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significant increase of high graded SSOCs
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13 posts in this topic

Trying to not seem like a conspiracy theorist here, but I began collecting Savage Sword of Conan mags back in the 80s, completed my collection in the last 10 years or so and then began buying CGC graded copies and at the time, wrote down, one at a time, the information from the CGC census for each copy. There were a few dozen, give or take, that had low or even no CGC graded copies at the time. Over the next few years I spent considerable resources buying copies, then in the last year or so, noticed that all of a sudden many of the low to no graded issues now have 9.8's and some of the lower issues (#1 in particular) suddenly have waaay more out there. When I wrote down #1, probably 8 years ago, the census had 128 9.8s. Now it reads there are 163! I get people find old copies now and then, but when I saw that within a month, around 25 of the low or no CGC graded copies have 9.8s (and they are priced pretty high), if feels a bit of a stretch. I asked CGC about it and received a response, but just wanted to get other collector's thoughts. 

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6 minutes ago, TTV Norman CU said:

I have no idea what you're asking. Are you insinuating that CGC is fudging the Census numbers?

Of course not. I'm asking the likelihood of people finding dozens of 9.8 quality magazines from the 80s within a few months time.

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I'm not entirely sure what's being asked, BUT you used the example of Conan #1 CGC 9.8 as having 128 copies 8 years ago, and 163 copies now.  So that's a difference of 35 more copies over eight years, so that's a barely over 4 more copies added per year.  While I don't think that's a ton more to begin with, here's some more possible explanations, which I think are reasonable.

1.  There was a Conan movie in 2011, so depending on when you checked, there still might have been some comics submitted around the time of the movie that had not shown up yet on the census when last you checked.  Probably wouldn't count for a lot of comics, maybe 2-4. 

2.  Generally, the economy has steadily improved over the past decade, resulting in more disposable income to spend on hobbies.

3.  There was another Conan movie in 2017, which certainly led to some people digging through their old Conan's and submitting them either for themselves, or to sell.

4.  CGC has become more well-known over time in the comic collecting world.

5.  Possibility of some press and re-grade of some old 9.6's or 9.4's, or some attempted re-grades where the old slab wasn't submitted.

6.  More people coming back to the hobby over the past ten years, mostly the people who collected hard in the late copper age, stopped for a long time, then came back with the Marvel movies (and now have some money).

 

Also very generally, people were more likely to take care of #1 issues

Edited by revat
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Just now, TTV Norman CU said:
3 minutes ago, revat said:

you used the example of Conan #1 CGC 9.8

I think he was referring to Savage Sword of Conan #1 magazine.

you're right of course, but it l was using "Conan" generically.  That comic/magazine isn't considered rare or anything, though I will say getting high grade magazines in general is quite tough.

But either way, I don't find that adding 4+ 9.8's a year to be extremely strange, ALTHOUGH if one wanted to do an analysis, they could compare other similar magazines or comics from that era with similar census numbers and compare growth over these last 8 years.

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7 minutes ago, djmcslick said:

Of course not. I'm asking the likelihood of people finding dozens of 9.8 quality magazines from the 80s within a few months time.

Finding? Those copies not being submitted to CGC earlier means... nothing, really.

29 minutes ago, djmcslick said:

CGC graded copies and at the time, wrote down, one at a time, the information from the CGC census for each copy

What a waste of time. @valiantman has a site that you can use to look up the census update history for anything.

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2 minutes ago, Lazyboy said:
38 minutes ago, djmcslick said:

CGC graded copies and at the time, wrote down, one at a time, the information from the CGC census for each copy

What a waste of time. @valiantman has a site that you can use to look up the census update history for anything.

You rang? :devil:

Current census for Savage Sword of Conan: http://www.cgcdata.com/cgc/search/title/:Savage:Sword:Conan:/label/all/orderby/alphabetical/

History of census data for SSOC #1: http://www.cgcdata.com/cgc/search/comicid/5000021

Edited by valiantman
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Thanks for some of the responses, but to be clear, I wasn't making a point about just the #1 issue and the 4+ CGC graded 9.8s every year, but the fact that more than a few dozen of different # SSOC issues were graded 9.8 and added to the census within a month or so AND the fact that they were from 35+ years back. It just seemed too good to be true. 

 

@valiantman - now that is impressive. 

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If issues for which there had previously been few or no high grade examples have started showing up on the census the most likely explanation is that someone is going for a competitive set and has been submitting high grade examples he's found in the wild.

Check with @Rune, SkyWise, and TopNot.

Edited by thunsicker
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