The CGC risk.

[nycjadie]

I prescreen a lot of books with CGC. On average, about 70% of my historical prescreens get graded at 9.8. I've gotten pretty good at screening. 30% don't make the cut, and CGC charges $5 for all rejects. That means that I usually pay $50-60 for each 30 book invoice for the pleasure of having them prescreen. At the end of the day, this is money well spent for me. That adds about $2.50-$3.00 on the cost of each graded book, but that also means I don't get stuck with any 9.6 or 9.4 books that are now worth less graded than they would have been raw. Crazy, I know.

There are some significant drawbacks to prescreening, however. I just went through about 200 rejected books, and here are a few of my thoughts:

(1) CGC's return shipping is crap. They provide certain guidelines on how to ship to CGC. I think it's a bit of overkill, and I found a few tricks over time that I believe create a safer shipment (I won't get into it here but super tight with protected corners are key, and be sure to avoid having a taped seal face the front of the book). CGC returns them tight in plastic bag, but loose in the box. That means all 4 corners (which are not protected) are banging around in the big return box they provide. Not cool. I find most of my return books then get bent corners on the return shipment. And I do mean most.

(2) Rejects are still often in 9.8. I've resubmitted rejects to only find they are actually 9.8 on a 2nd round. My biggest book I did this with is Batman Adventures 12. That's a serious reject! Right now, I'm pulling 30 of my rejects to see what comes back. But this is a very important thing to consider when you risk the damage under (1) above.

(3) They don't always consider manufacturing defects when they are supposed to. I'm pretty familiar with some defects of certain books. Despite getting the best copies of these books, Valiant still rejects them. Common defects can be paper pulls near the staple interiors, paper cuts around corners, common waviness in many 90s' cover stock, etc. You will see these issues in Magnus 5, 7, lots of books from 1995, early VEI issues, etc.

(4) I suspect that they automatically reject 10 out of every 30 books. Just due to history and the nature of the rejects, I think that most of the time I get a prescreen of 30 books, they take about 10 or so out. Another 2 or so might get rejcted by the 3 graders that look at 9.8s.

[Elveen]

I really appreciate this post. Thanks.

[Elveen]

Does anyone know if when you submit live at a show, do they do a preseceen there?

[Escaflown4]

Does anyone know if when you submit live at a show, do they do a preseceen there?

No, CGC does not do pre-screening service at Comic Con shows. Although you can bring your books to be dropped off for the pre-screen. That way it will save you on the cost of shipping the books to CGC.

[Escaflown4]

I prescreen a lot of books with CGC. On average, about 70% of my historical prescreens get graded at 9.8. I've gotten pretty good at screening. 30% don't make the cut, and CGC charges $5 for all rejects. That means that I usually pay $50-60 for each 30 book invoice for the pleasure of having them prescreen. At the end of the day, this is money well spent for me. That adds about $2.50-$3.00 on the cost of each graded book, but that also means I don't get stuck with any 9.6 or 9.4 books that are now worth less graded than they would have been raw. Crazy, I know.

There are some significant drawbacks to prescreening, however. I just went through about 200 rejected books, and here are a few of my thoughts:

(1) CGC's return shipping is crap. They provide certain guidelines on how to ship to CGC. I think it's a bit of overkill, and I found a few tricks over time that I believe create a safer shipment (I won't get into it here but super tight with protected corners are key, and be sure to avoid having a taped seal face the front of the book). CGC returns them tight in plastic bag, but loose in the box. That means all 4 corners (which are not protected) are banging around in the big return box they provide. Not cool. I find most of my return books then get bent corners on the return shipment. And I do mean most.

(2) Rejects are still often in 9.8. I've resubmitted rejects to only find they are actually 9.8 on a 2nd round. My biggest book I did this with is Batman Adventures 12. That's a serious reject! Right now, I'm pulling 30 of my rejects to see what comes back. But this is a very important thing to consider when you risk the damage under (1) above.

(3) They don't always consider manufacturing defects when they are supposed to. I'm pretty familiar with some defects of certain books. Despite getting the best copies of these books, Valiant still rejects them. Common defects can be paper pulls near the staple interiors, paper cuts around corners, common waviness in many 90s' cover stock, etc. You will see these issues in Magnus 5, 7, lots of books from 1995, early VEI issues, etc.

(4) I suspect that they automatically reject 10 out of every 30 books. Just due to history and the nature of the rejects, I think that most of the time I get a prescreen of 30 books, they take about 10 or so out. Another 2 or so might get rejcted by the 3 graders that look at 9.8s.

I think I posted about this before, but yes, don't disregard any rejects as potentially they can pass the next 9.8 pre-screen submission. It all depends on which set of graders look at your books. I just got back my latest pre-screen batch and I was a bit disappointed that only 21 out of 51 books were graded 9.8. Usually I hit an average of 70-80% of my submissions getting 9.8's, but this is literally the first time I seen this kind of results. I looked over the rejects and still can't figure out why most of them didn't get graded. So I definitely feel your pain about the reject fees. Sometimes I feel like they are doing this on purpose to rake in those fees.

[nycjadie]

I prescreen a lot of books with CGC. On average, about 70% of my historical prescreens get graded at 9.8. I've gotten pretty good at screening. 30% don't make the cut, and CGC charges $5 for all rejects. That means that I usually pay $50-60 for each 30 book invoice for the pleasure of having them prescreen. At the end of the day, this is money well spent for me. That adds about $2.50-$3.00 on the cost of each graded book, but that also means I don't get stuck with any 9.6 or 9.4 books that are now worth less graded than they would have been raw. Crazy, I know.

There are some significant drawbacks to prescreening, however. I just went through about 200 rejected books, and here are a few of my thoughts:

(1) CGC's return shipping is crap. They provide certain guidelines on how to ship to CGC. I think it's a bit of overkill, and I found a few tricks over time that I believe create a safer shipment (I won't get into it here but super tight with protected corners are key, and be sure to avoid having a taped seal face the front of the book). CGC returns them tight in plastic bag, but loose in the box. That means all 4 corners (which are not protected) are banging around in the big return box they provide. Not cool. I find most of my return books then get bent corners on the return shipment. And I do mean most.

(2) Rejects are still often in 9.8. I've resubmitted rejects to only find they are actually 9.8 on a 2nd round. My biggest book I did this with is Batman Adventures 12. That's a serious reject! Right now, I'm pulling 30 of my rejects to see what comes back. But this is a very important thing to consider when you risk the damage under (1) above.

(3) They don't always consider manufacturing defects when they are supposed to. I'm pretty familiar with some defects of certain books. Despite getting the best copies of these books, Valiant still rejects them. Common defects can be paper pulls near the staple interiors, paper cuts around corners, common waviness in many 90s' cover stock, etc. You will see these issues in Magnus 5, 7, lots of books from 1995, early VEI issues, etc.

(4) I suspect that they automatically reject 10 out of every 30 books. Just due to history and the nature of the rejects, I think that most of the time I get a prescreen of 30 books, they take about 10 or so out. Another 2 or so might get rejcted by the 3 graders that look at 9.8s.

I think I posted about this before, but yes, don't disregard any rejects as potentially they can pass the next 9.8 pre-screen submission. It all depends on which set of graders look at your books. I just got back my latest pre-screen batch and I was a bit disappointed that only 21 out of 51 books were graded 9.8. Usually I hit an average of 70-80% of my submissions getting 9.8's, but this is literally the first time I seen this kind of results. I looked over the rejects and still can't figure out why most of them didn't get graded. So I definitely feel your pain about the reject fees. Sometimes I feel like they are doing this on purpose to rake in those fees.

It's weird. Some of my submissions are 28/30, but the vast majority have been 18-22/30, and I have to think that it's some sort of internal algorithm they have for automatic rejections.

[StarBrand]

That's a very interesting theory, that they reject around 30% automatically. I think that's about what I get that come back under 9.8.

[kjjohanson]

So is it worth it to toss in maybe 20% of what you expect are 9.6s in the mix, if you're confident the rest are 9.8s, so you get the 9.8s on the books you think deserve it?

[Ricomortis]

So is it worth it to toss in maybe 20% of what you expect are 9.6s in the mix, if you're confident the rest are 9.8s, so you get the 9.8s on the books you think deserve it?

No... You are just wasting money.

They don't just knock out 30% automatically.

Remember JMATT's Divinity 1's?

Almost everytime I get pre screens back... I find what they see as the problem. Now some of those are so borderline that yes next time they might go as a 9.8, but as a rule of thumb... No.

In a year or two I will do a great pre-screen experiment and just keep resubbing rejects until I get no more 9.8's



Rico

[nycjadie]

That's exactly the type of experiment I'm doing right now. I'll let you know what happens, but it will take 6-8 months.

I don't think it's across the board rejections. As I mentioned, I sometimes get 28/30 in 9.8. There are also different graders. I've resubbed books only to get 9.8s, but I've also resubbed books that didn't make the grade. I do think that given the vast number of invoices which are 18-22/30, there is more than just my average screening success involved, which suggests an approach that I outline above. I will say that I've only had 1 book from Valiant's prestige format be rejected and that was do to a corner blunt which I think happened in shipment or on CGC's end. I do think that the nicer the coverstock, the stricter approach they take to those books ( as opposed to 80's newsprint stuff).

[StarBrand]

Occasionally I send a book in that I think is a 9.6 and really shouldn't be a 9.8 and it comes back a 9.8.
I do that when is be happy with a 9.6, so no risk involved to me.