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Check out these Grades! A Graphic Post! *DELETED*

Started by Gorgo,

58 posts in this topic

snizzenfixit

snizzenfixit

Posted
Posted

this has to be a joke. If it's not? Nightmare city.

 

Uh huh, and I am beginning to notice that CGC seems to be remaining strangely silent here. They put up a grading and restoration board, and then had a fit when grading issues were posted??

 

Phil

 

 

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fantastic_four

fantastic_four

Posted
Posted

One of Gorgo's posts had a little more in it than just objective observations about CGC's grades; he made some mildly negative comments about what he sees as CGC's lack of impartiality regarding the grades they give. Plus he was complaining about some money they owe him. To expect that CGC wouldn't make some mistakes is natural, and Gorgo pointed that out several times. I think they would prefer to iron out the kinks less publicly; I know I would if I were running their business. However, threatening to not let him submit anymore is rather harsh, especially since everybody knows they're currently the only ball game in town.

 

Focusing just on the grades he thought were questionable, many of them are a result of CGC no longer disclosing interior defects on their label. Some of the books he posted scans of--not all, but some (Gorgo can possibly say how many)--had interior tanning. It's awfully confusing to anyone who looks at this type of book when the cover looks significantly better that the number on the label.

 

My best suggestion to avoid problems like this in the future would be for CGC to standardize its grader's notes, have the encapsulator print them out, and ship them with each book. This would result in fewer confused and/or angry calls to the graders from customers, and fewer slab owners making negative assumptions about CGC's grade determination. I think most CGC owners would see this as added value. What would be really nice is if CGC could attach a plastic pouch to the back of the upper section of the exterior slab--right behind the label--and tuck the printed sheet with the grader's notes in there; that would give collectors an easy way to keep the notes with the slab. That would add some cost in time and materials to their product; I doubt it'd be any higher than a dollar per slab, though.

 

I'm sure the graders have already thought about the challenges surrounding sending out grader's notes. The main one I see is the idea that slab owners will ALWAYS complain about their grades, no matter what you do. That's true; we can all be unreasonable, some of us more than others. However, when you've got a comic that looks NM on the outside but is VF or FN on the inside, it doesn't matter how reasonable or unreasonable you are--that grade will always appear to be questionable. Sending out the grader's notes might not be the best solution, but this is most definitely a problem that needs to be addressed.

 

If you're able to place yourself into CGC's shoes, you should be able to see why they are very, very wary of making changes to the way they do business. Just look at the immediately dismissive and hostile attitudes the majority of people show to them when they exhibit some inconsistency or weakness. Even very small issues get people extremely hot under the collar! I like ComicInvestor's ideas, but he is the most outspoken example of a poster on these boards who condemns CGC first and asks questions later. The collective unconscience of most members of Western civilization appears to believe that people are guilty until proven innocent; it's really frustrating how often you have to preach to people that in a democracy, the opposite should be true!

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snizzenfixit

snizzenfixit

Posted
Posted

One of Gorgo's posts had a little more in it than just objective observations about CGC's grades; he made some mildly negative comments about what he sees as CGC's lack of impartiality regarding the grades they give. Plus he was complaining about some money they owe him.

 

So? I have seen FAR worse here. I have seen flat out accusations of CGC inflating the grades given to Heritage. Regarding the "owed money" it sounds like he has waited 10 months for this money, obviously the regular channels have proven unproductive, so he felt the need to make the issue public. Who here would not have done the same after 10 months?

 

However, threatening to not let him submit anymore is rather harsh, especially since everybody knows they're currently the only ball game in town.

 

Harsh? It may very well be the first step to corporate suicide. They are the only ballgame in town for now, but stuff like this certainly opens the door for competition to draw customers in droves.

 

My best suggestion to avoid problems like this in the future would be for CGC to .......

 

I notice that the suggestions are ALL for CGC. This implies that you agree that the problem here lies with CGC and NOT Gorgo.

 

Phil

 

 

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sborock

sborock

Posted
Posted

I need to keep this short, I have much work to do before I leave next week for my 1st vacation in 3 years (3 whole days).

 

We CANNOT stop people from submitting comics. Even if we wanted to, people can submit through other people.

 

We NEVER try to stop people from discussing our grading on this board. Do we like people discussing the grades when they have not seen or held the comic themselves? Of course not, but the reality is, it is going to happen anyway. We can live with that.

 

The situation with Gorgo will be worked out and you will all hear about it when the situation is resolved, either by us or Gorgo himself.

 

Sorry if this seems too short frown.gif

 

 

 

 

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drbanner

drbanner

Posted
Posted

The tanning was very apparent from the scan on most of those books (in particular, the TOS 58 looked real nice except the terrible tan), not to mention most of them had cream to off-white pages. As I recall, none of the books below 8.0 were bright and shiny like that 9.4 Spidey. I'm pretty sure CGC elaborated that the shift in policy was to stop noting defects like date stamps visible on the exterior on the label, and that interior defects would be noted (chunks out, tears).

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Arty

Arty

Posted
Posted

I would like to see a public database, where you can search graders notes with that serial number in slab.

As far as I know, anyone can ask them via phone with that serial number? There has to be some kind of database already, so why not to make it public?

 

Only reason I can think of is that CGC tries to protect their grading criterias. I bet that there will be people trying to reverse-engineer those if notes are available.

 

Database would be better than printed notes shipped with every slab.

(Its cheaper, and that way graders notes are available to other than books owner. For example: If I see an interesting book in Ebay, I'd love to check graders notes for that before bidding.)

 

 

 

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fantastic_four

fantastic_four

Posted
Posted

Yea, the database would be cheaper than the printout for CGC. Of course, the database wouldn't be available when selling comics at a convention, but the seller could always print it out and include it with the slab.

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fantastic_four

fantastic_four

Posted
Posted

A comic with a dark cover would hide the tanning. Gorgo posted a scan of a Spidey 40 a few months ago that looked 9.4, but it got an 8.0 due to the tanning. I sure couldn't see it in the scan, and Gorgo said he couldn't see it in person.

 

I only vaguely remember Steve's statement about what they would note and what they wouldn't...but I'm pretty sure he was inspecific about it. I think he said they would still note some things; counting the Restored and Qualified grade as "noting some things" could have been what he meant.

 

I have not yet seen a label comment on a Universal comic since Steve said they'd stop noting stuff on the label. Has anyone else?

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drbanner

drbanner

Posted
Posted

I've not seen any that I know definitively were graded after the change, but I bought at least one book within the last couple months with the notes, and there was that JIM 87 9.2 (9.0?) on ebay recently noting a big chunk out of the interior.

 

Do you know that they previously noted interior cover tanning on the label anyway? I imagine if it was worth noting before (big tears, chunks out), it's still being mentioned. If not (for example, a 1/2" edge crease on a VF or lower book), then it's still not being mentioned. They never did note every interior defect that kept the pages from NM...

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fantastic_four

fantastic_four

Posted
Posted

Are you a member of the collector's society? I'm not yet, but if you are, you can look up the date your comic with the notes was graded on their site. Hard to say when that JIM 87 CGC 9.2 was graded.

 

Someone claimed in another thread that the Spidey #1 CGC 9.6 recently seen in the Heritage auction used to note very slight tanning, but that it was resubmitted to have the comment removed. I can't confirm or deny this, but the person who said it in that big thread about it might be able to. I have most definitely seen several comics that noted tanning, including an Amazing Fantasy 15 CGC 9.4 that was on Jay Parrino's site for over a year. If I find another scanned example of a book noting tanning, I'll post it.

 

It is unclear which types of interior defects CGC used to note, which they didn't, and whether or not they ever note interior defects these days. I believe their general purpose in noting interior defects was to note those that affected grade and weren't visible through the slab, and I think I remember reading words to this effect on their web site, but I can't back that up. Hopefully Steve will comment, but this is one of those controversial topics that they might want to stay away from for business reasons, which I understand.

 

Below a unique label comment. Would they note this these days? I dunno. I do know I'd be confused without the label comment, because this copy is every bit of a 9.6 or 9.8 solely based upon what is visible through the slab.

 

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Goliath-migration

Goliath-migration

Posted
Posted

I noticed from another post that cgc hasn't yet helped out Gorgo on this. I bought a bunch of his early pre super-hero Marvels, extremely impressive collection (the part I looked at). One of the best I've seen to date. Please keep us posted Gorgo. And I know with your job, I'm very suprised you have any time at all to post here!

 

Michael

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