MatterEaterLad

Yes, you caught me. I totally made it up. Six years ago a friend's husband passed away and left her with a nice collection of SA books, including Hulk 1, and FF 1-5. I connected her with Steve when he was still at that other place and he went through her collection and recommended which ones to have graded (and he later graded them). About 18 months ago she decided to sell and both Steve and I recommended she have the books cross-graded to CGC cases, which we both felt would do better at auction (Steve had left the other place). The grades on all of her books came back .5 to 2.5 points lower. She was pretty upset, at Steve, at CGC, and basically the whole comic world, which she didn't know much about. Part of her frustration was because after she saw comic prices soar, they had plummeted by the time her books were sold. Steve's explanation to her was what I mentioned earlier. I'm not saying that's what's going on, but that's what he said. From the books I've had graded in the past two years, CGC definitely seems to be in one of their tighter grading periods. I hate that they've had such variance over the years. If I had the money to burn, I'd have a set of 100 books regraded each year to appraise the consistency/inconsistency of grading. Would they nail it every time? Would it be a hot mess? We'll never know because there's no audit of how they grade books.

I had similar results recently, with a bunch of Copper Age books. Was hoping for a minimum of 9.2 and the books all came back in the 8.5-7.0 range with "light creasing, light spine stress." The grading inconsistency has always been annoying, but now it's ridiculous. Borock has said that he thinks it's to push people to use CGC's pressing services.

No, I'd sent him an invoice with combined shipping. Twice.

Edited. Auction was cancelled but the buyer finally reached out. I relisted as a lot and he paid.

I called. They said I'm entitled to a refund. I paid for secure shipping with signature, I got neither. I need the local UPS shipping to fill out a form. We'll see how it goes.

Do you think that book comes with the paperwork from it's journey from 9.4 to 9.8? I'm sure there's a paper trail, but would that be included in the sale? Seems like it's akin to a multi-million dollar painting that's been cleaned. There's always documentation of where the work was done, the work in progress, by whom, etc. I'd love to know what magician worked on that book.

5.5 but looks way better. Great eye appeal!

Argh, you are correct. My mind was elsewhere...

Also UPS This morning they just left a Hulk 1 on someone's doorstep in California. I would have preferred to send it Registered Mail, but the buyer wanted it on a day he knew he'd be home, so we opted for UPS Air Advantage, Signature Required. Buyer got it, but I can't believe I just paid $500 for shipping and insurance just to have it left at someone's front door.

He-Man vs. ROM

I think you're missing a zero on the 2022 average for the AF15 - 7.5 As always, thank you for putting this together.

I know some people think they "sold out" because their sound changed, but their first album sold 10 million copies. I don't think money was the reason. I enjoyed hearing them evolve.

Dave Sim is still working, right? Didn't he fly an underage girl to some convention where she stayed in his hotel room? He met her when she was 13.

I work in publishing and a few years ago there was a whisper network where women created a list of mega-successful Young Adult authors who had been predatory creeps. As far as I know, nothing approximating rape, but definite "come to my hotel room at this convention and I'll help you get published" kind of stuff. The propositions were to adult women, but some were college age. It took a bunch of big name authors down. Their agents fired them. Their publishers cancelled contracts. Speaking gigs cancelled. One guy had to give back a big award. But...that list was like the Bat-Signal for jilted lovers who added names of their exes and those guys' careers got wrecked as well. It didn't matter that they were innocent of actual wrongdoing. When their names were trending on Twitter there was an avalanche of bad press, speculation, and venom. The scary thing was that no one could openly defend them, because the few who did were treated as fellow predators or enablers. No one attempted suicide (that I know of) but the difference between these guys and Ed Piskor is that these other guys were millionaires. Their careers got derailed but they still had money and could go five years without a book and still pay their bills and live their lives. Most have apologized and rebooted their careers. I wish Ed had given himself the chance to make amends and keep creating cool work.

This is a tough one because I have books in that condition that CGC graded 4.5 to 5.5, but with CGC hammering books lately (or just being inconsistent in general) you might get a 3.5.