And the mystery begins of what will it be.

It's been a while since I posted up on the boards and just have been reading here from time to time due to my move from the big city to the burbs. I have been reading the latest posts and I am too excited and looking forward to CBCS as becoming a competitor to the comic grading and certification market.

We all need to consider this and that is that we must understand that we need to differentiate the difference between our love and drive and nostalgic hold over our collections and the individual books and the memories of how we acquired them and about the story behind where we obtained them. Basically the who, where, when, why and how and of course how much.

That's all good and well but when it comes down to the nitty gritty we are all just customers to the machine and the machine is CGC and soon to be CBCS.

They are here to grade our books not for the love of the hobby but to make a dollar and a cent. I remember speaking to an employee at the CGC booth a few years ago, I don't remember her name nor do I really care but I asked her if she worked for CGC because she liked comics and she said not really. Now I'm not saying that every employee at CGC doesn't like comics but what I'm driving at is that it comes down to being just a job for most and that is how we need to look at it.

I'm sure we all would like our books back in a timely manner but enough is enough. CGC tried to improve its turnaround times to a quicker return and somewhat has but like any corporation it will never cut into its profits to appease the public and why should they? They have no real competition. Now with CBCS on the scene we are all hoping they will be our savior so to speak in getting our books back faster and with cheaper prices to lure us away from CGC's strangle hold over the market. This won't change anything on CGC's end quite as soon as we all think it will or put a scare into them at least not just yet. CGC has piles and piles of books just waiting to be graded so it's going to take a while for them to actually see the slowdown in submissions and when or if that happens that's when things will start to change on their end. Probably it will start in layoffs of graders who were recently added to keep up with the increase of submissions then probably faster turnaround times then some sort of discount or removal of fees such as the $5 handling fee or the direct submission fee. It all depends on what CGC's financial advisor tells them to do but don't expect to see these changes as soon as you think. These will take a while so just hang tight and see what the market dictates because we the consumers hold the key to the success or demise of these companies because without us they can't make it and we all need to remember that.

As for eBay being a factor that remains to be seen on how people bid and compare it to prices for CBCS books and CGC books. Hopefully they will balance each other out well.

Thanks for reading and enjoy the weekend.

To see old comments for this Journal entry, click here. New comments can be added below.