Expectations & Standards

Just wondering what your expectations are when purchasing ratio variants or store exclusives. When I purchase non-variants, I tend accept that some of the items I receive will be 9.4 standard and not necessarily better. I accept these as par for the course. (Luckily I have two suppliers who hit 9.6/9.8 standards on the vast majority of books.)

However, if I pay £25-£150+ for a variant, I have always expected to see a really clean item which is free from tics, creases, dents, etc. I will accept small pressible imperfections, as I tend to press before most gradings.

Am I being reasonable in this expectation? I have had one seller turn a bit nasty when I wanted to return a brand new ratio variant that I purchased for £50 ($70 US) with a couple of colour-breaking tics, so wondered what standards you expect?

My reasoning is that if I buy a 1:100, 200 or 500 and it grades at 9.4 I am unlikely to have an item that is worth the purchase price + pressing/grading cost…unless I get very lucky.

What’s your take?

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If it’s not cover price and it’s a newly released book I’m paying a premium for (anything over cover), I expect 9.6 or better or they better knock some dollars off the price.

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What Poyo said.

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I won’t buy those high ratio books or very expensive exclusives because I’m afraid of getting stuck with an “acceptable” 9.2 grade.

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I concur. I would expect a 9.6 condition on most new books that I would pay a premium on, and would probably seek some sort of partial refund for anything less.

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If I am paying a premium on some exclusive I expect a 9.8. The least would be a 9.6 condition. They should have comics put to aside to make sure of this. As for the ratio comic it should be the same thing, but it would be more understanding that some type of damage occurred. I would think you should get at least a 9.6 and if a customer complained they should work something out with them.

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Thanks all that is reassuring.

Absolutely agree. What is the point if it’s a 9.2 or even 9.4? It’s going to be worth less than the purchase + grading cost. I wouldn’t want any modern in 9.2 even for my PC if I had paid a lot for it.

Which is what I thought would happen, but the guy got seriously uptight and asked me not to buy from him again!

That’s when you respond kindly, will do, you can count on me never shopping at your store again and likely never recommending it either.

Why someone would tell you to not come back is just bad for business.

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Yeah, that’s pretty much what happened. I was super-polite when indicating I wasn’t happy, but he just went off at me. He let me return the book and I tried to be concilliatory and appreciative, but he just asked me not to come back. So I didn’t.

And then you tell the world what shop it is here so people can not waste their time with people who conduct their business in such ways… Nobody wants to deal with the Comic Book Guy from The Simpsons!

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