In the past decade, comics have fallen into two different categories when it comes to selling them; those that are not professionally graded, and those that are and are in a plastic slab by the Comic Grading Company.
If you have a comic which you want to be professionally graded by the CGC, you send it in, they slab it (put it in between two hard pieces of plastic where it stays until you crack it open, and they assign it a rating number. 9.8 are pretty well the highest you can get, there are a few 9.9s out there in the world and I don’t think there are any 10s.
Thing is, you can’t open the plastic without voiding the ranking the CGC has given it. I didn’t know what to think of this at first. On one hand I think it’s cool to preserve the comic books, but then I realized that you can’t even read the dang thing so it’s really just become a collectible and that’s it!
A few months ago I bid on some CGC graded comics that someone was selling out in the West end of Ottawa (side note: I love how in Ebay you can limit your search to a kilometer radius from your actual house. So instead of paying crazy shipping charges you can just look at what people are selling in your own town!) and in the end I ended up with one of them. But I only paid $1 for it. Steal! I don’t think the guy was impressed as you probably pay between $10-$15 to get these things professionally graded. This is a note for future Palmer…if you ever decide to go this route, be smart and only slab your worthy ones or you’ll end up like this guy.
Anyhow, I just figured if I won any for $1 I would just crack them open and read them anyhow. I did end up picking up the $1 issue last week and it’s pretty neat to look at it in its nice packaging and all, but that’s it! I can’t read it, I just look at the cover. What a waste!
That being said, getting your comics (or any other collectibles like a Wayne Gretzky rookie card) professionally graded is probably a good thing to do if you are planning to sell. Case in point, I just went on Ebay to look at how much Uncanny X-Men 266 sells for.
A 9.8 copy of this sold for $257! Meanwhile a non-CGC graded copy sold for $40.
What the heck? That’s a little insane. Who knows, the guy who just bought the $40 issue may find it’s in good condition, get it graded and then resell it at a profit! Isn’t that how the rich people of the world do it? 😉
Either way, it’s a crazy time to collect things…there is a vast difference between those who collect for fun and those who collect for profit.
