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Is It Worth CGCing the Byrne FF Run?
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97 posts in this topic

10 minutes ago, divad said:

:ohnoez:  :blahblah: lol

(Ask rob_react what he thinks of the books from this particular run . . . ) :grin:

FF244a.jpeg

If you think that's a 9.8, you should send it in, because you'll get $150 more for it than raw. It isn't a 9.8, so you probably shouldn't.

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26 minutes ago, FlyingDonut said:

This looks 9.8ish .You should slab it.

I thought the same thing.  To me, the 242 looks like a 9.8.  The others don't.  Those books also look pressed, whether naturally or unnaturally - they are not newstand fresh anymore.  Perhaps that just because of the weight of the scanner lid.  But, many of my books, even though bagged and boarded, still have that newsstand fresh quality to the spine and don't have the corner defects I see on that 244.  Which begs the question:  Do I need to press out the newsstand fresh spine to get a 9.8?

I don't trust myself to accurately predict a 9.8, so I'm going to pre-screen.  Will a CGC screen just tell me if its a 9.8 or will it tell me it can be pressed to a 9.8?  And what does a CCS screen tell you?  I think I want to know whether a book is a 9.8 before I slab, but I'd love to know whether a book can be pressed to a 9.8 if its not already.  

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2 hours ago, sfcityduck said:

I thought the same thing.  To me, the 242 looks like a 9.8.  The others don't.  Those books also look pressed, whether naturally or unnaturally - they are not newstand fresh anymore.  Perhaps that just because of the weight of the scanner lid.  But, many of my books, even though bagged and boarded, still have that newsstand fresh quality to the spine and don't have the corner defects I see on that 244.  Which begs the question:  Do I need to press out the newsstand fresh spine to get a 9.8?

I don't trust myself to accurately predict a 9.8, so I'm going to pre-screen.  Will a CGC screen just tell me if its a 9.8 or will it tell me it can be pressed to a 9.8?  And what does a CCS screen tell you?  I think I want to know whether a book is a 9.8 before I slab, but I'd love to know whether a book can be pressed to a 9.8 if its not already.  

When I have used CCS to pre-screen, my assumption has been that they are pre-screening for the grade you'll get, so if you pre-screen for a 9.8, that's the grade the book that they have will grade. I could be wrong, but that's how I thought they operated.

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8 hours ago, sfcityduck said:

I thought the same thing.  To me, the 242 looks like a 9.8.  The others don't.  Those books also look pressed, whether naturally or unnaturally - they are not newstand fresh anymore. 

These books are as newsstand fresh as they come - like ALL of my books they have never been pressed.  Funny with you two, to me in hand, the 242 looks the weakest of the three. Back to school with both of you! lol :baiting:

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20 hours ago, sfcityduck said:

I thought the same thing.  To me, the 242 looks like a 9.8.  The others don't.  Those books also look pressed, whether naturally or unnaturally - they are not newstand fresh anymore.  Perhaps that just because of the weight of the scanner lid.  But, many of my books, even though bagged and boarded, still have that newsstand fresh quality to the spine and don't have the corner defects I see on that 244.  Which begs the question:  Do I need to press out the newsstand fresh spine to get a 9.8?

I don't trust myself to accurately predict a 9.8, so I'm going to pre-screen.  Will a CGC screen just tell me if its a 9.8 or will it tell me it can be pressed to a 9.8?  And what does a CCS screen tell you?  I think I want to know whether a book is a 9.8 before I slab, but I'd love to know whether a book can be pressed to a 9.8 if its not already.  

You're looking too deep into it. 

Again, if you have to get them pressed, this won't be worth sending in. Pre screen or not. Remember, when you get a potential 9.8 rejected, it cuts into your initial investment. 

As a rule of thumb I press ALL my submissions. Even though I own 2 pressing units, it still costs me time to press them. And I won't do it for any books that I can't flip for at least $100. But that's just me

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6 hours ago, Aweandlorder said:

You're looking too deep into it. 

Again, if you have to get them pressed, this won't be worth sending in. Pre screen or not. Remember, when you get a potential 9.8 rejected, it cuts into your initial investment. 

 

Fortunately, my initial investment is 60 cents. 

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22 hours ago, Aweandlorder said:

You're looking too deep into it. 

Again, if you have to get them pressed, this won't be worth sending in. Pre screen or not. Remember, when you get a potential 9.8 rejected, it cuts into your initial investment. 

As a rule of thumb I press ALL my submissions. Even though I own 2 pressing units, it still costs me time to press them. And I won't do it for any books that I can't flip for at least $100. But that's just me

You either have a ton of high priced books to press or your time is really valuable.  Pressing a book takes so little time in the grand scheme of things that I really don’t factor it into the equation.  Everyone is different but if a book is $70 in 9.8 and $8 raw then it goes on the stack.  $25 for grading cost and shipping per book and a couple bucks to cover failed prescreens that still leaves a healthy profit for the little extra time to press and send the book in bulk to cgc.  But I also don’t mind making $25 an hour when it comes to my comic time.  I do agree $50 in 9.8 doesn’t leave much profit after everything is said in done but I’ll simetimes do it if I’m bored since I think an eBay store with a ton of CGC books gets a bunch of extra views.

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1 hour ago, Aweandlorder said:

So I essence you agree with me but just worded it differently

With $50 being too low - I agree most of the time but your comment about $100 being your sub threshold I personally will sub $70 - $80 9.8 all day long especially if they are sub $10 books raw.

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On 10/20/2018 at 2:42 PM, sfcityduck said:

Fortunately, my initial investment is 60 cents. 

And mine is zero. :grin: 

But still, I don't have the time or money to waste gambling on WTF some loserazz grader thinks of my books. lol

Say I could get $30 raw for these, is it worth it waiting two or three months, grader fees, insurance, shipping, scanning, listing, feeBay fees, PayPal fees and shipping to get $120? or even $150? Not gonna happen on my watch. :sumo:

 

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On 10/21/2018 at 6:38 AM, 1Cool said:

You either have a ton of high priced books to press or your time is really valuable.  Pressing a book takes so little time in the grand scheme of things that I really don’t factor it into the equation.  Everyone is different but if a book is $70 in 9.8 and $8 raw then it goes on the stack.  $25 for grading cost and shipping per book and a couple bucks to cover failed prescreens that still leaves a healthy profit for the little extra time to press and send the book in bulk to cgc.  But I also don’t mind making $25 an hour when it comes to my comic time.  I do agree $50 in 9.8 doesn’t leave much profit after everything is said in done but I’ll simetimes do it if I’m bored since I think an eBay store with a ton of CGC books gets a bunch of extra views.

Not MY business model, but whatever blows your skirt up . . . :whistle:

 

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On 10/21/2018 at 8:04 AM, 1Cool said:

With $50 being too low - I agree most of the time but your comment about $100 being your sub threshold I personally will sub $70 - $80 9.8 all day long especially if they are sub $10 books raw.

A lot of dealers don't realize that there are a ton of books that you can net $10-$30 for, that you couldn't sell raw for $1.

I ask convention dealers what their threshold for slabbing is, what a book would have to be worth for them to consider slabbing, and I'm shocked at the answers: "$200, $250, $300, $500." To which I look at them in amazement, and start digging through their stuff to pick up the things they pass on.

If a dealer can get slabbed price, minus costs, hey, more power to them...but that's not what's happening. If I can buy a Booster Gold #1 (1986) for $20 or $30 or even $50 and know I can turn it into a 9.8 slab, I'm a fool not to. 90 day avg for blues is $230-ish. 

If you can sell a slab for $80, for a book that you bought for nothing, and which you can't sell for $10 raw...that's somewhere in the neighborhood of $30-$50 for that same book, with just a little more effort.

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6 hours ago, RockMyAmadeus said:

A lot of dealers don't realize that there are a ton of books that you can net $10-$30 for, that you couldn't sell raw for $1.

I ask convention dealers what their threshold for slabbing is, what a book would have to be worth for them to consider slabbing, and I'm shocked at the answers: "$200, $250, $300, $500." To which I look at them in amazement, and start digging through their stuff to pick up the things they pass on.

If a dealer can get slabbed price, minus costs, hey, more power to them...but that's not what's happening. If I can buy a Booster Gold #1 (1986) for $20 or $30 or even $50 and know I can turn it into a 9.8 slab, I'm a fool not to. 90 day avg for blues is $230-ish. 

If you can sell a slab for $80, for a book that you bought for nothing, and which you can't sell for $10 raw...that's somewhere in the neighborhood of $30-$50 for that same book, with just a little more effort.

I agree a lot of dealers are looking for the home run or nothing mentality but I guess I understand if they only sell at Cons and slabs don't sell well or take up too much space.  But if I submit 25 books with a $70 - $80 anticipated price what is the extra time, really?  Filling in the form may take an hour or so.  Packing up the books to CGC  takes an extra 10 minutes.  Once I get the slabs back the time to scan and sell is the same as a raw copy.  So at max 3 - 5 extra minutes per book.  So if we say $30 to grade a slab and account of prescreen fails then I'm looking at $30 - $40 in extra profit compared to selling the book raw for $10 on E-Bay (which will probably take much longer raw since $75 9.8 slabs seem to sell quickly).  I can handle $30 in extra profit (after you factor in extra e-bay fees) for 5 minutes of extra work.  Loving the fact that most dealers pass these kinds of profits on to me - things must be going well on their end.

The interesting discussion comes up when you are dealing with $90 9.8s and $50 9.6 books.  Do you do the 9.8 prescreen assuming you would get 14 9.8s, 8 9.6s and 3 9.4s.  The 9.6s would be a $7 loss if you get them rejected.  You can regroup that money when you sell them for $10 on E-Bay but it's only $25 to sub a book (including shipping) if you don't account for almost any reject fees.  So a $50 9.6 slab cost $25 which gives you a $20 profit (after e-bay fees) for a book that is a wash if it gets rejected.  $20 profit for 5 minutes of extra work?

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the one thing a lot of you forget is inventory. If you have a budget of say, 500$ to grade comics. You go and get 20 9.8s in those 500 spent. Congrats. 

Now, you list them at a competitive price of 50-100 each as BINS. Assuming these are non key books such as the op's example of the Byrne run. You will be sitting on those books for a very very long time. Months, sometimes over a year. 

If I had ONLY a budget of 500$ allotted for these books until I sell said inventory to move to the next batch, I'm screwed. 

If you list them as .99 cent auction you're likely to LOSE on your investment with said books given the cost of investment in grading+pressing. 

If I had 500$ to spend on random non key 9.8 books I could actually do a lot better by spending the same amount of money AND time bidding on equal books on eBay and GUARANTEEING the grade without the hassle of pressing pre screening. 

I ALWAYS work with a budget in mind. I expect to spend a third (at most) of my net profit from the previous month

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