Outbreak of Shaken Comic Syndrome 3 3

[comicwiz]

20 hours ago, THE_BEYONDER said:

To be fair, 1 is too many.  Encapsulation is supposed to protect the comics, not subject them to damage.  

Chris!

[THE_BEYONDER]

32 minutes ago, comicwiz said:

Chris!

Hey Joseph

[drotto]

8 hours ago, comicwiz said:

The more interesting discussion or talking point for me is determining how many people are actually sharing their experience. You must consider that there will always be a contingent of people who will dump the item, because frankly that what CGC is for them, a selling tool, and will conveniently latch on to CGC's assessment before disclosing any issue. If they even care enough to check their submissions before posting them for sale - willful ignorance is a hell of a thing.

And then there are the folks that just don't notice. Hard to imagine the latter would be even possible, but I've examined collections where the owners hadn't even noticed a blunted corner that had no business receiving the grade it did, and that the only foreseeable explanation is there book sustained SCS damage during shipping.

There's a fair bit of sweeping under the rug going on, one way or another. The last two times it was brought up on Facebook, the cheerleaders assumed their ordinary position of deflecting blame to everyone but CGC. As I've sad before, this case should have been recalled a long time ago.

How much should we expect a plastic case to do?  I have owned or handled probably 200 cgc comics at this point.  I know that is a small sample, and I do look at the books fairly closely. With books for my PC to see if I like the book regardless of the grade.  For ones I have submitted, to understand why it got the grade it got.  

 

I think many expect too much from these cases.  If you shake or drop a book it will move in the case, and any movement can cause damage. On the other hand, as shown by the short lived no inner well design, if you press books too tightly you can cause damage. There is no perfect case.

 

I still think overall the cases protect a book better than bags and mylar, with a book that is handled, displayed regularly, or shipped. Mylar is just fine for a stored book, a book in a PC, or displayed at a home. But, many people have also displayed how much damage can been done to any poorly packed and shipped comic. I have also seen many cases from CGC that were heavily damaged but the comic is OK, and would have been trashed if not for the case.

 

Do we get SCS, no doubt, but I still think it is overall a small percentage. Plus, the vast majority of damage is likely do to shipping. In the real world all products have a failure rate. The reason we talk about it here is this is a product that is expected to prevent damage, so when it fails we get extra upset.

[comicwiz]

3 minutes ago, drotto said:

How much should we expect a plastic case to do?  I have owned or handled probably 200 cgc comics at this point.  I know that is a small sample, and I do look at the books fairly closely. With books for my PC to see if I like the book regardless of the grade.  For ones I have submitted, to understand why it got the grade it got.  

 

I think many expect too much from these cases.  If you shake or drop a book it will move in the case, and any movement can cause damage. On the other hand, as shown by the short lived no inner well design, if you press books too tightly you can cause damage. There is no perfect case.

 

I still think overall the cases protect a book better than bags and mylar, with a book that is handled, displayed regularly, or shipped. Mylar is just fine for a stored book, a book in a PC, or displayed at a home. But, many people have also displayed how much damage can been done to any poorly packed and shipped comic. I have also seen many cases from CGC that were heavily damaged but the comic is OK, and would have been trashed if not for the case.

 

Do we get SCS, no doubt, but I still think it is overall a small percentage. Plus, the vast majority of damage is likely do to shipping. In the real world all products have a failure rate. The reason we talk about it here is this is a product that is expected to prevent damage, so when it fails we get extra upset.

I didn't make these claim in their marketing, they did. I wasn't aware that comics that look oil smeared in the case (i.e. newton rings) is considered superior optics. And is it preservation or destruction? They need to own up to the problems, roll-up their sleeves and fix the case before more books are damaged. It wouldn't hurt if they would also drop the "state-of-the-art" wildly_fanciful_statement, this is a defective holder and they know it.

[drotto]

12 minutes ago, comicwiz said:

I didn't make these claim in their marketing, they did. I wasn't aware that comics that look oil smeared in the case (i.e. newton rings) is considered superior optics. And is it preservation or destruction? They need to own up to the problems, roll-up their sleeves and fix the case before more books are damaged. It wouldn't hurt if they would also drop the "state-of-the-art" wildly_fanciful_statement, this is a defective holder and they know it.

The issue is not the outer case, it is the inner wells or lining. CGC already uses a few different inner wells, you would need to figure out which type are causing damage.

[Naphtha]

It's definitely the inner well. The friction and tackiness of a fresh piece of whatever they are using sticks to a newly slabbed book and causes the interior pages to shift. I've stopped submitting all issues for reholder until this is addressed. It's not okay anymore. Books are reaching huge numbers and there needs to be at least some sort of accountability and quality concern. If you have any kind of staple tearing on your book I would recommend leaving it where it is.

I also think shipping standards are to blame. USPS priority is no longer the method I would recommend using. It doesn't matter how well you protect your book, the sorting process and handling is terrible.

Edited May 26, 2019 by MadJimJaspers

[comicwiz]

21 minutes ago, drotto said:

The issue is not the outer case, it is the inner wells or lining. CGC already uses a few different inner wells, you would need to figure out which type are causing damage.

I'm referring to the tamper evident slab as a whole.

[Naphtha]

2 minutes ago, comicwiz said:

I'm referring to the tamper evident slab as a whole.

This whole issue wasn't seen in older slabs. The minute they released their iconic 2016 design it's been a downhill struggle since. When the current slabs were released, they looked amazing, but no one expected them to be capable of completely removing covers...

[comicwiz]

34 minutes ago, MadJimJaspers said:

It's definitely the inner well. The friction and tackiness of a fresh piece of whatever they are using sticks to a newly slabbed book and causes the interior pages to shift. I've stopped submitting all issues for reholder until this is addressed. It's not okay anymore. Books are reaching huge numbers and there needs to be at least some sort of accountability and quality concern. If you have any kind of staple tearing on your book I would recommend leaving it where it is.

I also think shipping standards are to blame. USPS priority is no longer the method I would recommend using. It doesn't matter how well you protect your book, the sorting process and handling is terrible.

I can't accept the blame shifting. I can safely ship an ungraded comic in Mylar, sandwiched between to stiff sheets of cardboard, and packed well to absorb a hit. Third-party grading's reason for being is as a selling tool, and to stimulate buying confidence in a sellers product that has been assessed by an impartial party. The latter was born out of online trading atmosphere that required a grader that was consistent in their opinion, and who offered a tamper evident holder that would protect the item during transit.

The fact a comic is floating around in a slab is the issue, and the inherent design flaw is a problem being ignored, not the fault of anyone other than CGC themselves, and certainly not the fault of any particular shipping service or standard.

Edited May 26, 2019 by comicwiz

[comicwiz]

5 minutes ago, MadJimJaspers said:

This whole issue wasn't seen in older slabs. The minute they released their iconic 2016 design it's been a downhill struggle since. When the current slabs were released, they looked amazing, but no one expected them to be capable of completely removing covers...

SCS was a problem with older slabs as well. Not as bad as what we are seeing now, but it did exist prior to CGC needing to reengineer a new inner well after the Barex plant closure.

[HuddyBee]

On 5/26/2019 at 5:59 PM, comicwiz said:

SCS was a problem with older slabs as well. Not as bad as what we are seeing now, but it did exist prior to CGC needing to reengineer a new inner well after the Barex plant closure.

I think SCS will always be a problem, if you shake a book hard enough and long enough. However most books suffering from SCS are from the new slabs, because of the change to the inner well. Heck, even PGX books suffer less from SCS because of the design of the inner well.

Edited May 28, 2019 by HuddyBee

[Naphtha]

3 minutes ago, comicwiz said:

SCS was a problem with older slabs as well. Not as bad as what we are seeing now, but it did exist prior to CGC needing to reengineer a new inner well after the Barex plant closure.

Right, but that problem was blunting. The blunted issues can be fixed within reason and tweaking how books were encapsulated helped fix some of that over time. Once a cover is detached, it's game over. They need to immediately find a way to reintegrate the older inner well design into the newer slabs. I don't care if the book isn't as shiny and presentable, all I care about is the book is protected as advertised.

[Naphtha]

10 minutes ago, comicwiz said:

The fact a comic is floating around in a slab is the issue, and the inherent design flaw is a problem being ignored, not the fault of anyone other than CGC themselves, and certainly not the fault of any particular shipping service or standard.

I'm not saying this issue shouldn't overshadow the design flaw, I'm merely saying that it can alleviate some of the damage we've seen. If an issue is sold 5 times over two years and goes through the same bargain $15 shipping service like priority it WILL be tossed around with the same care as a $15 package of dog biscuits. 

[comicwiz]

5 minutes ago, MadJimJaspers said:

I'm not saying this issue shouldn't overshadow the design flaw, I'm merely saying that it can alleviate some of the damage we've seen. If an issue is sold 5 times over two years and goes through the same bargain $15 shipping service like priority it WILL be tossed around with the same care as a $15 package of dog biscuits. 

So now we have serial flipping to blame. I guess this was bound to happen, since there are other issues which can arise during transit, like inner wells melting while some purchases from Heritage are sitting in the back of a truck on a hot summer day. Should we focus only on submissions en route back to customers from CGC that arrive with SCS? That's outbound, from CGC to customer.

Again, if I can't repeat the same issue shipping an ungraded comic in Mylar, then I can't accept the shipping service as the problem.

[Naphtha]

16 minutes ago, comicwiz said:

Again, if I can't repeat the same issue shipping an ungraded comic in Mylar, then I can't accept the shipping service as the problem.

Agree.

Is there any acknowledgement from CGC that this issue exists? I've been waiting for this to blow open.

[Krismusic]

This is kind of worrisome as there a quite a few treasured ASM's 2-30 potentially I wanted to get graded but I'm considering not sending them in now until I know this potential issue has been resolved as this looks like a combination of both shipping and loose inner wells. Not sure what to trust. would CGC put extra packaging to help make it bomb proof to help combat this? can we ask for it? 

[JWKyle]

CGC has to tools to make this less of a problem I showed a new slab with a shim on the bottom to show shims fit into the new cases. I think a lot of these pictures being shown are because the books were not slabbed the best. The shims are really important to keep the book from moving in the inner well. I would like to see more pictures of the Hulk 377 because it does look like it had a shim in it. I think this it a 2 fold problem lack of books being secured properly in the inner wells and improper packing and shipping. CGC can fix the book in the well problems by taking a little more time to insure it's done better. The shipping can made better by trying to pack more securely. I've never received a damaged slab from Mycomicshop in the mail and there's a reason why.

 

[VintageComics]

2 minutes ago, JWKyle said:

The shims are really important to keep the book from moving in the inner well.

There are different types of inner wells.

Those shims (or wedges) are never used on the type of inner wells that the damage is being reported on in this thread.

[comicdonna]

2 minutes ago, VintageComics said:

There are different types of inner wells.

Those shims (or wedges) are never used on the type of inner wells that the damage is being reported on in this thread.

Maybe they should start adding shims on those holders, too.  

[JWKyle]

10 minutes ago, VintageComics said:

There are different types of inner wells.

Those shims (or wedges) are never used on the type of inner wells that the damage is being reported on in this thread.

Not sure if you saw this pic a page or so back but this does have the shims and show the damage so I would think this is shipping damage although it's hard to tell without more pictures or the book in hand. 

I do agree with you though @VintageComics not too big of a fan of the non- recessed inner wells.