Fantastic Four Annual #1 9.8 in Comiclink May auction was a 9.6.... 3 3

[batman_fan]

As a seller, it is in your best interest to have potential buyers believe a book you have for sell has not been pressed and even better, the book has pressable defects.  I think that could be why a lot of the books in a recent auction went for strong prices because the books didn’t appear to be pressed (and after seeing some, they don’t appear to have been).  I expect many to get pressed and re-graded for sell at a significantly higher price.

Edited May 28, 2020 by batman_fan

[masterlogan2000]

I just read through these first four pages of the thread.  Did I miss the part where CGC or CCS is/was the owner of the book in question?

Since they have no ownership stake in this book, it makes ZERO sense for them to disclose information regarding the book.  They were commissioned to provide an impartial grade, which they have done.  That is where their responsibility ends.

In fact, it would be a breach of privacy for CGC to provide that information to anyone that is not the submitter of the book in the first place.

So, to the OP's question... why stop at just requesting the pressing status of the book?  Why not ask for the submitter's name, address, and phone number?  While we're at it, let's pull their credit card information as well.

The only party that can disclose whether the book has been pressed is the owner himself.  Would it be nice if they disclosed it?  Absolutely!  But, 1)  it's completely voluntary, and 2) no one (except the owner) knows if this was even pressed since being a 9.6 (vs. a straight resubmission).

[Mmehdy]

3 hours ago, DanCooper said:

Don't know if this was mentioned here or elsewhere already (apologies if) but that 9.8 FF Annual 1 sold last night in Comiclink auction for $31,277

WOW what a profit...it just makes you wonder if you own unpressed books with a almost a 20K price bump and I do not think it is good for our GA/SA comic book world in the long run.

Edited May 28, 2020 by Mmehdy

[DTM700]

Not that I agree with the OP, but to play devil’s advocate, I’ve seen people get upset when a restored book has had restoration removed and resubmitted for a blue label and the removal was not disclosed by the seller. Is that different? Where is the line drawn? Food for thought.

[batman_fan]

18 hours ago, DTM700 said:

Not that I agree with the OP, but to play devil’s advocate, I’ve seen people get upset when a restored book has had restoration removed and resubmitted for a blue label and the removal was not disclosed by the seller. Is that different? Where is the line drawn? Food for thought.

There was a Batman 9 that has the restoration removed coming up for sell and a Hulk 1 I think 7.0 coming up soon too.  Both had the color touch scrapped off.  Looked really bad but blue label.

Edited May 29, 2020 by batman_fan

[lou_fine]

On 5/26/2020 at 11:00 AM, Zemo said:

For those seeking proper disclosure, looks like FF Annual #1 9.6 sold on Comiclink is now a pressed 9.8 and is in the current May auction.  Here the before, sold $12,361.00 November, 2018.  Shouldn't there be proper

mention in the listing of this?  Can a call be placed to CGC to verify if a book has gone through the pressing service by providing the serial number ?

 

Welcome to the boards as it looks like you just joined up about a week ago to partake in the fun and games here.  

All I can say is that you simply don't seem to understand that CCG is a business and as such, their business model is really geared towards maximizing both their top and bottom lines.  In order to acheive this corporate objective, they have astutely fine tuned the old grading system (without disclosure of course) to ensure that they can make money on the same book multiple times through various kinds of additional revenue generating ancillary services and subsequent resubmissions, as opposed to simply making money on the same book only once.     

Edited May 31, 2020 by lou_fine

[lou_fine]

On 5/27/2020 at 3:27 PM, Lazyboy said:

On 5/27/2020 at 2:19 PM, mattn792 said:

Good call, then CCS can turn off whatever percentage of the comic buying market wants unpressed books, no matter what.  

I see. Pressing affects the market.

So what's the argument for non-disclosure, again? How is it different from concealing any other kind of manipulation that will affect market prices?

Are you telling me that you don't really buy CGC's and the pro-pressers' spin from way back in the day that there's no need for disclosure because nobody cares if a book has been presseed or not, as the only thing that matters is that big number on the top left hand corner of the slab.  

All I can say to that, is that there must be a whole lot of nobodies in this marketplace then because they sure do seem to care. 

[pemart1966]

On 5/29/2020 at 12:00 PM, batman_fan said:

There was a Batman 9 that has the restoration removed coming up for sell and a Hulk 1 I think 7.0 coming up soon too.  Both had the color touch scrapped off.  Looked really bad but blue label.

There needs to be a new label - "UN - RESTORED"   

[waaaghboss]

2 hours ago, lou_fine said:

Are you telling me that you don't really buy CGC's and the pro-pressers' spin from way back in the day that there's no need for disclosure because nobody cares if a book has been presseed or not, as the only thing that matters is that big number on the top left hand corner of the slab.  

All I can say to that, is that there must be a whole lot of nobodies in this marketplace then because they sure do seem to care. 

Pretty much this.  The overwhelming support for pretending pressing doesn't matter yet its important to not disclose this information to potential buyers is somewhat surprising and very disappointing to me.  

 

Going to stick to getting my comics from quarter bins where its safe.

Edited May 31, 2020 by waaaghboss

[MustEatBrains]

2 hours ago, lou_fine said:

Are you telling me that you don't really buy CGC's and the pro-pressers' spin from way back in the day that there's no need for disclosure because nobody cares if a book has been presseed or not, as the only thing that matters is that big number on the top left hand corner of the slab.  

All I can say to that, is that there must be a whole lot of nobodies in this marketplace then because they sure do seem to care. 

I don’t buy the spin and I’m empathetic to those that do care but can only imagine how many pressed books the anti-pressers have sitting in their respective collections. Just nothing to be done about it.  It is what it is.  Image if overnight pressing can be 100% detected, I honestly don’t think I’d even want to know.

[LordRahl]

4 hours ago, lou_fine said:

Are you telling me that you don't really buy CGC's and the pro-pressers' spin from way back in the day that there's no need for disclosure because nobody cares if a book has been presseed or not, as the only thing that matters is that big number on the top left hand corner of the slab.  

All I can say to that, is that there must be a whole lot of nobodies in this marketplace then because they sure do seem to care. 

Did anyone actually say that "nobody cares"? Of course there are people who care. Most of them are very vocal and are here on these very boards. Thing is, there clearly aren't ENOUGH people who care... at least not enough to influence the market downwards. The minority here (people who care) may be very vocal and the majority (people who don't) really don't say much but clearly the people who don't vastly outnumber the people who do. 

[lou_fine]

On 5/30/2020 at 10:59 PM, LordRahl said:

On 5/30/2020 at 6:41 PM, lou_fine said:

Are you telling me that you don't really buy CGC's and the pro-pressers' spin from way back in the day that there's no need for disclosure because nobody cares if a book has been presseed or not, as the only thing that matters is that big number on the top left hand corner of the slab.  

All I can say to that, is that there must be a whole lot of nobodies in this marketplace then because they sure do seem to care. 

Did anyone actually say that "nobody cares"? Of course there are people who care. Most of them are very vocal and are here on these very boards. Thing is, there clearly aren't ENOUGH people who care... at least not enough to influence the market downwards. The minority here (people who care) may be very vocal and the majority (people who don't) really don't say much but clearly the people who don't vastly outnumber the people who do. 

Which now brings us back to the chicken or egg argument.  

As you have clearly stated and a point to which I definitely agree, there are some collectors (along with speculators and flippers) who DO indeed care whether  book has been pressed or not, which means that this critical piece of information should rightfully be disclosed if they as sellers are aware of this fact when they go to sell such a book.  Yet, my bet is that the number of sales descriptions or auction descriptions which discloses the fact that a book has been pressed is a whole lot closer to zero than even a tiny fraction of the books that CCS has pressed over the past 20 years.  

The argument back then by the pressing cabal was that it was not necessary to disclose pressing since the only thing that mattered in the final determination of the price was the grade, and pressing didn't factored into the price.  As a result, it was conveniently not necessary to disclose this fact because they claimed that they themselves as buyers would pay exactly the same price for equivalent graded books whether the book had been meticulously preserved and stored in that condition over the decades or whether it had been artificially improved to that same grade the previous week by a comic book doctor working in their basement lab. 

Clearly a argument which I found to be totally unbelieveable and totally   if you actually gave it some thought.  

Edited June 2, 2020 by lou_fine

[Lamborghinikid]

Correct me if I’m wrong , but wasn’t the million dollar Marvel comics #1 CGC 9.4 previously a CGC 9.0 book ? I don’t think there was any kind of backlash about its re grade at all ? Me personally, I only care about the current grade a book is in. 

[Jaylam]

Why does the original poster believe the book was “pressed” into a 9.8? Could it not just be the book was re-submitted and this time around the graders were feeling real good about this book being a 9.8 versus a 9.6 last time around? To me, I believe it falls into the realm of possible grading variance, plus who’s to say it wasn’t already pressed before when it was a 9.6? Maybe it’s been pressed more than once; if only the book could talk!

[F For Fake]

I certainly respect the opinions of those who are anti-pressing, but these days I just assume that any book in a slab has been squashed within an inch of its life. The genie is out of the bottle, there's no going back. We're past disclosing pressing because everything has been pressed, more or less. The only books you can know for sure aren't pressed are your own original owner books. And if you slab and sell them and advertise them as "not pressed"...well, someone is going to buy it and press it.

Edited June 2, 2020 by F For Fake

[lou_fine]

On 5/27/2020 at 1:57 PM, Lazyboy said:

If pressing is a good thing and not something to be hidden, shouldn't proclaiming that your book was pressed by the #1, official company be a good thing? How could that possibly hurt CCS's business?

Which kind of reminds me of the ads in the old days when CGC first opened their doors and were trying to convince collectors to get their books graded and slabbed. 

I remember they would do things like run side by side pictures of say a raw Shadow #1 by Kaluta selling for $3 and then a CGC 9.8 graded copy or whatever it was selling for something like $2,500.  Thought it was absolutely   back in thise days, and now some 20 years later it seems to be doubly      as it still only guides for $4 at top of guide and you could probably still find copies in your dollar or 25 cents quarter boxes without too much problems at all.  

So, it just might save CCS a lot of advertising dollars to openly disclose to the marketplace how pressed books can indeed result in big dollars for their customers.  

Edited June 2, 2020 by lou_fine

[mattn792]

36 minutes ago, lou_fine said:

Which kind of reminds me of the ads in the old days when CGC first opened their doors and were trying to convince collectors to get their books graded and slabbed. 

I remember they would do things like run side by side pictures of say a raw Shadow #1 by Kaluta selling for $3 and then a CGC 9.8 graded copy or whatever it was selling for something like $2,500.  Thought it was absolutely   back in thise days, and now some 20 years later it seems to be doubly      as it still only guides for $4 at top of guide and you could probably still find copies in your dollar or 25 cents quarter boxes without too much problems at all.  

So, it just might save CCS a lot of advertising dollars to openly disclose to the marketplace how pressed books can indeed result in big dollars for their customers.  

You mean like this?

 

[lou_fine]

In the ball park, but probably not necessarily the best use of their advertising dollars here from my point of view.  

To get the speculators and flippers to submit their books, it's sometimes much more effective to show the before and after dollars results.    

[lou_fine]

12 hours ago, Lamborghinikid said:

Correct me if I’m wrong , but wasn’t the million dollar Marvel comics #1 CGC 9.4 previously a CGC 9.0 book ? I don’t think there was any kind of backlash about its re grade at all ? Me personally, I only care about the current grade a book is in. 

Can't remember exactly what the previous grades were on this copy here, as I believe it might have actually started out its certification life as a CGC 8.5 graded copy before morphing itself into a CGC 9.0 graded copy a couple of years later.  

There was most definitely a lot of discussion on the GA boards here at the time when this copy came back into the marketplace at the end of last year as the Windy City copy, but now as a CGC 9.4 graded copy.  Unlike the FF Annual 1 here or other much more common books which gets their potential maximized and comes back to market a few short months later, it's much more difficult on a book like this copy of Marvel 1 which you are refrring to.  Especially since its hard to tell what part of the increase is due to the true and real price appreciation over an extended period of time after a 15 to almost 20 year time period, as opposed to just the grade increase.    

Same kind of thing with the CGC 9.0 graded copy of Action 1 which sold for something like $3.2M dollars after it was hyped so much on that crock and bull video by Adams and Nelson, but somehow conveniently left out the part in their 5-minute diatribe where it had been upgraded over a period of time from its initial CGC 8.0 grade.     Although I am 100% sure that the underlying value of the book itself would have increased substantially over the years and decades, I am also quite sure that the bump up in the grade also didn't hurt at all in the final price that the book was able to eventually managed to fetch in the end.  

The only thing that I will say is that it is quite evident that flippers will have a much more difficult time trying to play the CPR game with the GA books since collectors of these books tend to focus much more on just acquiring a copy of the underlying book itself, as opposed to paying for a certain grade of the book as they simply don't come to market that often.  As we have seen with a number of the GA books that have been fliiped in a short period of time, the consignor have ended up losing money on the transaction after factoring in all of the fees and other ancillary charges even though the book has been bumped up in grade.  

Definitely not the same scenario with the much more common and not as easily identifiable SA and BA or more recent books where there are just so many copies that have been graded and subsequently placed into the marketplace since it's much more easier to launder these maniupulated books onto an unsuspecting collecting base.  Especially if you are lucky enough to be able to manipulate it into a highest graded copy and place it onto CL which seems to be the venue of choice for the CGC label chasers or Registry points chasers.  Heck, when you've got these big money players by their short hairs, they don't even care what the book was before because the only thing that matters to them is that big huge number on the top left hand corner of the slab.  Not a problem from my point of view though, as it's really a case of to each, their own when it comes to buying books.  

 

[LordRahl]

18 hours ago, lou_fine said:

Which now brings us back to the chicken or egg argument.  

As you have clearly stated and a point to which I definitely agree, there are some collectors (along with speculators and flippers) who DO indeed care whether  book has been pressed or not, which means that this critical piece of information should rightfully be disclosed if they as sellers are aware of this fact when they go to sell such a book.  Yet, my bet is that the number of sales descriptions or auction descriptions which discloses the fact that a book has been pressed is a whole lot closer to zero than even a tiny fraction of the books that CCS has pressed over the past 20 years.  

The argument back then by the pressing cabal was that it was not necessary to disclose pressing since the only thing that mattered in the final determination of the price was the grade, and pressing didn't factored into the price.  As a result, it was conveniently not necessary to disclose this fact because they claimed that they themselves as buyers would pay exactly the same price for equivalent graded books whether the book had been meticulously preserved and stored in that condition over the decades or whether it had been artificially improved to that same grade the previous week by a comic book doctor working in their basement lab. 

Clearly a argument which I found to be totally unbelieveable and totally   if you actually gave it some thought.  

I think what eventually ended up happening is that a lot of sellers just started saying to assume that their books are pressed because it's difficult to keep track of what is and what isn't and it's easier to just assume everything they sell is. I don't know why people wouldn't take this approach as well with auction houses. Just assume it's all pressed. I know I do when it comes to any book that is valued more than a couple hundred bucks.