Comics Guaranty LLC

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Comics Guaranty LLC

Type	Private
Founded	Parsippany, New Jersey (January 4, 2000)
Headquarters	Sarasota, Florida
Area served	Worldwide
Key people	Steve Borock, President Mark Haspel, Senior Grader Paul Litch, Senior Grader Chris Friesen, Restoration Expert
Industry	Collectibles
Services	Comic book grading
Parent	Certified Collectibles Group
Website	www.cgccomics.com

Comics Guaranty LLC, also known as CGC, is a Sarasota, Florida comic book grading service. CGC is an independent member of the Certified Collectibles Group of companies. It is the first independent and impartial third party grading service for comic books. The company was launched in early 2000 and has since gone on to become an important yet controversial part of the comic book collecting community. The company has been described as "extremely important" to the comic book collection market by Robert Overstreet, author of the Overstreet Comic Book Price Guide.^[1] CGC's current President, Steve Borock, is also the company's primary grader.^[2]

1 Process
2 Criticism
3 References
4 External links

[edit] Process

A CGC-graded copy of Action Comics #1

Comic books and comic-related magazines can be submitted to CGC for grading and encapsulation either through an authorized dealer or directly by the owner through CGC's Internet partners (at a 10% discount). They may also be submitted to the company by paying an annual membership fee. The company also sends representatives to several comic book conventions.^[3] Upon receipt, the comics are inspected by five experts^[4] in a temperature- and humidity-controlled environment.^[5] The graders look for damage and signs of alteration. The comic books are then graded on a scale from 0.5 to 10.^[6]

In addition to the numeric grade, CGC also uses color-coded labels to categorize comics: ^[7]

Label	Definition
Universal (blue)	a standard comic book
Restored (purple)	a book that has evidence of restoration, either amateur (A) or professional (P), combined with the descriptors slight (S), moderate (M), or extensive (E)
Qualified (green)	a book with a significant defect that needs specific description. For example, an otherwise "near mint" condition book with a 4-inch back cover tear would be given a Qualified grade of "VF/NM 9.0, back cover 4-inch tear."
Signature Series (yellow)	an unrestored book signed by one of its creators, as witnessed by an employee of CGC
Signature Series Restored (yellow/purple)	an authenticated signed book showing evidence of restoration
Modern (red)	No longer in use, originally used to distinguish modern comics

After grading, the comics are placed in an inner well - a sealed sleeve of Barex, a highly gas-impermeable plastic polymer.^[8] Then, the comics are sonically sealed in a hard plastic, tamper-evident holder. This process is often referred in slang as "slabbing". A label is affixed at the top indicating the title, date, grade, page quality, and any notes, such as notable creators. Books which would be damaged by encapsulation are returned without this process. Examples of this include books with cover overhang (i.e., the cover protrudes beyond the interior book), some European variants, and Museum Editions of modern comics. In such cases, the grading fees are refunded and the book is returned ungraded. Although ashcans are graded, CGC will not grade certain black-and-white books (e.g., Eerie # 1) as these books may easily be counterfeited.

[edit] Criticism

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For highly-valued comics, a higher grade can result in a price difference of thousands of dollars. Similarly, a comic book marked by CGC with the purple "Restored" label (known by collectors as the "purple label of death") can suffer a significant price reduction.^[5] As a result, CGC's actions are highly scrutinized by collectors. There has been controversy regarding CGC's policies on conservation, restoration, and trimming, as well as concerns about its impartiality.

[edit] Grading

Not all experts agree with CGC's grades. The comic book store chain Mile High Comics offers their customers a refund if a comic book which they evaluated as "Near Mint" is given a lower grade by CGC.^[9] For its part, Comics Guaranty LLC has been tight-lipped about its grading standards. In 2001, when the Comics Buyer's Guide changed its "Price Index" column to add Overstreet's grading definitions to CGC's grades, CGC requested that this change be reversed, stating that Overstreet's definitions were not necessarily the same as its own. When asked by the Comics Buyer's Guide to clarify its definitions, CGC declined. However, in July 2003, CGC announced that it had decided to fully adopt Overstreet's grading standards.^[10] In October of that year, CGC President Steve Eichenbaum stated that although the company had adopted the Overstreet standards, CGC's standards remained unchanged. Eichenbaum cited the 2002 publication of the 2nd edition of The Official Overstreet Comic Book Grading Guide – with input from CGC's graders – as the reason for the July announcement, stating that "there is now little difference between Overstreet and CGC."^[11] In reporting on the subject, Comics Buyer's Guide reporter Nathan Melby asked, "Who adopted whose standards?"^[11] According to Mile High Comics owner Chuck Rozanski, prior to the publication of the new grading guide, Overstreet was negotiating a "middle ground" between the standards established in their 1992 guide and the stricter CGC standards. Rozanski questioned the wisdom of changing Overstreet's standards – which could greatly lower the value of several collections – in order to achieve a "political solution" with CGC.^[12] In September 2003, CGC changed the labels it puts on graded comics, removing most descriptive terms used by Overstreet ("near mint", "fair", etc.), instead using just CGC's own numeric grading scale.^[13] On CGC's message board, Steve Borock explained that this change was made so that the numeric grade would be larger and easier to see. He added that the descriptive terms which were removed are becoming obsolete.^[14] Overstreet now uses both the numeric point grade and the alpha descriptive grade in their annual price guide and their official grading guide.^[15]

After the discovery of a micro-trimmed issue of Fantastic Four #3 which CGC did not detect, other undetected restorations were found and CGC posted an official announcement, banning the restorer, Jason Ewert, from doing business with CGC.^[16] CGC also announced on their message board that they would recheck any and all Ewert books for free.^[17]

[edit] Restoration

There is disagreement among comic book collectors on the definition of restoration. Some collectors feel that any work done to improve the quality of a book should be defined as restoration. CGC defines it as "treatment that returns the comic book to a known or assumed state through the addition of non-original material for aesthetic enhancement".^[18] CGC does not consider the following to be restoration and comics with these conditions may receive their blue Universal label: tape removal, dry cleaning (i.e., erasing pencil writing or surface grime with an eraser or other object), tucking loose wraps back under a staple,^[19] disassembly and reassembly of a comic,^[20] certain staple replacement, and pressing.^[21]

Pressing, that is, using heat and pressure to smooth out wrinkles, is one the most controversial topics in comic book collecting. Some collectors feel that such changes should be called restoration.^[5] CGC's president, Steve Borock, has expressed a different view. Interviewed for the Iron Slab website column Borock said, "Who cares? Really, when you get down to it, dealers and smart hobbyists have been doing it for years and years." He added, "The biggest complainers are the guys who don't want the collectors to have a level playing field. Taking a bend or fold that does not break color out of a comic book is not a bad thing. It is not like you are adding glue and/or color touch, using something artificial, to bring paper closer back to look like it's original state. You are bringing it back closer to its original state. I and many of the top collectors and dealers have never seen a problem with this."^[22] In an interview with the Wall Street Journal, Borock offered the analogy, "When you're buying a used car, do you say to the guy, 'Hey, did you wash this?' "^[5] Critics say that this policy encourages sellers to press comics without disclosing it to buyers.^[5]

Also, if it meets CGC's approval, disassembly and reassembly of a comic may not be counted as restoration.^[20] In one case, a book which had previously received a low CGC grade (4.0) was given a much higher rating by CGC when re-submited (9.0). After receiving several messages about the issue, Borock responded on the CGC's message board.^[23]

[edit] Impartiality

Various concerns have been raised regarding CGC's impartiality and independence from other companies. In October 2005,^{[citation needed]} CGC's parent company, the Certified Collectibles Group, announced the launch of a new separate company called Paper Conservation Service (PCS) with CGC's main restoration expert Chris Friesen as its President. The company's stated purpose was to "perform conservation to prolong the life of a comic book". PCS defined conservation to include deacidification, structural repair, reinforcement, pressing, and dry cleaning. The announcement also differentiated between conservation and restoration, saying that the company would not perform services which it defined as restoration. PCS also planned to offer consulting services regarding comic book conservation.^[24] However, the Certified Collectibles Group announced PCS's dissolution in April 2006, two months after the company's planned incorporation. Steven Eichenbaum, CEO of the Certified Collectibles Group cited the perceived conflict of interest between CGC and PCS as the reason for the decision.^[25] One concern was that comics with restoration could be "unrestored" to the point where they would receive the blue Universal label and could then be sold as if the comic had never been restored. Steve Borock confirmed this possibility in an interview ^[22] and also on CGC's chat board.^[21] Another issue is that Jim Halperin, co-chairman of collectibles auctioneer Heritage Auction, owns stock in CGC. This has led to accusations of Heritage Auction giving preferential treatment to auction items graded by CGC. Although the stock ownership has been confirmed by both Halperin and Steve Borock, they deny any favoritism.^[26]^[22]