They're Still Out There! 22 22

[Pickie]

16 minutes ago, N e r V said:

When I was 10 I was reading about 50+ comics a month. Toss in another 5 magazines or so and maybe 1-2 treasury books by Marvel or DC. Cost was about $5.00 a week to do that.

Interesting, that seems a lot to me. As a teenager, over a period of approx. 4 yrs I read only 4-6 issues a month.

To clarify, my thoughts are not about the costs but only about the reading effort/time ...

Oh wait, recollection sets in. That had to be only the issues bought by myself off the newsstands. In the same period of time I read numerous back issues from the collections of friends or copies bought second hand at the flea market. But still not hundreds and hundreds ...

Edited July 4, 2021 by Pickie

[lou_fine]

22 hours ago, MrBedrock said:

Dan provided a number of examples of impacted staples with tears that did not occur as a result of pressing. He could have provided a number of others, but out of brevity chose not to. I can attest that impacted staples like those on the Cap 46 do occur. The Cap 46 may very well have been pressed, and probably was. But the tears at the impacted staples are not the smoking gun that proves that pressing definitely happened - no matter how much anyone wants that to be the case. And those tears could have been and probably were there prior to and regardless of a press.

Although we've all seen examples of books with impacted staples similar to the ones which @buttock was good enough to take the time to post for us, I guess the real question for me and some of the other boardies here is:  Did CGC appear to take them into consideration in the determination of their final grade or did they also simply assume that these impacted staples were production related and gave them a free pass like what took place with a lot of the Promise Collection books?   

From looking at some of the scans which we have seen and the defects on the promise Collection books, it appears the default for the CGC grader was to assume production related issues for any visible default resulting in a minimal impact on the grade of the book.  Unfortuantely, it would appear that the default for submittors of regular non-Promise GA books would be that they are true defects and not production related resulting in a much bigger hit on the grade of the book. The most important thing for a supposedly 3rd party independent certification company is to ensure CONSISTENT application of their grading standards (albeit undisclosed standards ) for all books submitted to them from all of their submittors, which clearly does not seem to be the case here with the Promise Collection of books as evident from some of the scans and associated grades that we have seen so far.   

[lou_fine]

14 hours ago, tth2 said:

22 hours ago, Randall Dowling said:

Also, I don't think it's a safe assumption that books in old label holders were never pressed.  Or that raw books weren't either.  

I think the odds are heavily in favor of them not being pressed.

 

13 hours ago, batman_fan said:

Definitely less likely to be pressed than a book in a new holder.

Of course books were much less likely to have been pressed prior to 2005 when CGC legitimitmized the whole process when it was declared by Borock as nothing more than "maximization of potential" for a book after pressing was outed here on the boards, and even more so if graded prior to 2002 before Heritage arrived on the scene.  

Especially if you think back to those long ago days back then in the first few years of CGC's operations, pressing was considered by absolutely everybody within the hobby as restoration beyind a shadow of doubt.  Of course, that did not stop of cabal of nefarious quasi-dealers and money hungry scammers and crooks to hide out in their darkened dungeons and apply their trade to work on their books and then to foist them into an unsuspecting marketplace as HG universal unrestored books in order to line their personal bank accounts with untold gobs of money.    

I don't recall a single ad back in those days offering standalone pressing services to the collecting marketplace because it was something that was simply not being done in the general marketplace, except by a bunch of crooks trying to steal money from everybody else.   So, it only makes sense that the chance of having pressed books in those old slabs are definitely far lower as compared to slabs from today where the undisclosed grading standards have been changed in such a way as to now punish your book if they have NCB spine ticks and haven't gone through the whole pressing process.    

[lou_fine]

14 hours ago, Randall Dowling said:

Maybe.  I seem to remember the guy running CGC at the time saying it was a mistake to assume that "old label" = "not pressed".  

Yeah, but isn't this the same guy who forgot to proactively inform the collecting base for the first 5 years of CGC's operations about this rather significant change in terms of their restoration definition and grading standards, especially since everybody within both the hobby and industry had viewed standalone pressing as restoration back then.  

Actually, not sure if he was involved with this cabal of crooks from the get go that foisted as lot of what would then be considered to be restored books into the marketplace as Universal unrestored books.  Interesting to note when the whole fiasco came to light on the boards here, one of these crooks (i.e. Jason) had apparently broken the "crook's agreement" that this cabal had in place at the time by taking their misdeeds one step further (i.e. micro-trimming of books) , and was then summarily booted out not only from the group, but blackballed from ever submitting books ever again.  

[GreatCaesarsGhost]

30 minutes ago, lou_fine said:

15 hours ago, Randall Dowling said:

 

Yeah, but isn't this the same guy who forgot to proactively inform the collecting base for the first 5 years of CGC's operations about this rather significant change in terms of their restoration definition and grading standards, especially since everybody within both the hobby and industry had viewed standalone pressing as restoration back then.  

Since Borock was the tip of the “maximization of potential” spear, now embraced by our benefactors, why is he now gone from there?

p.s. I’m probably the only guy here doesn’t know. 
 

but if, in my ignorance, I’m asking a radioactive question, just pass by

Edited July 4, 2021 by GreatCaesarsGhost

[Randall Dowling]

16 minutes ago, lou_fine said:

one of these crooks (i.e. Jason) had apparently broken the "crook's agreement" that this cabal had in place at the time by taking their misdeeds one step further (i.e. micro-trimming of books) , and was then summarily booted out not only from the group, but blackballed from ever submitting books ever again.  

He may be forgotten but he's not gone.  My guess is he's still working...

[N e r V]

5 hours ago, Pickie said:

Interesting, that seems a lot to me. As a teenager, over a period of approx. 4 yrs I read only 4-6 issues a month.

To clarify, my thoughts are not about the costs but only about the reading effort/time ...

Oh wait, recollection sets in. That had to be only the issues bought by myself off the newsstands. In the same period of time I read numerous back issues from the collections of friends or copies bought second hand at the flea market. But still not hundreds and hundreds ...

I started collecting (I had read comics before) with mostly the July 1973 dated comics. I do remember seeing May and June dates still on the stand (like Spiderman #121). Where Monsters Dwell #22 was my first collected comic then I was hooked mostly due to my best friend who had started collecting earlier. Comics cost 20 cents so a buck bought 5 comics at the local 7-11. My life was sports and reading. I burned through 20 page comics quickly so paperbacks filled the rest of my time. I counted on Mike’s site to get a rough idea of what I bought from the beginning. At 10 it’s a great time to be a boy since you liked girls but weren’t old enough to do much about that. As I got older girls came more into play, sports required more time, my interest in science increased and honestly comics were losing some of their quality by the mid to late 1970’s. It wasn’t until the new X-Men started hitting their stride, Miller began on Daredevil and the early 1980’s with all those Indy publishers did I come back heavy again. I read very fast though so yeah, 50 comics a month was pretty easy for me and still keep my A’s up. I’m glad you posted though I had fun going through my “firsts” on Mikes site. Gawd comics and life was so fun back then. Scooby Doo Saturday morning cartoons, playing Pong, drive in movies, comics on spinner racks and looking cool in my Hang Ten T-Shirts…

[G.A.tor]

Hi everyone….what did I miss ? 

[GreatCaesarsGhost]

1 hour ago, G.A.tor said:

Hi everyone….what did I miss ? 

 

 

Edited July 5, 2021 by GreatCaesarsGhost

[lou_fine]

On 7/4/2021 at 12:17 PM, GreatCaesarsGhost said:

Since Borock was the tip of the “maximization of potential” spear, now embraced by our benefactors, why is he now gone from there?

Best to ask Steve himself, but my guess is that it's a whole ton more financially beneficial to be the FOUNDER/president/head grader of YOUR OWN grading company, as opposed to simply being a working employee of a grading company.  Especially when you are doing pretty much the same duties in terms of being responsible for launching the grading company and becoming its president, head grader, spokesperson, and front man for them.  

Edited July 6, 2021 by lou_fine

[MrBedrock]

34 minutes ago, lou_fine said:

...but my guess is...

A typical lou_fine post.

[Cat-Man_America]

12 hours ago, G.A.tor said:

Hi everyone….what did I miss ? 

I’d heard you were booking passage on a Promise Cruise to the Metroplex.

Oh, ...wait a minute.  Never mind, I just realized the climate hasn’t changed enough for a Dallas seaport yet.  

[lou_fine]

1 hour ago, MrBedrock said:

A typical lou_fine post.

Yes, and a typical Bedrock post of late, without any qualifier at all.  

[N e r V]

11 hours ago, lou_fine said:

Yes, and a typical Bedrock post of late, without any qualifier at all.  

You only have to fear the threat of a Bedrock post if you’re being Snarfy…

 

[N e r V]

12 hours ago, MrBedrock said:

A typical lou_fine post.

You know a lot of people spend a lot of time on those amazing guesses to create their theories of everything so maybe if we had a lot more guessing and a little less facts the world would be a different place for us all to live in…

 

[MattTheDuck]

55 minutes ago, N e r V said:

You know a lot of people spend a lot of time on those amazing guesses to create their theories of everything so maybe if we had a lot more guessing and a little less facts the world would be a different place for us all to live in…

 

You know. We get after it. You know, we jabber jaw, we go tit for tat. We have our little differences. But at the end of the day, you win some, I win some, and there's a mutual respect left over between us. 

[N e r V]

7 minutes ago, MattTheDuck said:

You know. We get after it. You know, we jabber jaw, we go tit for tat. We have our little differences. But at the end of the day, you win some, I win some, and there's a mutual respect left over between us. 

I agree.

Theories should always be presented as theories and facts as facts.

Bad optics are bad optics but don’t automatically equal any wrong doing.

I was just trying to poke a little fun at some of the discourse here in general…

[buttock]

1 hour ago, N e r V said:

I agree.

Theories should always be presented as theories and facts as facts.

Bad optics are bad optics but don’t automatically equal any wrong doing.

I was just trying to poke a little fun at some of the discourse here in general…

Theories imply there is some rationale or evidence behind what is being theorized.  To just throw out random uninformed opinions about people's personal lives and livelihood is a different story.  Especially when you do it ALL. THE. TIME.  

[MrBedrock]

1 hour ago, buttock said:

Theories imply there is some rationale or evidence behind what is being theorized.  To just throw out random uninformed opinions about people's personal lives and livelihood is a different story.  Especially when you do it ALL. THE. TIME.  

+1

[N e r V]

2 hours ago, buttock said:

Theories imply there is some rationale or evidence behind what is being theorized.  To just throw out random uninformed opinions about people's personal lives and livelihood is a different story.  Especially when you do it ALL. THE. TIME.  

 

44 minutes ago, MrBedrock said:

+1

We live in an era now of social media judgements which are often quick and uninformed lacking some or all the facts. Opinions can often trump the reality of things. It’s kinda become the norm. 
 

I am surprised however by the amount of people here who don’t use CGC but have such strong opinions about their business since it shouldn’t be of a concern to them one way or another. 
 

I mean if I read Yelp and someone doesn’t like to eat Italian food, never goes out to eat Italian food but wants to be a critic of Italian food restaurants how much weight should I put on their reviews?