The difference is it’s someones opinion that you should (or should not) trust going into it and you can make your buying decision based off that.
Crack the cgc 9.8 with the color breaks and submit to cbcs. See what happens?
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You can say buy the book not the label all day but I can’t see the book when I buy online. I can see pictures and I can zoom in but I can’t really see all the details until I hold the book in my own hands and move it around in the light.
Then why can’t they see them? lol
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I think we should all solely trust our own opinions, and not the opinion of an arbitrary stranger.
Use the arbitrary strangers opinion to maybe use as a baseline for your personal opinion, but never buy something based solely on the opinion of a stranger, imo. 
Buy the book, not the label.
There are definitely better looking books in equal, or similar, grades.
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There’s no quick answer but I trust the CGC grade or the CBCS grade and I am comfortable buying or selling that comic. Based on my own grading skills I’m only comfortable listing comic as low, mid, or high grade.
Fair enough of a point. However, there are ways to look at a book before you buy online too. You certainly can message, and ask the seller for detailed photos of certain areas. And honest sellers would mention it, imo. If I’m buying online, I would want to deal with honest sellers.
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I am a Moon Knight junkie. I have spent hours looking at #1 through the years, and I know that book very, very well. I have seen 9.8’s that are not centered and they are easy to spot; they don’t even have the lettering on the cover any more. The book is clean and looks great, but it should be no where near a 9.8; that is a MAJOR manufacturing flaw. It doesn’t make any difference how books were printed then, or what might be considered acceptable from the printing at that time. If a book cannot have “x”, then it cannot have it, whether it is a Hulk 181, brand new ASM 55, or an X-men 1. If there was truly a standard, it would apply universally. It doesn’t.
Many times, in looking at slabs, I can see the imperfections and, if I really wanted to buy one, I would never make a purchase from the bloke who took one picture with their phone from 10 feet away. Yes, you cannot see everything from a posting, but if you can see it from a posting, it sure is going to be worse in person, regardless of who gave their opinion on a day somewhere.
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Fair enough. To each their own.
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Yeah, that 9.6 looks worse than my 9.0 ASM194.
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So there are moon knight 1’s that are centered and some that aren’t. Those should be graded accordingly. A centered one should receive a higher grade. Some comics have knowns defects that affect the entire print run. Should those be knocked down to 9.6 or 9.4 automatically or should they be judged against the others when they were all printed the same?
I knew I liked you. Me too!
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Yes, that would be my opinion. How else would we even attempt to have a standard grading system if allowances are made to allow defects to be permissible? I also think it should be just as easy to get a 10 as a 9.8, all things being equal. There are some stellar books out there, and I know a grading company is looking for an error instead of seeing the ones that are actually present.
I do understand your feelings on the grading, and for better or worse, it is the system that is available to us. I would like more protection for my books too, but I think their error rate is much higher than we really want to believe with these grading companies.
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I know that there are a lot more of us out there davidbitterbaum!!!
Yep, sometimes you will see sellers that have 3+ copies of the same book with the same grade for sale. They will have different prices on them. Why is that? Because they perceive one to look better than the other.
I understand that more at lower grades but at 9.8, it should “almost” be flawless.
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I was at a show two years back and was going to buy a Dime Press #4. The dealer handed me the slab. Going from the outside of the case to the inside sealed chamber was a hair. It was sealed in. I asked the dealer if he had any more copies. He said no. I passed on the book because of the hair. It was gross. I have books with Newton rings. I am ok with them. I also have slabbed comics where parts of the book have flecked off and are sealed inside the slab.
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That is gross.
Buy the book, not the hair.
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Blonde? Brunette? Red?
Pubic?
You should’ve bought it and contacted cgc. They would’ve reslabbed it free.