Had to choose between getting my comics graded or keeping them raw

I was sitting on a stack of 90s X-Men comics that I thought were in good shape. A local shop offered me $8 each raw or $20 each if I got them graded first. I sent 12 issues to CGC and it cost me about $35 per book with shipping. Three came back at 9.8 and I made way more than I expected on those. But the other nine got dinged for spine ticks I never noticed and I barely broke even. Would you guys gamble on grading a whole run or just sell as-is?

2 comments

2 Comments

david1232d ago

You said "I sent 12 issues to CGC and it cost me about $35 per book with shipping" and I gotta say that number seems a little high to me. If you're doing the economy tier and you ship a batch together the per book cost should be closer to $25 or $30 depending on the declared value. I think you might have used the standard tier or added fast return or something. The real gamble though is that you got lucky with those 9.8s because modern books are tough to get high grades on unless you personally pressed them first. For 90s X-Men especially the carded issues have those tiny spine ticks from the card stock being too thick. I'd say if you're sitting on a whole run just sell them raw unless you have a really sharp eye for defects. Grading is a total crapshoot and you only really win on the ones that come back 9.8 or higher.

nancy9292d ago

Yeah but I gotta push back a tiny bit on the card stock thing. I've cracked open a few 90s X-Men books and the carded issues are actually stiffer than the regular ones, so they tend to lay flatter in the slab. The real problem is those foil covers from like 1992-1994, especially the ones where the foil is peeling near the staples. I had a whole run of X-Men 25 that I thought were clean but two of them had micro tears right at the top staple you can barely see unless you tilt it under a light. So yeah the card stock isn't always the enemy, it's more the manufacturing quality from that era being all over the place.