IS IT JUST ME? WHY IS THERE SUCH A SHORT SHORTAGE, CGC

[woosuh]

I'VE ONLY SEEN LIKE 3-4 CGC GRADED 9.9 -10 VALIANT ISSUES EVER? WHY IS CGC SO STRICT ON A TRUE MINT VALIANT BOOK. PLEASE ADVISE. BTW HOPEFULLY VALIANT WONT BLOW UP, I LOVE THE STORIE LINE, SOME OF US COLLECT FOR THE READING.
THANKS

[Brother J]

First of all, could you please lower the caps when you type? It's considered SHOUTING and is poor netiquette.

Second, I think you'll find that 9.9 and 10.0 are rare for any comic from CGC, even fresh off the shelf. Valiants have been around for over 10 years and many have not been taken care of since then, so it's tough to even get a 9.8 on most Valiants, which is why some of the key issues go for crazy money in that condition.

[greg]

I keep a watch on the CGC census here...
http://www.valiantcomics.com/valiant/valiantcgc.asp

It looks like there are two 10.0 and three 9.9 out of 1,258 tries.

9.9s and 10.0s require unbelievably sharp corners...
absolutely no wear of any kind, even with a magnifying glass,
and near-perfect printing at the factory.
http://www.valiantcomics.com/valiant/im ... xamine.jpg

Honestly, I think 9.8s are fantastic books... so it's ok to "settle" for those.

Any comic that has been read at least once is most likely 9.6 or lower...
that's just the "nature of the beast".

[woosuh]

WELL, WITH THE SHORTAGE OF 9.9 -10 VALIANT BOOKS OUT THERE, IT'S WORTH THE EXTRA PREMIUM, ANY ONE HAVE ONE?

[Vault-Keeper]

[kryptonitecomics]

I think the one point that has not been brought up is that their is a large population of high grade Valiant's setting in collections across the country. These books haven't been worth slabbing for the past 10 years and now thay CGC copies are commanding solid prices, we should see the population of Graded Valiants increase.

That's not to say that their are cases of 9.8's out their, but don't forget that these books were hot at the time of release so the early and key issues went from the shelves to mylar almost immediately. I have no doubts that I have a few 9.8's in my collection if I were to submit books, but I am not planning to send any in at this point.

[COMICKINGS]

the current hot Valiant books right now,were not hot when they came out.It took a year for Valiant to catch on,Magnus & Solar were both doing 60-70,000 books the first few issues then dropped down to around 50,000 by the end of that first year.Harbinger,Rai,Shadowman,& X-O all were doing right 50,000 or less.With more than 3000 comic shops that were in business back then ordering from Diamond and Capital City,if it was a hot book the print runs would've been double to triple that amount.Just look at when the Unity storyline hit....there was tons of promotion with advertising,and free Unity issues,and then the ordering went crazy.Then the demand caught like wildfire for the pre-Unity stuff.The guys that were sitting on cases,sold them 10 years ago.It's as rare as a Solar 10.0 to find anybody sitting on a case of Harbinger 1's or Rai 3's & 4's.Sure,with people seeing how much some of these books are going for graded,there will be alot more Valiants going to CGC,but not cases of one book getting submitted.It's just getting old,seeing people come on here and on the CGC talkboards,talking about "people sitting on cases".There weren't that many cases made,and why would anybody back then be putting away cases of a book that wasn't a hot seller? Where are all these cases at??The time has been right this past year to be selling if you are sitting on 200 Harbinger #1's or any other pre-Unity book.Yet only 1 guy in the last few years has listed a good amount of 10 count lots of the same pre-unity book.Ebay seller...jefhinds.And it seems he's stopped or ran out of quantity.The guys bashing the books still,are the guys that never supported the books in the first place,and then got caught holding the bag with 100 copies of everything Valiant made in 1993/1994.They are the guys that laughed at people buying any pre-unity they could find from 1995-2003.Now they are *SQUEE* because they never picked up the books when they saw 'em in the .50 boxes.

[greg]

Here's a little more "food for thought" related to CGC grading.

Currently, books like Incredible Hulk 181 are selling for huge premiums
when they have been CGC graded (compared to the ungraded prices).

According to the Marvel circulation statement at the time...
there were at least 200,000 copies of the book printed in 1974.
When Hulk 181 was the same age as Harbinger #1... it was 1986,
so there's no reason to believe that even half of those books are gone...
it's not like it was the 1940s... it was the mid-1980s when Hulk 181 turned "twelve".
But, let's say that only 50,000 copies of Hulk 181 still exist today...

Even with all the publicity... CGC has graded less than 2,000 copies of Hulk 181.

So... even if pre-Unity Valiant becomes slightly popular again,
you won't be seeing 1,000 copies of Harbinger #1 in CGC slabs.
You probably won't even see 250 CGC graded copies of Harbinger #1...
For books with print runs of 5,000... how many will be CGC graded? 50?

Just because something CAN be graded doesn't mean it will be.
Where are the rest of the Hulk 181s? Less than 5% seems like an awfully small number.

In the case of CGC, it's a combination of supply, demand, AND effort.
People might contribute to demand fairly easily...
But supplies aren't abundant...
and there hasn't been a lot of people stepping forward with the effort.