Some disappointing CGC results for someone...

[greg]

I don't know who submitted these books, or if they'll ever even see this post, but this has to be the saddest group of Valiant submissions that I've ever seen show up in the same week on the CGC Census.
http://www.cgcdata.com/cgc/search/publi ... or/201229/

75% below 9.8
33% below 9.2 <--- ouch!

Those aren't Valiant key issues, either. It's almost as if someone who knew nothing about comic books was told they should send them to CGC, so they did... and it was a box of 1993-1994 random common issues.

It's not just Valiant. I'm seeing some similar low grades for 1993 Green Lantern, Spawn, and Batman common issues, too, so I think someone may have literally spent thousands of dollars submitting a 1993-1994 collection of random books to CGC that probably aren't worth $5 each even with the CGC slab.

[nycjadie]

Oh my! That Bloodshot 32! How did that mistake happen?

Sounds like somebody spent quarantine trying to make some dough, and they lost a bundle. I've had a few doozies for sure, like that silver age common that came back a 7.5 (for what reason, I'm still not sure), but a whole load of poop? I see those 9.0 and 9.2 commons on eBay (still for sale) and I wonder what they are thinking. Sure, we have a mistake here and there, but when a guy has like 25 of them for sale, it suggests to me they can't quite just eat the mistake.

I have 3-4 I'll be cracking and putting the raw back in the boxes. It's just not worth the space to keep the CGC, and nobody will want it anyway!

[IMJ]

So the short of it is that I've run into people at conventions that are collectors but in circles like we have here they'd be called "normies. I've spoken with a lot of people like that at conventions and even by the CGC booth. One year a guy that was submitting to CGC at a con and he started asking my opinions on how this was going to go for him. He was completely genuine.

He was submitting books that had no hope of high grades and that wouldn't needed high grades to have any hope of value. And he even included the "I thought I'd do this and leave for my kids and see what happens". I was as cool as I could be with the guy and explained that CGC can be harsh and that he should really only submit for the love of it, and so on.

And so my point is that do you guys think that the submitter maybe was a guy who remembered that Valiant was big in the 90's, fished the books out of his attic or whatever and submitted them with sunshine in his eyes?

[magnus20009]

Could be that be "that the submitter maybe was a guy who remembered that Valiant was big in the 90's, fished the books out of his attic or whatever and submitted them with sunshine in his eyes" but there are plenty of professionals who do not get it either.

The owner of one of the comic shops I frequent knows that I am a big CGC buyer (as he is always bringing CGC boxes for me to store my slabs in) so he decided to slab a bunch of 80's and 90's semi-key books to sell for his store about 2 years ago. (Think ASM, Jim Lee X-men, Lefield NM). His books all came back 7.0-9.2 and he was shocked and was giving me slabs to look at an explain why this X-men 2 (1991) was only a 8.5. He was most displeased with his order and swore he would never submit to CGC again. (Although he still put the books up on the wall with $100 price tags - don't think he has sold any of them).

This is a guy who has run a shop that only sells comics for 20 plus years but doesn't really understand how CGC grades.

[IMJ]

Could be that be "that the submitter maybe was a guy who remembered that Valiant was big in the 90's, fished the books out of his attic or whatever and submitted them with sunshine in his eyes" but there are plenty of professionals who do not get it either.

The owner of one of the comic shops I frequent knows that I am a big CGC buyer (as he is always bringing CGC boxes for me to store my slabs in) so he decided to slab a bunch of 80's and 90's semi-key books to sell for his store about 2 years ago. (Think ASM, Jim Lee X-men, Lefield NM). His books all came back 7.0-9.2 and he was shocked and was giving me slabs to look at an explain why this X-men 2 (1991) was only a 8.5. He was most displeased with his order and swore he would never submit to CGC again. (Although he still put the books up on the wall with $100 price tags - don't think he has sold any of them).

This is a guy who has run a shop that only sells comics for 20 plus years but doesn't really understand how CGC grades.

Yeah I've seen guys like that too. For sure.

Have you noticed there are cliches that persist in every hobby? Wayyyy back when a few buddies and I had this joke about flea markets. You could go to any flea market on Earth and everyone of them would have a CD Guy, a stolen-stereo guy who told you to send in the warranty card for a warranty, an area rug guy and a weapons master who sold swords and $#!(.

There are comic cliches too. At every convention there's a guy with a booth that gets no traffic selling some computer program or course, an art dealer who still thinks random comic art should sell for 500 to a grand a page, and the "I got one!" dealer who puts a 1.5, tattered pence price variant of Iron Man vol 1 #3 on his wall for $250 as if it's a real find.

So. Yeah. You're right. It definitely could be a guy in business in the hobby, I suppose.

[ckb]

It was me!!!

OK, it wasn't me.

The other option is the package/books were damaged in transit and CGC did not realize it.

Check the pre-screen box, kids. Trust me.

[IMJ]

It was me!!!

OK, it wasn't me.

The other option is the package/books were damaged in transit and CGC did not realize it.

Check the pre-screen box, kids. Trust me.

This post was... wisdom. I hadn't considered that possibility, but the combination of the shipping damage component and using the pre-screen as an actual mitigation rather than only a way to save a few bucks is brilliant. Honestly I hadn't thought of that for that reason before.

[greg]

It was me!!!

OK, it wasn't me.

The other option is the package/books were damaged in transit and CGC did not realize it.

Check the pre-screen box, kids. Trust me.

This post was... wisdom. I hadn't considered that possibility, but the combination of the shipping damage component and using the pre-screen as an actual mitigation rather than only a way to save a few bucks is brilliant. Honestly I hadn't thought of that for that reason before.

Pre-screen is good for the submitter, but bad for those of us watching the CGC Census. We're seeing high percentages for some Valiant books getting 9.8s on the CGC Census, but the pre-screen rejects could be none, hundreds, or hundreds of thousands and we'd never know.

[IMJ]

My real issue with CGC is that the 9.8 is the appealing sort of market commanding grade.
But the crapshoot between a 9.8 and a 9.6 is ridiculous at times - in many ways as it should be given the small difference on the scale. But I think everyone here knows that you could resubmit your 9.6 and provided nothing happens in transit that it just as likely as being reslabbed a 9.6, it could come back a 9.8.

[Aport]

I hope what that guy loss in money he gained in wisdom.

[nycjadie]

My real issue with CGC is that the 9.8 is the appealing sort of market commanding grade.
But the crapshoot between a 9.8 and a 9.6 is ridiculous at times - in many ways as it should be given the small difference on the scale. But I think everyone here knows that you could resubmit your 9.6 and provided nothing happens in transit that it just as likely as being reslabbed a 9.6, it could come back a 9.8.

I posted here before, but I resubmitted a couple submissions of failed 9.8 prescreens. I can’t recall the success rate, but nearly 50% came back as 9.8 the second round....

[ckb]

My real issue with CGC is that the 9.8 is the appealing sort of market commanding grade.
But the crapshoot between a 9.8 and a 9.6 is ridiculous at times - in many ways as it should be given the small difference on the scale. But I think everyone here knows that you could resubmit your 9.6 and provided nothing happens in transit that it just as likely as being reslabbed a 9.6, it could come back a 9.8.

I posted here before, but I resubmitted a couple submissions of failed 9.8 prescreens. I can’t recall the success rate, but nearly 50% came back as 9.8 the second round....

That doesn't surprise me but I have had the opposite happen. There were a few times where I got some books back and I really just had no freaking clue why they would have been rejected so I included them with my next sub. They always came back ungraded. Since then I never have tried to resubmit rejects.

From what I know about the pre-screen process it is really just one guy who gives the prescreen opinion. So if the one pre-screen guy kicks it it never gets to the actual graders. For moderns I think now it's usually two. A third grader only comes into play when the two don't agree. A prescreen can also get kicked at that point if it doesn't meet the requested level.