Is CGC the only place to shop ?! ?!

[joe_collector]

My favorite is:

 

"This CGC comic has no grader's notes and is perfect in every way...."

 

and then when you ask for larger scans and pick up a date stamp on the back cover, dist. ink overspray and other anomalies that used to be in the notes. These scammers use the fact that CGC does not have grader's notes, as a selling point.

[fantastic_four]

and then when you ask for larger scans and pick up a date stamp on the back cover, dist. ink overspray and other anomalies that used to be in the notes. These scammers use the fact that CGC does not have grader's notes, as a selling point.

Yep it's definitely a problem...maybe if CGG or another competitor starts to do it, CGC would follow suit.

 

Does anyone know if any coin or card grading services provide any kind of grading certificate with their slabs?

[ArAich]

Actually...I think it would be benificial if CGC would just put the graders notes on the certification data available through the Collectors Society....at the very least it would cut down on phone traffic of people such as myself calling to see exactly what the defects are on a certain books...

[musicmeta]

I call CGC every 2 or 3 days and my books that I sent in on 1/31/03 have STILL NOT been graded, but yet the grading prices keep going up.

[plitch]

Morning!

The final Economy's from 1/31 are being done today.

This was the deadline for the price increase, so there were a lot of books submitted on that day. All the other tiers are on time.

 

[musicmeta]

Thank You for the update.

[garthgantu]

I'm not a big sports card collector, but if memory serves, it was the inundation of grading/slabbing services that prompted the implosion of that market...? Once there were seven or eight competing services, and the price to slab a card went down, the number of slabbed cards went way up, leading to :

1) buyer confusion...which slabbing service does the best job? Which card should I buy, among the X identical cards with X different grades?

 

2) dealer resentment/collusion: rumors were rampant that some of these slabbing firms "promised" major card dealers that if they submitted XX copies of the same card, at least X would receive a 10.0 grade.

 

3) devaluation: while it was difficult to gauge the actual number of slabbed copies of a given card, the impression (which turned out to be true in many instances) was that there were 1,000s of most cards in the highest grades.

 

I'm not opposed to CGC having competition; I think that on the surface at least, competition seems good. It should keep prices sane, reduce turnaround times, promote the likelihood that new features will become 'standard,' and perhaps promote the general perception that many comics are rare and valuable items that require sophisticated, professional grading and protection. But I think we should expect that, in the case of post-Bronze Age comics at least, additional slabbing services will cause a serious disintegration of comic book values.

 

Garthgantu