Lessons Learnt: What you need to know when submitting comics for grading (CGC)

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Membership Selection

The first question someone has to answer is: Which membership is the right one. CGC just recently (01/24/2024) announced a (big) change in the membership benefits.

available membership tiers since 01/24/2024

Someone may assume that with these changes, the decision became simplier. Well good news is, it is, if you "only" plan to send in comics in a small amount, once a year. If you plan big, and want to send in multiple by getting the most for your money, it may not. The following overview tries to explain the "dilemma".

overview of costs per submitted comic

The previous table shows that if you plan to submit:

  • up to six modern comics (1975 - present)  over a year, go with the free tier
  • between seven and 60 modern comics, the premium tier is your best choice
  • more than 60 modern comics, you save the most if you go with elite

Summarized: To pick the right membership, you should decide on the amount of comics per year that you plan to submit. Small amounts between one and six, go with free, otherwise a good strategy for the first year, is to go with premium (because even if you would go slightly over the 60 comics, the savings are small and you can always change to elite once you are certain you have 60 more to send, since the benefits are reapplied with an upgrade of a membership).

Other Things to Know

There are some other things that are good to know, when submitting comics. Weirdly - or maybe sadly - I haven't seen any good YouTube videos covering these things. The videos I have found are covering mostly:

  • how to start a submission and enter the information (which is trivial), or
  • how to pack your comics so that CGC won't lose them (never happened to me ðŸ¤ž), for which CGC has a pretty good news article/video themselves (you can find it here)

So long introduction, short list. The "other things" to know are:

  1. Send in 25 comics packages, because it is the best packaging you get for the handling and shipping fees. Let's look at an example to understand this statement. Assume that you plan to send in 30 comics. CGC works in 25 comic batches (they will break it down on arrival) and you pay shipping per batch (so one 25-comic-package, and one 5-comic-package). In the end, the second has "only" 5 comics, but it costs only a few dollars less than the 25 in regards of handling and shipping.
  2. Use the "Grade Pre-Screen" option when submitting. Most comics have a lower limit in regards of grading, i.e., if it's below a 9.2 it's not worth it. If that is the case (and again most often it is), bundle your comics by lowest grade and set the option. You won't pay $25.00 (or $22.50, $20.00 depending on your membership) and instead only $9 (sadly, there is no discount on this). Yes, you won't get a slabbed comic back, but what is it worth to have a (modern/not worthy) comic slabbed for $20.00+ if the value is below $20.00 in a low grad.

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