ExNihilo

Director of Excellence sounds like the business equivalent of a participation trophy. "Aww, here you go buddy, here's a Director title even though you don't do anything meaningful."

Is it 2017 again? I remember when re-salers were hyping up this character.

I wonder what the Director role pays. Sure sounds like I could easily balance his existing workload on top of my own and probably be able to provide a marked improvement to CGC while simultaneously doubling my take home. Because you know what they say, improving upon nothing is still improving.

I remember a year ago Mike mentioned that there was a new Quality control guy that was supposed to come in and work on improving the system. Was that this guy? He's gone already? Why would you leave such a cush position? He clearly did absolutely nothing other than collect checks.

LOL! What a f'in joke. @CGC Mike, just admit it, CGC's QC department is non-existent. Books go from grader to encapsulation and directly to shipping. Pretending QC exists is just embarrassing.

There are three methods of selling off a collection: 1) sell individually (this results in the greatest return but is also the most time consuming, potentially taking years to unload everything) 2) sell the entire collection to a single buyer/store (this results in the lowest return but is the quickest method of washing your hands of books/responsibility) 3) some combination of the two where you identify the keys and sell those individually while selling the rest as one lot (best of both worlds) Personally, if there are runs (a continuous or near continuous run of issues for a particular title) I would lump those together and attempt to sell them as one. You never know what buyers are looking to fill holes in their collection and might be tempted to buy a bunch of books from one person instead of scouring stores to buy a book here and there.

Static had his own animated series from 2000-2004, Static Shock. The character has had a small cult following since then which is probably why the book sells for more than cover.

Again, it's not you, it's me. This is the newbie section of the board and your question is perfectly valid. I apologize as it's just something I happen to see repeatedly in places like Reddit. So yeah, keep your questions coming. I agree, I think mylar is an excellent means of protecting your books. It's the material used by the Library of Congress to protect historical documents so I'm of the opinion that if it's good enough for them, then it should be good enough for our comics. People will say that they want to slab to protect their book and I think that's a bit misguided. Mylar, fullback, microchamber paper, and a top loader will provide sufficient protection at a fraction of the cost. Obviously if you've got like an Action Comics 1, then you're gonna want to go the whole nine yards with a slab and likely several other layers of protection, but again, it's a matter of cost relative to value.

I hate that we've come to a point in collecting where people's first instincts are "should I slab XYZ?" for EVERYTHING. This comment isn't geared towards just you OP, it's more the repeated question here and on other social media sites around the internet. There are those vocally oppose slabbing. You'll often hear them chirp "books are meant to be read!" I like to think of them as "raw doggers". Then you've got the opposite end of the spectrum who see any remotely valuable book and go "send that to CGC!" That latter group of people is what leads newbies to re-enter the hobby and ask of themselves "what's CGC and should I get my books slabbed" and then often post a bunch of drek. The truth is, there's a middle ground. Slabbing serves a purpose in the following situations: 1) You have a personal/emotional connection to a book and just REALLY want it slabbed. If that's what makes you happy, go for it. 2) You plan to keep the book a long time and want to easily identify value for yourself, or more realistically, your next of kin. 3) You want the provenance that comes with witnessed signature/sketches. 4) You want to ensure that a book is free from restoration. There are other reasons (such as people maintaining registries), but beyond that, you need to consider the cost of slabbing. Far too often I see people slabbing $10 books and it just makes no sense to me when the cost of slabbing such a book can be as high as $50/book. If you have the money and want to just blow it on that stuff, no one's gonna stop you. But logically, I'd rather apply that $50 into some sort of fund for future books/keys. Also, while we're on the subject of slabbing, any books signed and not witnessed by CGC will be given a green label. A lot of people don't like green labels and would much prefer yellow. Lastly, no, I don't think you should get those books graded, but it's not my money, it's yours.

Take @ 20%

The cover says $1.50 US.

Yup.

Every time I go to Manhattan, I go to Midtown Comics. And every time, I leave disappointed. Maybe some of that has to do with how shady they were with some exclusive variant sales. Whatever the case, I haven't spent a dime with them in years. They do have a warehouse sale every so often that I've considered checking out since I get the impression that's where the majority of their back issues are stored, but I've never taken the time to venture out there.

I stopped following this for a few days and now I come back and it's like the thread is on fire again. 9 years?! Part of how I justify expensive books to myself is to amortize the cost of ownership over the life of the asset (or more realistically, of me). If I buy a $30,000 book, then I think of it as just spending $1000/year. (For simplicities sake, I ignore the time value of money of what a $30k investment would grow to become in those 30 years). My point is, I'm willing to spend a lot on books and see the majority of the cost attributed to the asset itself, and a portion of it is simply the cost of ownership and the ability to see and enjoy such a book. 9 years with that book in someone else's hands would rob me of any joy I get out of owning something. I get nervous when CGC has my book for 9 months. I'd be questioning the status of my book weekly if it took them over a year to do anything. How you maintain your sanity on a six figure book is beyond me. 9 years without starting work/services? That's no longer a business failure. As others have said, that's business fraud.

When you're right, you're right. Let's add the encapsulation department and QC (as noted by others on the previous page)

@CGC Mike Seems to me the right course of action for CGC would be to reach out to the seller on eBay to try to remedy it, or buy the book so it's off the market, fix the label, and recoup some costs via auction or giveaway or something. Whatever it takes to remove that embarrassment from the marketplace.

That HotShot Comics thing has been brewing for years. And while I'm surprised it's taken so long for anything to happen, I'm glad the crows have come home to roost. But I digress as there are plenty of threads already relating to that.

This was my first ever submission so I knew nothing about proper grading.

The thing is, early on in the thread people were sympathetic to the health concerns going so far as to cover some of the costs of shipping. I believe some boardies even inquired where Hero's was located and said if they were closer they'd help pack books for a day. Instead of meeting those offers with appreciation, they were met with jokes and excuses. Frankly, I'm still sympathetic for the ongoing medical conditions, but he burned A LOT of goodwill with his early responses to customers and boardies alike.

More chickens. Why do I get the sense this is one of the few true, factual, non-BS responses in this entire thread?

I believe it was taken down.

As always, market value is determined by the principals of Economics 101: supply and demand. Supply is simply capped at whatever the print run is. Demand is the number of collectors looking to buy it at any given time. Demand fluctuates over time as books rise and fall in popularity. Some books rise in popularity in such a way that their demand is almost forever higher than the available supply. When this happens, you get an increase in price. Note, this is different from speculation where short term hype drives up the demand on a book. Variants are a prime example of this as some variants are hyped up upon release but as that immediate demand fades, prices come back down. It's a bit like buying something at the cash register at the supermarket, you see it, you want it, but you don't NEED it. So you buy it to satisfy a short term craving, but long term realize that may have been unnecessary.

I've been collecting for 30 years. I used standard polypropylene bags and boards because they were cheap but now find myself in a situation where I am overdue for re-bagging those early collected issues. I could either buy more polypropylene bags because they're cheap and have to re-bag again in 20-30 years, or I could buy Mylar and be done with it for the rest of my life. Moral of the story is, if I had to go back and do things all over again, I would have just spend the extra money upfront to bag in proper mylar/fullback and never have to think about re-bagging again. It'll cost you more upfront, but will be cheaper in the long run.

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