Folks.. a little history of slabbing comic books is in order
first of all, the true reason for slabbing comic books is a financial reason
Slabbing comic began as a response in part to investors
definition of investor: a person who has no historical interest in a
comic. The item is only regarded as a monetary unit and frequently,
the investor has never even read the comics he collects.
These investors first started coming into comics from the baseball
card business and then the coin business back in the 1970's and we
saw a huge exodus of them in the 1980's . naturally because those
businesses both have had slabbing for many years, it was only a
matter of time before the demand for slabbed comics for a uniform
grade came about.
Myself, I have never like slabbed comics. I call them "coffin books"
they are dead, you can no longer study them
But the main impetus was this..
Investor A goes to the New York Comicon and buys a copy of Superman #
1 in what that particular dealer called Very Fine. The investor pays
$50,000 for it, puts it in his briefcase & then goes looking for more
buys around the room.
Then he spies another Supe #1. This dealer, who is a very tight
grader has a nicer copy for sale that he calls Fine and is asking
$30,000. The investor shows him the book he bought, the dealer says
it is Very Good and the investor just lost over $30,000 walking 100
feet from the other dealer's table. The investor promptly tells every
dealer to f*ck off, they're all thieves.. and his money never comes
into the room again.
Obviously this is a serious issue and at first a uniform grading
system was put forth, but there was no way to implement this uniform
system unless each book was vetted by one person or entity.
Enter CGC (Comics Guarantee Company)
Now an investor can walk into a convention and if a book is slabbed,
graded Very Fine... every dealer in the room will honor that grade
and now the unscrupulous seller can no longer sell that VG as VF
That part was a good thing. However, the other side is that now,
these books have skyrocketed in some areas due to collectors who want
(at first) only books that grade 8.5 or better. During that time,
books over 9.0 were deemed incredibly rare and worth a premium. Then
due to the "population report" that is easily checked at CGC's
website, buyers began to see that 8.5-9.0 were fairly common on some
titles/issue and now they began to want only 9.2 and above & the
prices on 9.0 began to stagnate & then drop
now the cream is 9.6 and where a 9.2 may demand a premium over price
guide value of 1.5X, a 9.6 may demand a premium of 5X and a 9.8 10X.
There is a sale of for instance Spawn #1 that is mind boggling.. a
10.0 sold for $5000 while guide mint is only $30, because it was the
only copy graded at 10.0 at that time (there are more since, and the
price has dropped)
Now slabbing is used for issues of all grades as low as 1.5 (good plus)
another aspect of slabbing was that Restored comics have tumbled in
value (as rightly they should). Nobody wants restored comics anymore.
Myself, as a historian I abhor slabbing. Some comics there are only a
few copies, no reprints. So how do you research that book if all 3
known copies are slabbed?? It is a conundrum
I think if lobby cards get slabbed, it works against the real
collector, however where I think slabbing hurts comic historians,
there is no such caveat for lobby cards. Like baseball cards and
coins, they only have 2 sides and no interiors. Also, there is no
argument that a slab prevents an item from incurring new damage due
to improper handling.
One thing to keep in mind, as a dealer.. a box of unslabbed comics
holds 150 books (small size comic box)
the same box holds only 35 slabbed comics and weighs more
ultimately I do not care for slabbing and I think it is un;likely in
posters because as has been said, too few investors and a smaller
hobby than comics by a factor of at least 100. I also do not see coin
& baseball card sellers coming in to posters because of the size of
the market & the enormous learning curve. Everyone wants to sell
Frankenstein, King Kong , Casablanca.. but there aren't enough copies
of these posters for them to trade as often as some coins or comics.
Superman #1 must be about 1000 copies extant. If we stacked up every
1931 Frankenstein lobby card found it may not be 200 cards. It is a
different market
Rich==================
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