Rant: I used to mock graded comics until I saw a beat-up ASM 129 sell for $300 raw

For years I thought paying for a slab was a waste. Why lock up a book you can't even read? Then I watched a guy at my local shop in Pittsburgh try to sell a CGC 9.0 copy of Batman 423 for $400 while a raw one in similar shape sat for $50. The graded one sold in a day. Now I'm torn between thinking it's a scam and admitting it protects value. Anyone else flip on this or still hate grading?

3 comments

3 Comments

thomas.parker27d ago

Man, that Batman 423 story hits way too close to home. Same thing happened to me with a New Mutants 98 at a show in Philly last year. Raw copy was sitting there for like $60, nobody touched it. Then a graded 9.8 went for $350 in the same room and the seller had people lined up. Completely flipped my opinion on the whole thing. It's not about the reading or the plastic case, it's about the certainty that you're getting exactly what the label says, and that alone makes people pay more.

wilson.sam15d ago

This whole thread is making me feel vindicated about something that happened to me at a convention in Chicago. A dealer had a raw Amazing Spider-Man 300 for $80 and literally no one looked at it, but two tables over a 9.6 slabbed copy was priced at $400 and moved in like an hour. It's wild how the plastic case flips a switch in people's brains, but I've been burned on raw copies with hidden spine ticks before so I get the appeal.

wilson.sam27d ago

You gotta learn to check the raw bins first and flip that mindset. If you see a raw book you like, grab it and ask the seller if they'll cut a deal on a grading service or just throw it in a bag and board and call it a day. The people paying $350 for a 9.8 are buying the promise, not the book itself. If you can get a raw copy for $60 and pop it into a clean Mylar (seriously, the difference a Mylar makes is huge), you're eating good compared to the guy who dropped six times that. I've had a few raw books come back as 9.6s from CGC and it completely wrecked my whole "grading is a scam" attitude, you know? It's just a different game entirely.