the blob Posted January 7, 2019 Share Posted January 7, 2019 And saw this...the name looked familiar...I am shocked any of them were disclosed... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
lou_fine Posted January 8, 2019 Share Posted January 8, 2019 Well, the only ones that's listed as being restored are the 2 GA Detective's and Marvel Mystery 's which would probably not be that much of a surprise. I guess you are referring to the fact that micro-trimming and pressing were not being disclosed since both of these manipulative activities would have clearly fallen under restoration at the time of this ad. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
GreatCaesarsGhost Posted January 8, 2019 Share Posted January 8, 2019 Anybody know where Jason Ewert is now? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
lou_fine Posted January 8, 2019 Share Posted January 8, 2019 (edited) 2 hours ago, GreatCaesarsGhost said: Anybody know where Jason Ewert is now? Probably around somewhere still ruing the day that Borock declared that undisclosed pressing was simply "maximization of potential" while micro-trimming was "destruction of a comic book". Unfortunately for virtually all collectors not in the know at the time, this declaration only came out about 5 years after CGC first opened its doors and only after being flagged by Danny boy and some of the other astute board members here. I imagine if Borock had come down on the other side of the fence about undisclosed pressing and micro-trimming after several days of angst, Ewert would now be in charge of grading at CGC while Nelson would have been turfed out from the industry. Indeed, a game of barely perceptible micro-inches here. Edited January 8, 2019 by lou_fine The Lions Den 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bomber-Bob Posted January 8, 2019 Share Posted January 8, 2019 It scares me to think many of these VIA micro trimmed books are still out there in the marketplace. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
lou_fine Posted January 8, 2019 Share Posted January 8, 2019 1 hour ago, Bomber-Bob said: It scares me to think many of these VIA micro trimmed books are still out there in the marketplace. Then again, does it really matter if nobody (including CGC themselves) can truly tell with any reasonable degree of certainty if the book has been micro-trimmed or not? Especially if the work had been done properly, it's supposedly virtually impossible to tell unless you have before and after scans of the book magnified to the nth degree. The Lions Den 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
The Lions Den Posted January 8, 2019 Share Posted January 8, 2019 10 hours ago, lou_fine said: Then again, does it really matter if nobody (including CGC themselves) can truly tell with any reasonable degree of certainty if the book has been micro-trimmed or not? Especially if the work had been done properly, it's supposedly virtually impossible to tell unless you have before and after scans of the book magnified to the nth degree. I've seen some of those books and it's extremely hard to tell the difference. The only way I can describe it is they didn't look quite right---a little too sharp a cut on the edges of the cover. Apparently they were not only trimmed, but the trimmed edges were artificially age-enhanced as well. Lo and behold, they eventually were discovered to have been micro-trimmed. I can't remember the specific books, but I'm pretty sure they were early Silver Age Marvels... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
oldrover Posted January 8, 2019 Share Posted January 8, 2019 13 hours ago, lou_fine said: Then again, does it really matter if nobody (including CGC themselves) can truly tell with any reasonable degree of certainty if the book has been micro-trimmed or not? I tend to agree with this. If you can't tell... then you can't tell. What irks me far more are raw books sold as unrestored that actually turn out to have some level of measurable color touch/resto. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
telerites Posted January 8, 2019 Share Posted January 8, 2019 17 hours ago, GreatCaesarsGhost said: Anybody know where Jason Ewert is now? I thought he is now PGX's primary grader. Mystafo 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
GreatCaesarsGhost Posted January 8, 2019 Share Posted January 8, 2019 22 minutes ago, telerites said: I thought he is now PGX's primary grader. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
the blob Posted January 8, 2019 Author Share Posted January 8, 2019 17 hours ago, lou_fine said: Probably around somewhere still ruing the day that Borock declared that undisclosed pressing was simply "maximization of potential" while micro-trimming was "destruction of a comic book". Unfortunately for virtually all collectors not in the know at the time, this declaration only came out about 5 years after CGC first opened its doors and only after being flagged by Danny boy and some of the other astute board members here. I imagine if Borock had come down on the other side of the fence about undisclosed pressing and micro-trimming after several days of angst, Ewert would now be in charge of grading at CGC while Nelson would have been turfed out from the industry. Indeed, a game of barely perceptible micro-inches here. Pressing and trimming seem different. Pressing is pretty common in all sorts of paper collectibles (but so is tear sealing...), cutting off a piece of the item, however? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
lou_fine Posted January 9, 2019 Share Posted January 9, 2019 1 hour ago, the blob said: Pressing and trimming seem different. Pressing is pretty common in all sorts of paper collectibles (but so is tear sealing...), cutting off a piece of the item, however? Stand alone pressing in and of itself prior to CGC was most certainly not as rampant as it is nowadays since it was considered to be restoration back then. Pressing in those wild wild west days was usually done as the final step in association with other restoration work being done on a book. Unfortunately for the collecting hobby place (but fortunately for the speculative marketplace ), CCG made a business decision to shift pressing along with a few other former generally acknowledged restorative activities over to the additional revenue generating umbrella of unrestored activities. Nothing really wrong with that, except for the fact that they forgot to proactively mention this critical game changer to the collecting base until they were caught with their pants down around their ankles and had to react after the fact. Definitely left the impression, whether rightly or wrongly, of an uneven playing field where there were a few in the know raking in the money big time while everybody else was left to play on the losing side of the game. And yes, trimming of any kind is indeed quite different from pressing. But then again, barely perceptible but properly executed microscopic trimming is also quite different from the old hack eye trimming jobs done back in the day. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
GreatCaesarsGhost Posted January 9, 2019 Share Posted January 9, 2019 6 minutes ago, lou_fine said: business decision to shift pressing along with a few other former generally acknowledged restorative activities over to the additional revenue generating umbrella of unrestored activities. Nothing really wrong with that, except for the fact that they forgot to proactively mention this critical game changer to the collecting base until they were caught with their pants down around their ankles and had to react after the fact. This is true? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
the blob Posted January 9, 2019 Author Share Posted January 9, 2019 42 minutes ago, GreatCaesarsGhost said: This is true? I dunno, did PLODs ever say "pressed" as part of resto? Trimming, if they could catch it, has always been considered a PLOD worthy offense. Seems that CGC continued to not ding pressing, just like they had not dinged it for years. That they now have a pressing service..yes, that's tricky. But if there is a pan asiatic wall and no preferential treatment given to their own pressing, I guess that is fine. GreatCaesarsGhost 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
lou_fine Posted January 9, 2019 Share Posted January 9, 2019 19 minutes ago, GreatCaesarsGhost said: 26 minutes ago, lou_fine said: business decision to shift pressing along with a few other former generally acknowledged restorative activities over to the additional revenue generating umbrella of unrestored activities. Nothing really wrong with that, except for the fact that they forgot to proactively mention this critical game changer to the collecting base until they were caught with their pants down around their ankles and had to react after the fact. This is true? Of course it was. Weren't you around for that wild and raucous, but fun times (well, probably not for the CGC boys ) back around 2005 or thereabouts when the whole pressing fiasco first came to light on these boards here. Let's see, if you joined in October of 2005, you might have just missed all of the fun as there were multiple threads that covered this, with some for well over a hundred pages on this controversy before the Mods were able to "macro trim" them back. Definitely a game changer with the big boys at Metro apparently not even aware of this undisclosed practice in the beginning. Even Overstreet had to go back into his Glossary and revise his definition for "restoration" to take into account what CGC had been uncommunicatively doing from the get go. A real eye opener to the collecting base as board members here were finally able to figure out that pressing no longer fell under the long held historical umbrella definition of restoration, but was now being spun by Borock and CGC as something called "maximization of potential". Even before that controversy died out came the Church copy of Boy Comics #17 a few weeks later. Courtesy of before and after scans provided by board members like Masterchief, Danny boy (i.e. Comic-Keys), Red Hook, etc. we saw how a CGC 4.0 graded book could turn into a CGC 7.5 graded copy and then finally into a CGC 9.0 graded copy, all while residing in an unrestored blue label slab. After several controversial and heated days of angst on the boards here, word or spin finally came back down from the mountaintop that "disassembly and reassembly of a comic book in and of itself does not constitute restoration". Courtesy of Masterchief and a few others who are probably no longer welcome here, we soon discovered with many more before and after scans of the exact same books that what we were seeing was really nothing more than just the tip of a huge iceberg. Needless to say, the barn doors were opened wide after that with an explosion of pressing ads as everybody was scrambling to squish squash their books into oblivion like there was no tomorrow. This whole pressing issue would not have erupted into such a big controversy if CGC had been upfront about the whole thing and proactively informed the collecting base about these significant changes to the definition of restoration before they first opened their doors. Being the smart businessmen they are and with prior experience in other collecting fields, no doubt the owners at CCG knew that the collecting base would never had accepted changes of this magnitude in the first place. The smart play was to quietly and secretly sneak it in through the back door while nobody was looking, get the party going and then turn on the money machine once everybody found out because nobody would want to leave the party after that. chrisco37, GreatCaesarsGhost and Tony S 2 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
lou_fine Posted January 9, 2019 Share Posted January 9, 2019 57 minutes ago, the blob said: That they now have a pressing service..yes, that's tricky. But if there is a pan asiatic wall and no preferential treatment given to their own pressing, I guess that is fine. I believe you might have missed a couple of rather controversial and censured threads on the boards here that were talking about "good" pressing and "bad" pressing and how books were being graded at the time. I believe it was back in 2016 around the time that key personnel changes were made at CCS. GreatCaesarsGhost 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
lou_fine Posted January 9, 2019 Share Posted January 9, 2019 1 hour ago, GreatCaesarsGhost said: This is true? 1 hour ago, the blob said: That they now have a pressing service..yes, that's tricky. But if there is a pan asiatic wall and no preferential treatment given to their own pressing, I guess that is fine. Seriously, are the two of you trying to get me booted off these boards here with your postings? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
the blob Posted January 9, 2019 Author Share Posted January 9, 2019 (edited) 5 hours ago, lou_fine said: I believe you might have missed a couple of rather controversial and censured threads on the boards here that were talking about "good" pressing and "bad" pressing and how books were being graded at the time. I believe it was back in 2016 around the time that key personnel changes were made at CCS. I didn't miss them as I was here in 2004. But I didn't/don't have a horse in the race, so after a few pages I stopped following. I have never had a book pressed or submitted to CGC, although i will be doing both in the near future. As it is not something that can always be determined just by examining the book and does not involve adding or removing any part of the book (like a proper wonder bread cleaning) I get why they went that route. Mind you, it would be informative for blue labels to indicate pressing when obvious so that buyers know there is no additional potential maximization. Unless there is evidence that a particular pressing has degraded the paper in the book, that should be noted. I guess we shall see in 20 years if pressing speeds up eventual brittleness. I have no idea. I think the pros doing it now have much better methods than 20 years ago. Edited January 9, 2019 by the blob Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
the blob Posted January 9, 2019 Author Share Posted January 9, 2019 9 minutes ago, lou_fine said: Seriously, are the two of you trying to get me booted off these boards here with your postings? Nobody has a gun to your head and is forcing you to type. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
lou_fine Posted January 9, 2019 Share Posted January 9, 2019 4 minutes ago, the blob said: 14 minutes ago, lou_fine said: I believe you might have missed a couple of rather controversial and censured threads on the boards here that were talking about "good" pressing and "bad" pressing and how books were being graded at the time. I believe it was back in 2016 around the time that key personnel changes were made at CCS. I didn't miss them. But I didn't/don't have a horse in the race, so after a few pages I stopped following. I have never had a book pressed or submitted to CGC, although i will be doing both in the near future. That's good to know. With what is happening, it's definitely hard to do the latter without doing the former, although you could always go for a pre-screen. Either way, best of luck to you with respect to your grading results. GreatCaesarsGhost 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
