What Exactly Are CGC Graded Comic Books And Why Should You Care?

This is a 'repost' from our Blog back in November 2006. It is repeated here today to help those 'mainstream' buyers who have been either calling or e-mailing us to either get their comics graded so they can sell them or are looking to buy but can't figure out how who to trust when it come to grading. Here is Tina's prior blog post: 

 

What Exactly Are CGC Graded Comic Books And Why Should You Care?

That is a question that we asked earlier in our eBay selling career.

For some time now we have been selling our comics as 'raw' comic books, meaning that they were 'unslabbed', and not graded by a 'third party'. The 'raw' comics were graded by my husband and then bagged with boards inserted to protect the comic book until it was sold.

My husband, Michael, has been a reader of comics since the late 1950's, a collector since the early 1960's, sold as a dealer at the early 1970's  San Diego Comic Cons, (SDCC), and has the experience of finding great deals at comic book conventions for sale in my eBay Featured Store in the 2000's.

We have all three Editions of the Overstreet Grading Guides, and our grading has been praised in many of our eBay positive feedbacks.

However, no matter how good you might think your grading is, there is always some prejudices involved while grading.  Michael doesn't particularly like slightly mis-wrapped covers and downgrades for those, but others would not.  Some collectors are a little more fussy about misplaced staples, while others place more emphasis on the spine.  How does one get around this grading dilema?

Well, we have been watching the 3rd party grader, CGC, for a while.  We finally decided to ship off several comics for their grading and encapsulation. Why? Because 'slabbed' encapsulated comics are becoming a 'commodity' instead of a collectible encased inside a plastic holder.

Indeed, there is even at least one web site that shows how CGC graded comics are faring sales wise and price wise. We have subscribed to the service at www.gpanalysis.com for CGC graded comics sales history.  The history goes back to September 2002, so there is now a little over four years of history.  That is why we know that one of our current CGC graded comics, Fantastic Four #17 in CGC 9.2 grade, is the highest known copy (per GPA) of that issue for sale, ( and will be when it hopefully sells at or above our reserve price), since 2002.

CBG, (Comics Buyer's Guide) has a great book out, called Standard Catalog of Comic Books 4th Edition, that we also have, but being in print makes it not as current as GPA is.  Plus it is a little unwieldly being so bulky.  However it is a great reference for those that don't want to pay a monthly fee for a service such as GPA.  CBG also had a monthly magazine that showed the latest averages for NM 9.4 CGC sales for popular comic book titles.

Back to the main theme of this post.... With 3rd party graded comics, even though there are some questions on their grading standards on some discussion boards, at least the comic is stated to be a certain grade, which the seller and potential buyer can recognize that an authority is stating as such. 

Otherwise some sellers would tend to overgrade while some buyers would tend to undergrade, and in older comics a 'half grade' difference can mean hundreds of dollars. The 'slabbed' comics have a seal, which when broken, voids the stated grade. A picture of me holding some recent CGC slabbed comics can be seen below.

While we will continue to sell 'raw unslabbed' comics, we will be joining the growing numbers of dealers who are submitting their 'raw' higher grade books to CGC for grading.  It is far easier from a marketing standpoint to have the large decimals at the top left of the holder show exactly what stated grade the encapsulated comic book is.  Additionally each slabbed comic comes with a certification number that can be looked up for additional details about the graded comic.

This post is not meant to be an endorsement for CGC, or any other 3rd party grader, it is meant to state that in the current evolution of e-selling on the internet means that standardization has to be in place, and we have decided to  Make It So for our current and future customers!

Thanks for listening!

Tina

And now...Thanks for reading this popular culture - comics - comic book - comic books blog post and feel free to post your comments below!

 

Michael