How often does CGC grading lower when opening the slab 0

[Rly]

Tons of great input.

I have to admit while reading each post I was swaying back and forth from keeping it in the slap.

I've come to the conclusion, its either send in or open the slab at your own risk. Degradation of the comic do occur at CGC upon cracking the slab, hence the disclaimer. Now how often they degrade, nobody knows except the CGC staff themselves. 

I feel like the best thing to do is to keep the slab itself and find 9.8 candidates to ship in for signing.

Edited March 31, 2021 by Rly

[William-James88]

7 hours ago, Rly said:

 

I feel like the best thing to do is to keep the slab itself and find 9.8 candidates to ship in for signing.

That's what I did. So far of the 3 I sent I got one 9.8 and two 9.6. But I dont mind since I bought them each for so much less raw. With a signature on them all these 3 yellow label  books of mine are worth at least 3 times my total cost of book + sig series event.

I was gonna CGC these books eventually, so the sig series was a great opportunity.  

[William-James88]

10 hours ago, Sky1 said:

Alot of good comments already but I wanted to give you my experience as it will give you a bigger sample size to compare from.  I only had one slab return with a MUCH lower grade out of the 4 or 5 I cracked open for signatures; with hindsight I wish I never bothered to be honest.  A grade is more important to me than someone's sig no matter who it is.  With that said, my friend has terrible luck cracking open slabs for sigs.  Out of 5 or so that he has done, 3 of them came back with a lower grade that I know of.  He gambled and it didn't pay off, I feel for him because with current market those books would be selling for alot pre-cracked.

 

Like everyone said, don't bother if the grade is important.  If you do, assume it will come back lower so you will be pleasantly surprised if it retains.

Would you mind giving a breakdown of the books and what the individual results were? Like how much did it drop for each?

For science.

[Rly]

10 hours ago, XjYoZbQ said:

I'd be more worried about the artist damaging the book than CGC.

Could I pack the raw comic book in a way that the signer doesn't damage it? 

[xvipah]

You have to, sort of. CGC won't accept a book for signing if it's not in a Window Bag. But, even in a window bag, at some point the artist has to be near the front cover so there's just always the chance. Push too hard with the pen/marker, ink blots, accidentally rub their hand across the cover and crinkle it, whatever. I know most of them will absolutely try to be careful, but when you're on signature 300 for the day, just getting it done may take priority 

 

6 hours ago, Rly said:

Could I pack the raw comic book in a way that the signer doesn't damage it? 

 

[Rly]

3 hours ago, xvipah said:

You have to, sort of. CGC won't accept a book for signing if it's not in a Window Bag. But, even in a window bag, at some point the artist has to be near the front cover so there's just always the chance. Push too hard with the pen/marker, ink blots, accidentally rub their hand across the cover and crinkle it, whatever. I know most of them will absolutely try to be careful, but when you're on signature 300 for the day, just getting it done may take priority 

 

 

Is it recommended to double board the comic in the window bag?

[revat]

24 minutes ago, Rly said:

Is it recommended to double board the comic in the window bag?

There’s a signature room subforum.  If you dig around a bit you will find many answers to many of your basic queries, including this one.  But yes, nothing wrong with double boarding.  Many if not most people do.

 

 

[Sky1]

15 hours ago, William-James88 said:

Would you mind giving a breakdown of the books and what the individual results were? Like how much did it drop for each?

For science.

I am not sure how much detail I want to get into it because the signings was done via facilitators from here.  I do not want to make it seem like I am holding a grudge or even discourage people to get signings from people here.  I'll give a break down of the grades though.

For me personally, I only got 1 get a lower grade but it's a big one.  It was a 9.8 and went down to a 9.4 when I got it back.  If you knew what it was then you'll understand why I said a grade is more important to me,

As for my friend...

9.8 to 9.6

9.8 to 9.6 (also returned from WHITE pages to OFF-WHITE)

9.2 to 8.0 (This was really weird, book looked the same; we even talked to CGC personally about this & shocker no grader notes on it either)

9.4 to 9.0

He had one or two more return back a 9.6 to 9.8 I believe but those were "junk" books unlike the others.  Like I said for some reason he has terrible luck doing this, but his volume of sending out books for signings are higher than mine.  Keep in mind the book that went from a 9.2 to 8.0 is only 3 levels lower.  There's only a 8.5 and 8.0 grade & no in between.

Before anyone ask, we have no idea how the books dropped so dramatically.  Facilitators walked us through their process & have plenty of xp cracking books open.  If we had to guess, the ones above where it dropped by more than one grade level were all signed by the same person; he might have wanted to take a trip down memory lane & started reading them then & there.  Either that, they were bought on eBay, who knows how the previous owner treated their slabs.  Maybe they used them as a sauna buddy, realized that was dumb then decided to sell it

 

Edited April 1, 2021 by Sky1

[Sky1]

34 minutes ago, XjYoZbQ said:

9.0?

Yea there's a 9.0 in there too, I assumed everyone just knew that.  Mainly didn't want people to think there's a 8.8, 8.6, 8.4 etc.

Unless you were just grading my post and given me a score of 9.0 then asking if it was acceptable.  You're a polite judge, I accept the 9.0 grade,

[Ryan.]

15 minutes ago, Sky1 said:

Mainly didn't want people to think there's a 8.8, 8.6, 8.4 etc.

[Sky1]

15 minutes ago, Ryan. said:

wth, please tell me I wasn't the only person who thought that at the beginning

[Erndog]

On 3/31/2021 at 12:35 PM, Sky1 said:

 Out of 5 or so that he has done, 3 of them came back with a lower grade that I know of.  He gambled and it didn't pay off, I feel for him because with current market those books would be selling for alot pre-cracked.

 

Did he crack them in order to get signed and then graded?

Or did he crack them hoping for a grade bump?

Because if he cracked them hoping for a grade bump, and 3 out of the 5 came back lower grades, than thats pretty concerning that the grades are THAT subjective no?  If he got them signed and then graded then all bets are off with the grade sure.

[Sky1]

2 minutes ago, Erndog said:

Did he crack them in order to get signed and then graded?

Or did he crack them hoping for a grade bump?

Because if he cracked them hoping for a grade bump, and 3 out of the 5 came back lower grades, than thats pretty concerning that the grades are THAT subjective no?  If he got them signed and then graded then all bets are off with the grade sure.

He cracked them to just get signed (well the facilitator cracked them).  I am sure he wasn't hoping for a grade bump just hoping it retains the grade.  All bets are off sure, but usually it's just one grade down though.  Anyone else crack a slab open & get two grades or more lower before?

[William-James88]

On 4/1/2021 at 4:07 PM, Sky1 said:

He cracked them to just get signed (well the facilitator cracked them).  I am sure he wasn't hoping for a grade bump just hoping it retains the grade.  All bets are off sure, but usually it's just one grade down though.  Anyone else crack a slab open & get two grades or more lower before?

Oh yes, we've seen several examples on the boards. One of the worst was going from a 9.0 to a 7.0 or something like that. There's also plenty of unboxing videos on youtube of people opening up their signed comics to see that they have gone down two grades or more. 

[William-James88]

Here's a 9.4 which came back 9.0 after sig event
 

 

[rexinnih]

On 3/29/2021 at 3:46 AM, Angel of Death said:

If you get it signed, then get it pressed. That's your best course.

Sent in a raw Wolverine #8 for the last Chris Claremont signing and included pressing - received notification today it's a 9.8. Sent in two CGC slabbed books in for same Chris Claremont signing and included pressing. Both came back a grade higher (X-Men 221 from 9.2 to 9.4 and Iron Fist 14 6.5 to 7.0). 

There's always a gamble but so far, it's worked out for me. I did have a Wolverine 10 CGC 9.8 I contemplated sending in but decided against it. 

[shootin-str81]

Does the person doing the actual grading see the previous grade of the book if you submit in the original cgc case?  Just wondering if that might influence them one way or another.  I am planning to resubmit a few books for regrading but planned to crack them myself before submitting.  

[William-James88]

3 minutes ago, shootin-str81 said:

Does the person doing the actual grading see the previous grade of the book if you submit in the original cgc case?  Just wondering if that might influence them one way or another.  I am planning to resubmit a few books for regrading but planned to crack them myself before submitting.  

They dont. 

[William-James88]

On 3/31/2021 at 4:48 AM, Buzzetta said:

I have sent a graded comic in for grading 4x.

In the first three instances the books came back at the same grade that I submitted them at but with the added signature of McFarlane who is usually conscious of what he is doing when he signs.

Question about this, did you also opt for the extra 20 for a press/clean, wondering if that had a factor in retaining the grade.

[Buzzetta]

9 minutes ago, William-James88 said:

Question about this, did you also opt for the extra 20 for a press/clean, wondering if that had a factor in retaining the grade.

Yes... I am still waiting for Eastman to sign the turtles book so the jury is still out on that one.