mcribar

Well said!

Hey Trevor, I've been collecting comics since 1977. My first thought after reading your post was how many people have happily purchased restored books before they were officially identified and branded as being restored? I would assume that is an astronomical number. Sort of like having a cheating wife and not knowing it. As long as you don't know, everything is fine. But now that books are visibly branded as being restored I believe that many people are going to naturally shy away from them for no other reason than the visible branding. I say MANY, not ALL. And now we have conserved and restored which further complicates things. Since a large portion of the market today consists of speculators/flippers and not collectors I think the restored label is having an overly negative effect on the collectibility since all the non-collectors really care about is the highest grade with no purple label. Thank you for your post/question....

This of course makes their product easier to sell a top dollar prices. Without the defects being listed you can sell it as if they don't exist. The grade certainly doesn't tell the whole story. The "input" they received that allegedly prompted this change is from retailers and auction houses who send books to grade a resell. This is so transparent it makes me sick.

I'm sure it's been said already (I'm not a regular here) but rather than asking people to reduce their submissions, how about CGC suspending submissions until they can provide a more reasonable turnaround time. And yes, I understand that will never happen since it would hurt their bottom line but I really don't see another solution. I submitted 12 books (all golden age) last month (not express/fast track) and it looks like I will have to wait 9 months or so before they are certified However, I'm not a flipper so I'm not worried about the bubble busting before I get my books back. CGC is benefiting from the bubble as much as the flippers which is what the free market is all about. I started collecting in 1976 and have seen a lot in this business This current bubble is definitely one for the records. I've sold 70% of my collection over the last 18 months at a local auction house. Hard to believe what people are paying right now but I'll certainly take it!

That's a sweet book. I would love to own it. Congrats!

Yes. I remember reading a detailed article regarding Marvel Chipping in the early 90s. If I recall it was a problem with one of the blades in the main printing facility. It was not properly maintained and was allowed to go dull very often which caused the chipping. I think this went on for a couple years until they improved their quality control and made sure the blade was sharpened on regular intervals. That's what the story said anyway. Makes sense to me since in the 60s nobody cared about the integrity of a comic book, least of all the printer.

But I suspect that this "signal" is just that. They just changed the status on half of the books. I seriously doubt this is going to affect how long it takes them to grade and ship them back to me.

They took it upon themselves to upgrade. But from I've read here that's not uncommon. I don't mind that. What I do mind is that if I didn't complain via phone and contact us regarding how long it's taking to grade my books I'm 100% positive they would still be sitting there in received status. 3 of the 6 still are since they didn't raise the tier on those, but it's clear they actually looked a my submissions after I complained. The contact us message is what did it. I first received a scripted generic response but that was followed by another reply from a person who went into more detail regarding the delay. In any event, the end result was they finally looked at my books and moved half of them to "scheduled for grading."

What appears to be either a lack of market foresight OR disrespect of common everyday submitters, many of which are the purchasers of their end product so are the ones that actually keep them in business (if it wasn't for the end buyer, none of this would be happening).

Just in case you are curious the books I submitted were as follows (with my raw grade): Value: Whiz Comics #54 8.5, Captain Marvel Adventures #75 8.0 & America's Best Comics NN 9.2 Economy: Avengers #4 4.0, Iron Man #1 5.0 and Amazing Spiderman #300 9.4 Since I'm an old school collector I simply used the values in Overstreet 2020 guide. I know now that things move way to fast these days to use that guide for any purpose other than book reference and research. In the future I will refer to recent sale prices available online.

I submitted 3 economy and 3 value tiered books that were delivered on 2-16-2021. They were logged into the system as "Received" on 3-9-2021. Recently I have seen a few posts regarding same class submissions (economy/value non-fast track) that were logged in after 3-9 but already scheduled for grading. I called the customer service line and did not get a satisfactory answer. The first rep said they would be graded in mid-September. I responded by stating that is not acceptable. We apparently then got disconnected. I called back again and the second rep said they would be graded in mid-July. I requested to have my submission cancelled and returned. I know it states you cannot cancel an order but I figured I would ask anyway. As expected the request was denied. Yesterday I sent a contact us message stating that I agreed to an "estimated" 33 day turn around and now I'm being told it's 270 plus days. I stated that even though their disclaimer states estimated, the actual time frame of 270 days would not be considered "reasonable" in any legal form so their disclaimer would probably not hold any weight. Now that I have prefaced my situation here is my question. The very next day (today) after I sent the contact us message I received this email..."These comics were moved from the ECONOMY tier to the EXPRESS tier. Your account was adjusted by $147.60." The subsequent books ARE NOW scheduled for grading. My questions for those more experienced are as follows: 1. Is this a result of my calls and contact us complaints? I would assume yes but then I have to ask myself would they have sat in limbo indefinitely if I didn't press the issue? I understand they gave Heritage all man hours to grade the Promise Collection and the timing of that was horrible since thousands are trying to slab and flip books before the market levels or falls. But that shouldn't result in a disrespect of the rest of us. The lack of transparency is disturbing to me. If they did not have enough foresight to see what was going to happen then I would seriously question their judgement. But it's more likely they are just following the biggest and quickest profit (nothing wrong with that, simply say so). 2. So they use what they consider current market values and bump the tier rather than what the market value was when they were delivered? I'm now going to be billed an additional $147.60?. In this insane market a value can change dramatically in the 3 month time frame here. Although I'm happy that complaining 3 times evidently prompted them to process my submissions my overall experience was horrible. These were my first submissions and probably the last, at least for a while.

Here are the top Bronze Age sales from a local auction I sold through last weekend. I netted $12,767.00 for a wide range of Bronze Age books. I sold over 2,500. I really need to downsize and since the market is good now is the time! Working on Silver Age now. All books were raw and the prices below were what I netted after paying 15% commission. Amazing Spiderman #194 VF 375.00 Amazing Spiderman #100 VF 325.00 Conan the Barbarian #1 VG 300.00 Ghost Rider #1 GD 275.00 DC Comics Presents #47 FN 200.00

9.0-9.2.

7.0. In my opinion tear is too long for anything higher.

The "why" of seeking runs of horror books/mags? I find the artwork far superior than that majority of super-hero stuff. I'm talking about GA through BA. Not much interest in copper/modern. Most of the stuff published today is indistinguishable. Looks like everyone is using the same digital processing and you can't even tell the difference between the alleged artists.