CGC is now grading pulp magazines 3 3

[Point Five]

Tried looking it up on CGC's Verification page (to potentially 'verify' that it left CGC looking as it should), but no pics are supplied there.  

https://www.cgccomics.com/certlookup/4419776002/

 

[Point Five]

A CGC 7.0 Dime Detective was listed on MCS at the same time, and the Verify page tells me it was graded the same day (5/24/24). It's obviously much better off than the 6.5 book, but you can see some interior page flakes caught in the right edge inner well, so still a bit shy of ideal.

Edited June 15 by Point Five

[Point Five]

For those of you who submit pulps to CGC, I'd like to know if you have experienced any issues like the ones I've flagged here.

(As I alluded to before, I've had a similar issue with a GA comic that I submitted to CGC for slabbing, where some chips of interior paper got caught in the inner well... not nearly as bad as the CGC 6.5 Dime Mystery, but definitely worse than the CGC 7.0 Dime Detective. For my book specifically, it was definitely something that happened from the slab being shook around in transit, as the pics on the Verification page look better than what I received. It's a bummer.)

Pulps are so fragile by nature, and the encapsulation and shipping processes submit them to a lot of force. I sure hope this is rare, but I fear this sort of issue may be coming to the doorstep of anyone who submits pulps for slabbing on a regular basis.

 

[Ryan.]

On 6/14/2024 at 7:42 PM, Point Five said:

Someone just listed this CGC 6.5 Dime Mystery on MCS for $1900 and good God that right edge. 

Did those long fragments get stuck in the inner well during encapsulation? Or the slab bounced around in transit and they pulled loose?

I've dealt with this with CGC comic slabs pulling off the occasional chip or two but nothing on this scale.

 

I've been reluctant to jump into pulp collecting thus far, opting to hang back and learn as much as I can from this forum and seeing what shows up on MCS before buying anything. They are definitely super cool and I'm intrigued, but seeing slabs like this gives me extreme trepidation about throwing money at graded copies. 

[Point Five]

On 6/16/2024 at 8:46 AM, Ryan. said:

I've been reluctant to jump into pulp collecting thus far, opting to hang back and learn as much as I can from this forum and seeing what shows up on MCS before buying anything. They are definitely super cool and I'm intrigued, but seeing slabs like this gives me extreme trepidation about throwing money at graded copies. 

Thanks for the response.   

Just throwing scenarios out there, but I wonder if on average 1920s/30s books are more fragile and thus potentially more prone to this than pulps from the 40s/50s. Some rainy day I'll search through ebay and MCS listings and see if I see any more like the Dime Mystery 6.5.

The issue may also lie with the way CGC is shipping slabs back to people... that was true of my GA comic slab... but hard to be sure since there are no images on these verification pages. 

 

[Ryan.]

On 6/16/2024 at 9:47 AM, Point Five said:

Thanks for the response.   

Just throwing scenarios out there, but I wonder if on average 1920s/30s books are more fragile and thus potentially more prone to this than pulps from the 40s/50s. Some rainy day I'll search through ebay and MCS listings and see if I see any more like the Dime Mystery 6.5.

The issue may also lie with the way CGC is shipping slabs back to people... that was true of my GA comic slab... but hard to be sure since there are no images on these verification pages. 

 

I expect a full TPS report of your analysis by EOD Friday. 

[Point Five]

On 6/14/2024 at 7:49 PM, Point Five said:

Tried looking it up on CGC's Verification page (to potentially 'verify' that it left CGC looking as it should), but no pics are supplied there.  

https://www.cgccomics.com/certlookup/4419776002/

 

Back on this Dime Mystery CGC 6.5—the pics are now showing up on the CGC verification page (sounds like it was a glitch for a few days on CGC’s end).

The right overhang looks completely normal in CGC’s scans. So the damage happened either when CGC shipped the slab, or when the slab was shipped to MCS.

 

[Point Five]

Unfortunately, here's *another* slabbed Dime Mystery -- this one just sold on HA -- where the book appears to have lost overhang chips from sloshing around in transit.
 

CGC's verification page -- right edge overhang still looks good here

The slab gets to HA -- a sprinkling of chips are now detached.

 

[Point Five]

Particularly concerning to me is that none of the books in my examples seem like "obvious" candidates for this kind of damage inside the slab. They're all midgrade books and look fairly bright/fresh/solid to my eyes, as opposed to (say) a brittle/tanned/fragile book which you might reasonably assume would be more prone to this.

 

[Darwination]

Having never seen an example of a slabbed pulp my two questions would be - can the books shift around inside the slab?? Can overhang actually get pinched between two layers of plastic at the very edge?

[Point Five]

On 6/23/2024 at 11:23 PM, Darwination said:

Having never seen an example of a slabbed pulp my two questions would be - can the books shift around inside the slab?? Can overhang actually get pinched between two layers of plastic at the very edge?

I'd like to hear from more collectors here, but my two cents:

-- "can the books shift around inside the slab?" The answer likely varies from book to book, given how wildly different pulps are from each other -- every conceivable shape and size and thickness, and CGC is now tackling them all.

I've got one CGC-slabbed pulp, a Terror Tales; just checked by shaking it a bit and I don't feel any "give" at all inside the slab, which is good. And I can see lots and lots of slabbed pulps online which look fine. I honestly hope this problem is a tiny fraction of the overall pool of CGC graded pulps, but it's hard to know.

-- "can overhang actually get pinched between two layers of plastic at the very edge?" Yes, I think that is what is happening here at least some of the time. I've got a slabbed GA comic that seemingly bounced around in transit from CGC to me, and some overhang chips got 'impaled' in the inner well seal along the top. If pulps can potentially slosh around within their slabs, then logically their edges will be even more at risk than comics.

 

[Cool Ghoul]

On 6/23/2024 at 11:39 PM, Point Five said:

I'd like to hear from more collectors here, but my two cents:

-- "can the books shift around inside the slab?" The answer likely varies from book to book, given how wildly different pulps are from each other -- every conceivable shape and size and thickness, and CGC is now tackling them all.

I've got one CGC-slabbed pulp, a Terror Tales; just checked by shaking it a bit and I don't feel any "give" at all inside the slab, which is good. And I can see lots and lots of slabbed pulps online which look fine. I honestly hope this problem is a tiny fraction of the overall pool of CGC graded pulps, but it's hard to know.

-- "can overhang actually get pinched between two layers of plastic at the very edge?" Yes, I think that is what is happening here at least some of the time. I've got a slabbed GA comic that seemingly bounced around in transit from CGC to me, and some overhang chips got 'impaled' in the inner well seal along the top. If pulps can potentially slosh around within their slabs, then logically their edges will be even more at risk than comics.

 

I had 11 pulps slabbed recently.  One had a cracked case so I returned it for a reholder.  I would say overall I was very pleased with how they handled the overhangs, and didn't see a lot of "give" inside the case.  That said, I don't think I'd handle these as casuallly as I might a modern grade comic in a slab.