, send me the estimate and I will pay the estimate the same day." And 2 months later, that's exactly what I did. Because that's what we do when we ruin someones property. We take responsibility and make it right.

[solm4st3r]

On 3/23/2021 at 5:12 AM, Phill the Governor said:

To add insult to injury I just noticed that the book is also so tightly sealed in the inner well, that the book was sealed with "SCS" (shaken comic syndrome). The entire top edge of the back cover has been creased. While I do understand this can happen to book while in transit, by mishandling, etc- there is no space for this book to move vertically - implying it wasn't damaged because it shifted- there is literally no room for it to have shifted. This was caused by improper encapsulation.

 

I don't care if it can be pressed out or not, that's not the point- this a problem. 

 

I bought a book recently from HA that had the exact same damage to the back cover. It was done in transit (SCS) as the high resolution scan from HA did not show a crease. I believe your book was damaged in transit, and there is probably a small tear where the crease ends near the corner.

[The Lions Den]

On 4/15/2021 at 3:34 PM, Phill the Governor said:

So what do you think? Would you be happy with this, after spending time and energy on emails and 3 times of shipping the book to CGC.. ?

If you don't feel that the positive side of this transaction outweighs the negative, I'd sell the book...

[agamoto]

I think my GSX1 might have been the one referred to here. The 9.6 White that I received with some severe 'shaken comic syndrome'. They essentially wrecked what was nearly a perfect copy. CGC offered to fix the bends their encapsulation caused, but refused to guarantee the grade. At the time, it was a few grand difference between a 9.4 and a 9.6 and I didn't think that was such a good deal. I decided that I didn't want to risk it and sold the book to another board member for the FMV half way between 9.4 and 9.6. Someone who had some clout with CGC and apparently was successful in submitting the book and having it returned to him at 9.6 White. Of course that book is now selling for $25,000 so needless to say, my bum is chapped and raw over all of that, and I haven't submitted anything to CGC since. CBCS also did me dirty on a different GSX1, a 9.2 that was also damaged in their case. I got the run-around there too, shipped it to them only to have it come back worse, and somehow the same grade... I chose to sell that one and get rid of the problem instead of sending it to them again. It physically makes me want to puke when I think about what I sold those books for versus what they're going for now. I'm out of comic grading companies to get pissed off at. CGC pisses me off and they're raising their rates. CBCS is super hard on the silver/bronze grading and they've screwed my books up too... I haven't had anything graded since. Sitting on a lot of awesome books that I don't want to send to either of them, yet have no choice if I want to max out their value because the only other player in town is PGX and no one wants to pay top dollar for their brand. 

 

I f*#&jg hate comics. 

Edited April 25, 2021 by agamoto

[agamoto]

11 hours ago, solm4st3r said:

I bought a book recently from HA that had the exact same damage to the back cover. It was done in transit (SCS) as the high resolution scan from HA did not show a crease. I believe your book was damaged in transit, and there is probably a small tear where the crease ends near the corner.

Reading this makes me want to hulk smash. "Damage in Transit" is comic grading company double-speak for "-poor encapsulation engineering that can't keep a comic secured inside a case whose entire purpose is supposed to be to PRESERVE the grade of a comic." Getting your product to and from clients safely is part of the business, if CGC cases aren't capable of making the trip, that's on CGC, not the courier.

 

<triggered.jpg>

Edited April 25, 2021 by agamoto

[solm4st3r]

17 minutes ago, agamoto said:

Reading this makes me want to hulk smash. "Damage in Transit" is comic grading company double-speak for "-poor encapsulation engineering that can't keep a comic secured inside a case whose entire purpose is supposed to be to PRESERVE the grade of a comic." Getting your product to and from clients safely is part of the business, if CGC cases aren't capable of making the trip, that's on CGC, not the courier.

 

<triggered.jpg>

You're right. I'm going to contact HA and file a complaint.

[The Lions Den]

On 4/25/2021 at 5:22 PM, agamoto said:

Reading this makes me want to hulk smash. "Damage in Transit" is comic grading company double-speak for "-poor encapsulation engineering that can't keep a comic secured inside a case whose entire purpose is supposed to be to PRESERVE the grade of a comic." Getting your product to and from clients safely is part of the business, if CGC cases aren't capable of making the trip, that's on CGC, not the courier.

 

<triggered.jpg>

Given the number of times I've seen this particular book damaged, I'm also inclined to think that it may be more susceptible to SCS. I've noticed that GSX1 often has an overhang on the edges of the cover which can be problematic. Any amount of movement within the well seems to result in horror stories like the ones above. For books like this, CGC often uses at least one stability wedge to help secure the book, but I have seen cases where two wedges were used---one on the bottom and one on either side of the well. Perhaps the "double-wedge" treatment should be adopted more often for GSX1 (and similar books) in the future.

I'm terribly sorry this situation has resulted in these kinds of issues, and I'm sure no one at either grading company is happy about it either. I only hope that something can be done to remedy the problem so it doesn't keep happening...   

[Lazyboy]

On 4/25/2021 at 4:22 PM, agamoto said:

Reading this makes me want to hulk smash. "Damage in Transit" is comic grading company double-speak for "-poor encapsulation engineering that can't keep a comic secured inside a case whose entire purpose is supposed to be to PRESERVE the grade of a comic." Getting your product to and from clients safely is part of the business, if CGC cases aren't capable of making the trip, that's on CGC, not the courier.

 

<triggered.jpg>

Encapsulating comics in hard plastic cases was always a stupid idea. Sure, it worked for coins and cards, but those are essentially two-dimensional objects, and comics are absolutely not.

[Phill the Governor]

UPDATE!

 

After some back and forth, I was told this by customers service:  

"they’ve stated that the book with the errors you have stated would retain the same grade. They would like to offer you $75 in membership credits."

As this was an offensive offer (not to mention they regarded the damage as "errors" LOL), I promptly responded saying I expected my submission costs on the book to be fully refunded, as well as a few hundred dollars for the damage to the book and for my time. Which I do not think is unreasonable at at all. What do others think?

Oh, side note: At the same time- I was just overcharged for my $900+ submission order CGC received the other day AND they did not apply the previous $75 credit from a few weeks back from another damaged book. So not only was the previous credit not applied, but I was actually overcharged.

This is an appalling level of quality control.