CGC...BANNED ME?

So this may (not) come as a surprise to you but I loooove me some comic books. Long before I was a hardcore action figure collector and customizer I was an avid coming book collector. I worked at a LCS (Crush Comics in Castro Valley, CA) for a couple years and bought books every single Wednesday for about a solid decade before I finally gave it up. Reason for that are in my previous "No More Comics..." article that I wrote several years ago. But, despite that, I still love 'em, and from time to time I'll pick up a few key bronze/copper age books that I want to have in my collection.

Call me old fashioned but I try to stick with that era of comics because the hype over this modern stuff is, in my opinion, redonkulous. All this hype over virgin variant, 1:50 store incentive, exclusive-to-one-store covers is just silly. Do we not remember the 90s!? Do we not remember the 13 variants of Gen 13 #1 that everyone was dying for in 1994 and that are now worth less than they were then? A lot of these books are shipped straight from the store shelf (or maybe even the supplier), directly to these grading companies and we're supposed to be shocked and awed when they come back 9.8s? Or, we're supposed to spend top dollar for a book that shares that treasured 9.8 grade with literally thousands of other copies? I prefer to spend my money on the older stuff. The stuff that will retain its value and has a cool history to it. The stuff that's actually rare because people just tossed them out or threw them in a box. Not books that are basically manufactured to be "rare". That's essentially printing money and there's a moral grey area there that I'm not a fan of.

Anywho, I got distracted there. Back to the main reason for this long ass post. So, I was doing some googling a while back for grading guidelines, because I was looking to buy some raw books online and I wanted to see what the potential grades may be based on the flaws that I could see in the photos. I stumbled upon this year old CGC forum post where a member was questioning why CGC trimmed down their grading standards to vague, one sentence descriptions for each grading tier. As the internet does, several other members came to CGC's rescue and defended their practice saying thing like, their standards are proprietary and even comparing it to Coke's secrete recipe. Now, I have this love/hate relationship with these grading companies. I find the whole thing a bit suspicious and I hate how it's inflated the market and treats everything that's not a 9.8 like trash. But, I do find it necessary for online sales. I've been hosed more than a couple times buying raw "NM" books only to get them in hand and realize they're VF at best. So I get it. They're like this necessary evil with the bonus of making your comics look real purty on the wall. So after reading through everyone's post, and despite this whole discussion being a year old, I thought I'd chime in. "But wait a minute", you might be saying. "I clicked that there link and there ain't no Supertom post!" Well, well my astute friend, it happened to be the first time I posted to the CGC forums which means a moderator needs to approve it before it's published. So, I wrote out this long winded rant of sorts and threw it out there and kinda forgot about it...until now. Today, I was googling once again, this time for information about old CGC labels, and I find another forum link. I click on it, and I'm greeted with this lil' diddy:

I'm gonna go out on a limb here and say the moderator did not approve my post! LOL. I think I may have struck a nerve! Thankfully, I'm a frikin' genius and I copied the whole thing to a google doc because I had a feeling they'd be sensitive Sally's about this. So here it is in all its ban-worthy glory.

Sorry to stir up a year old post but I came across this searching for actual grading guidelines and I had to chime in.

We pay these companies to determine the value of our collectibles. Yeah they stamp a big ol' pretty number in the upper left corner but let's be honest. That number determines value, and .5 swing one way or another can change a book's value by hundreds of dollars, sometimes tens of thousands. We don't pay professionals to give us their gut feeling. If you hired a professional roofer to come inspect your roof, would it be acceptable if they just missed a few leaks here and there? I mean, if they did you'd probably have to call them back and they could charge you again. Then you can just shrug your shoulders and say, "Well, that's smart business." or "I can't blame them, detecting all those leaks is probably really really hard", or "leak detection is an art form, don't question their art!". The original standards were developed for a reason, so sellers could price their books accurately and so buyers wouldn't pay NM prices for a VF books. Of course with dealers we're trusting that they aren't trying to squeeze a few extra bucks out of us, but with CGC we're trusting professional graders. People who have been presumably trained to do this exact thing. They should have no skin in the game (or do they? More on that below). Their name is the Certified Guarantee Company but we're basically saying that they can't really guarantee anything? And we're OK with that?

It's also nonsense to think that their grading standards are some proprietary super secret thing that only they shall know. Other grading services post their guidelines. It's not at all comparable to Coke's secret recipe. If Coke revealed their recipe there'd be a thousand new cola products on the market within a year. Do we really think that if they revealed their grading guidelines that someone would steal that ultra valuable information and run them out of business? There's a whopping total of 3 grading services, one of which is seen as the RC Cola of grading services. And as I said, guidelines are already posted everywhere. Overstreet published a book about it for cryin' out loud! Do we really think CGC's guidelines are all that different? Now if you tell me they have some magic light bulb that can detect restoration or special microfiber gloves that can detect even the tiniest spine tick, then OK. Keep that on the down low. But come on, it's humans looking at books and finding flaws. There's no secret sauce in that.

Now I agree in lower grades things can get a bit messy. When a book looks like it's been dragged behind a horse and then ran through a rinse cycle, it can be tough to say if it's a 2.0 or a 2.5. But when you're talking about a 8.0 vs 8.5 or a 9.2 vs 9.6 it should be an exact science. Minor flaws should measure one range, significant flaws measure in another, major in another. So many of x type of flaw is allowed per grade. If you're a professional grader and you miss a flaw, then I'm sorry but you've done a bad job, just like if the roofer missed a leak.

But hey, what can we expect? CGC has plenty of shady business practices. Giving out 9.8s like candy knowing full well it leads to high sales which leads to more people sending books to them rather than a more strict grading company. Not disclosing how many graders they have on site at cons which would allow us to determine how many books each grader is touching per day (hint, it's probably way more than any human could accurately handle). Grading books straight off the press then sending off emails trying to get us to buy these ultra rare 9.8 Detective Comics #1000 (even though their census shows that they've graded over 4,000 9.8s. Heck, finding a 9.6 is actually rarer). Not that I just got one of those emails from them or anything. Good business? Sure. It's good business for pharmaceutical companies to convince us we need medications. It's good business for McDonald's to tell us that their whole white meat chicken is super duper yummy and not at all bad for you. But ethical? I don't think so.

But hey, the books sure do look pretty behind that plastic and they sell for 25% more than guide so what do we care!

Ok, so maybe I was a little salty while writing that but despite my intentional snarkyness and hyperbole, I think I brought up some valid points. I reached out to them to see if this was in fact the reason I was banned and sure enough, this was their response,

"Your message board account has been banned and will remain that way due to your post from several weeks ago. CGC has always allowed constructive and respectful feedback on the boards. Making posts that serve only to disparage your hosts and make unfounded accusations is not allowed and will not be tolerated."

Now, I don't really care that I was banned.  I can still sign out and read through the forums to my hearts content. I just can't share my thoughtful and well crafted ramblings anymore.  I don't think what I said was overly mean or crude.  My comments were no more "unfounded" than the ones praising their lack of transparency.  If they were completely unfounded, then there should be simple responses that would quickly shut me up, right? But, they didn't give anyone the chance to make such a retort. They just flat out banned me without notification. What I find interesting is you'd be hard pressed to find ANYTHING online, other then maybe some random comments on IG or YouTube, that brings these company practices into question. Even the big name YouTubers will briefly cover some of their questionable practices, but then end the discussion with "but I'm not gonna stop submitting books to them" or "but I still really like them".

So what say ye? Did I cross a line trying to post that? Should I just shut up and accept the fate of the comic industry and enjoy my raw books even though they're mostly trash tier 9.2s? Or should we start to look a bit deeper into what these companies are really after and how they're effecting the market. I'll leave you with these final thoughts. Why would they ban me for something like that? What harm could possibly come from my incredibly witty yet "disparaging" words? Are they worried what might happen if someone did really start to investigate their practices? I mean like some Morgan Spurlock type shit (seriously if anyone has his number hit me up).  What if someone discovered something that proved these companies weren't totally on the up-and-up? Could it be that if there was even a sliver of doubt that made people second guess the validity of their grading, it could potentially cripple the comic book market, send big name auction houses into a downward spiral and decrease the value of some collections by tens of thousands of dollars?  Hell, I donno. 

I'm still gonna send some books to CBCS though.  I like their new case.