i agree on the aspect that it's cool to have a few graded ones for display that are special such as limited special editions, signed, or just maybe just your favorite volume of all time, idk. but for basic volumes i don't think i'll ever care for it and it kinda strays away from the sole purpose of manga.. to read and look back at and have on the shelf.. graded stuff just feeds into the rare = better and spend the most money in the community issue.
I think for manga it should be the opposite. If the junk limited books become the valuable ones, you'll now see manga come in 9 different covers and we don't want that. I think the oldest, oldest versions should be worth something in high condition.
I have mishushi vol 8,9 ,10 omnibus brand new I wonder if I should grade it ,I had two one I read and the other never I know a used is going for like 275 if I grade my never read one i will keep in my private collection .
@@ThePromG Yup I have some rare rare RARE volumes from the 90s. All signed and probably around 10k lol. You can't find these... Good luck searching for 8 years and come up empty handed. A lot of the old mangas from defunct companies are just not for sale. I badly want to send them in, but a little scared as well.
Also one thing I forgot to mention: Beckett stated that they WILL NOT be grading sealed manga! If you send a manga volume in the original plastic, they will unwrap it to assess page condition 🤐
It was inevitable. In Japan, this is normal practice, to care about edition and condition for legendary titles. Right now there are people who go to every comic book and anime shop and buy up stuff they know is low in supply. In Japan, this common place with these people who hunt down old versions of manga to resell for profit. And old classic volumes can go for hundreds and thousands each.
Also, unless the manga is an adults only rating manga, it doesn't normally come sealed. That's just some person getting minimum wage with a shrink wrap roll and a blow dryer. And that plastic seal in the long run is likely very bad for the paper. People have been serious about pop culture paper collectibles since the 70s and in the 80s, both the baseball card and comic book collector industries realized that plastic holders/sheets/bags and boards were all highly acidic, turning the paper yellow and sticking to the paper.
I was a Comic book collector bought some CGC 9.8, 9.2 blah blah blah now there companies been lying outta there butt causing problems grading Blemishes now at high grades. I'll be buying Manga like crazy and wrapping it in nice protectors but having graded companies do there thing complete waste of time customize your own display case and be proud of it.
It may be negative press, but it’s still lots of publicity. I’m curious how much Beckett has invested into this project (advertising, labor, materials) and how safe of a venture this is for them given they’ve been offering similar services forever
Like you said, this is cool for special editions/ singed books, but other than that, I don't see many people using this. In American comics there are 2 types of comics that people get graded : first appearances and more modern 1:25 , 1:100 variants. Manga doesn't really have this system in place for creating artificial scarcity with variants. That said if this does start to happen I can see cgc jumping on this but with the recent debacle with people opening their cases I don't see this happening any time soon.
It might be too soon, but it will eventually take hold. Old stuff needs to be encapsulated for protection. Anything old, OOP, misprints or simply fat bank $ are the perfect candidates for grading. It's the same with American comics. Barely anyone is sending in modern comics unless it's a key issue. The same will happen with manga. No 1 is going to grade and encapsulate a new issue, it serves no purpose. I say in 10 years grading for manga will take off hard because it will be needed then. The 90s and early 2000s are going be prime real estate and even Japanese releases or doujins.
Grading manga just says we see this as big as comics and games. Sure you can argue a card is for looking and playing. Vs books and games are for playing and reading. If people want to test the waters and grade their items fine. But if this was unprofitable then the ones that were graded will be.
I’d understand someone wanting to grade say a 1st edition gold lettering one piece volume 1. But who would grade chainsaw man… it’s literally common as the cold.
I can easily see Beckett pairing with Viz or Seven Seas to sell variant covers of popular manga already pre-graded in a 9.8 slab, just like comics. And yes, people will buy it.
To me, it looks like Beckett is trying to do this with certain harder-to-obtain manga like collector's editions or signed copies which I think is cool to an extent. Having a framed signed copy of a manga from my favorite Author is great. However, paper is still paper and regardless it will still yellow and fade over time which I feel defeats the purpose of grading them compared to comics which have better print and paper quality. Also, will this be specific to normal, viz-sized manga or stuff larger like the Berserk Hardcovers
They’ve said for now grading will only be available for normal-sized tankoban volumes, but I bet they’ll expand to bigger sizes if this is successful. And I agree, I hope they market this more towards special books and not your typical common ones
Really cool, but I personally will not grade anything from my collection, almost impossible to find mint condition manga nowadays and I don’t think the cost is worth it and I’m sure the graded volumes are gonna go for ridiculous prices
I'm not gonna lie, I've bought plenty of perfect condition mamga from my Barnes and noblie. I've gotten them straight out the back, right of the truck before they even put them out cause I ask if they have it. I've also gotten them straight from the shelf in perfect condition. It very possible, but it don't always be their fault. Yen press corners are horrible and automatically be come to the shops with ripped corners. Even manga tht be in plastic be having a light blck or brown line on a random page in the chat bubble😂😂😂
I feel like manga grading is like any other collectible grading, it seems great in theory but it doesn't really offer anything that you can't tell for yourself. If a volume is in mint condition or has minor blemishes, you can see that already. I get paying for it if it's something super rare and you're going to sell it but beyond that it kinda seems like a waste of money to me. As for using as a display or conversation piece, it's definitely an option but there are cheaper shadowbox alternatives if that's all you care about. I mean do what you want with your money but it's not something I'm gonna be doing anytime soon!
I’m very interested to see how the “grade and flip” market will affect manga as that’s what I most closely associate with grading: You do it for the chance to earn profit. Now will any volume actually be worth more to people sealed up and unable to read it? I think some will see it that way but who knows 🤔
This came out of nowhere. We won't really know for a while if people actually buy slabs off people. I could possibly see something like Gold Foil OP volumes being desired. Other than that not much else Interesting to see where we'll be in 20 years
Well maybe there will be a standard on pricing based on condition in resell market. I think ex-lib being sold at maximum resell price is more ludicrous.
I think the fact that ex-lib copies of rare volumes ultimately don’t affect the price or desirability in super substantial ways is a negative for grading. We’ve seen historically that OOP collectors can look past things like that for the sake of just owning and reading a rare volume they need
It’s funny that the highest was a 9.6 haha, didn’t even have a 9.8. But damaged books drives me nuts, I will re buy a book if I’m not fully happy with the condition. Most of my manga is near perfect condition.
If BGS was smart, they would copy PSA and make a set registry since manga is often in volumes and people who really want a manga want every volume/issue. The PSA set registry allowed highly specialized high end collectors to build public sets for all to observe. And thus building collections became a huge thing in grading. For example, if you want to build a particular favorite set like 1990 Marvel (Impel) 162 cards or 1983 Topps baseball 792 cards at PSA 10. Then you have to get every single card in PSA 10, including the commons. Then you get some weird anomalies like card 562 in PSA 10 is worth $250 bucks because it's rarely seen in PSA 10, only 2 have been graded to 10 or worse, 0 have been graded to 10. You can also see who is building such sets and who is ahead. Other people may collect a certain player like Derek Jeter in baseball or Wayne Gretzky in hockey and they want all 10s, they will collect every single card of that player that PSA says is a legitimate licensed card and again you can see everyone's progress. BGS was late in the set registry game for sports cards but if they're the first in manga, they can get their foothold in that first and own it. But, BGS will need to not be so strict on grading if they do this...having the 9.2, 9.7 like these kind of grades will make it difficult to get whole sets like that and so it won't take off. And given the nature of manga, collecting graded sets seems to just make sense if you want to get graded at all...
i hate this so much, entire one piece in 9.8 condition lets go. Old manga should go in book offs not slabs. People do not read their collections to the point of now putting the books in plastic slabs. i like picking up a 20 year old manga to read, now i have to consider it a collectable ???????
It's like slabbing collected editions... signed or variants would be fine but old/rare would drop in price the moment a reprint/collector's edition comes out...
From a collectors point of view and how comics having been graded, I think this has been forthcoming a long time ago. Manga has basically moved across to the mainstream of Netflix like One Piece, Cowboy Bebop, Dragonball etc. You will have ppl like me who have old manga comics sitting somewhere in the garage and wanting to preserve them and if it adds any value, then sure it’s a bonus, the only thing is the grading prices is too steep at the moment.
NGL I don’t hate this. Haven’t checked the dimension requirements but I hope they allow Japanese volumes to be graded. I literally have a few that I use as display pieces next to statues.
I think since most Japanese volumes are smaller than English prints they would grade them. Whether they have the expertise for Japanese volumes or not is a different story
It’s absolutely ridiculous, the entire reason for graded comics is the number of them is limited, once a floppy comic comes out DC don’t reprint the comic a year later. Most manga is always in print.
Speaking of dumbest things people spent their money on in manga. That One-Punch Man "variant" cover. You got scammed by the publisher, because everywhere where manga comes in dust jackets that's the standard cover under it.
dumb lol i remember reading about game grading and how the company was manipulating the prices for games and ppl would buy expensive rare games hoping to resell and end up losing money. they just want to take advantage of idiots. they see ppl pay crazy amounts for out of print manga on ebay so they think its good to bring manga grading
I think the WATA Games market manipulation was an isolated incident, and I highly doubt Becketts intentions are malicious. I wonder if we’ll see a massive drop off eventually with graded manga though 🤔
It's not an isolated incident. Some consolidation already happened with graders and high-end auction houses in the collectible space. I believe that happened after Jobst's report. This whole plan to grade manga is as cash grabby as graded VHS. Grading only works if you can trust the people rating things. If you are a collector, you should be skeptical simply because you don't know who is doing it and what their credentials are. As collectors, we already know that different types of manga are printed with different paper, and different types fade differently. Some editions are even printed with different types of paper. This announcement proclaims that Beckett has people who know the history of printing of each manga published and is able to make an assessment on the quality of editions to give it a grade. We should know WHO that person is in the community by now if that person existed - that person would be an amazing subject matter expert who consults with other collectors about manga. But we don't. Hence the whole "third party unbiased declaration". This whole thing feels like they are just going to a different collecting community and reusing their comic/card grading people to expand simply because they've graded paper and cardboard in the past. THAT screams Logan Paul resealed booster boxes to me. Would they know a manga-ka's signature if they come across one? Be very wary and only treat grading as a novelty and that number (which creates the FOMO) should not be chased. Know that grades could change due to improper storage deteriorating paper despite it being slabbed. If the scene for graded copies ever reaches an insane amount, you SHOULD be cautious.
I don't think that this is bad. I can see this useful for really rare and old volumes. As any collecting hobby, grading is part of it. Why should it be different for manga? Now when it comes to me, I'd rather spend the money for new volumes rather than buy an expensive volume. There's a lot of manga out there to be read.
Long time comic collector. These will be worthless. Single comic issues are representative of huge, captivating moments in history with the best artwork the time could offer. Even cover art on tankoban is lack luster in this regard. These books will be worth less than the cost to slab.
99% of people who consider themselves having a manga "collection" actually just have a pile of books they read. They aren't collectors and these bunches of books are not collections. For example, if you buy mass produced Berserk hardcovers and you consider Berserk to be one of your most favorite manga, then you're a reader, not a collector. And that's perfectly fine. If you value the original versions more than hardcovers and box sets, with a few exceptions like Akira, then you're a collector. 99+% of those who buy manga are of these reader types and for those manga people grading is not for them. But that 1% who want status symbols and value the OG over the latest thing, a high grade sealed manga volume they never plan to touch again and didn't want anyone to touch it, grading is for them. Grading came to coins first, in the 80s. 99% said it was dumb. It became such an institution in coins, PSA and Beckett BGS brought it to sports cards in the 90s and then to all cards including gaming cards. Once it became an institution in card collecting, in the 00s it came to comics. And now that it's an institution in comics, it has come to manga. Will it work in manga? Not sure, since the industry is not really that much of a hobby...the manga people paid a ton for in the 2010s like Monster, now are worth cover price (which is low, the farther back you go, the lower the cover price is in history). And in comics, people routinely paid more money for individual comic book issues even after they were reprinted in trade paperback volumes. For example, you can buy a New Mutants trade paperback of the Rob Liefeld run for cover price or less, like $12 plus ship on Amazon right now for a used copy. But a copy of New Mutants 98, the content of which is in that trade, went for well over $800 (1st Deadpool...by the way this book tanked with the recent Ryan Reynolds news...). So that's a difference. People in manga pay a ton for stuff that is out of print and are willing to pay anywhere near double cover price to like over $500 per volume depending on what it is...to read. But once a book is reprinted, often times the prices tank. Not sure how you grade that... Me personally, I think I would like to see manga in English become actually collectible, especially the comic book issues that came out in the 80s and 90s. In the past, they were, but now things have shifted to read only and consume rather than collect.
I am also working with Beckkett and they are giveing me some graded manga so it should be a fun unboxing and a closer look at them. I see this as a personal collection type of deal. Got something thats special to you or something you want to keep and or display this will be cool. Manga is not a CCG or like american comics in any way in the secondary market so it seems fun and less for reselling. Also the special tops you get to pick for them behind the grades do look sweet!
I actually would be interested in having 1 or 2 in my collection one day (I look for perfection with my manga) and I think it would be very cool to have YKnow ?
I apologize for the dark ass camera but I HAD to get this video out tonight! What are YOUR thoughts on the idea of manga grading?
i agree on the aspect that it's cool to have a few graded ones for display that are special such as limited special editions, signed, or just maybe just your favorite volume of all time, idk. but for basic volumes i don't think i'll ever care for it and it kinda strays away from the sole purpose of manga.. to read and look back at and have on the shelf.. graded stuff just feeds into the rare = better and spend the most money in the community issue.
Agree, for normal common volumes it kind defeats the whole purpose. Not sure there will be a huge market for such graded volumes
I think for manga it should be the opposite. If the junk limited books become the valuable ones, you'll now see manga come in 9 different covers and we don't want that. I think the oldest, oldest versions should be worth something in high condition.
@@ThePromG same goes with comics and baseball cards
I have mishushi vol 8,9 ,10 omnibus brand new I wonder if I should grade it ,I had two one I read and the other never I know a used is going for like 275 if I grade my never read one i will keep in my private collection .
I just don't see there being enough demand for this to be profitable for them
For now I agree, the only exception being signed volumes and special edition covers
@@ThePromGany special editions I should look after ?
@@ThePromG Yup I have some rare rare RARE volumes from the 90s. All signed and probably around 10k lol. You can't find these... Good luck searching for 8 years and come up empty handed. A lot of the old mangas from defunct companies are just not for sale. I badly want to send them in, but a little scared as well.
Also one thing I forgot to mention: Beckett stated that they WILL NOT be grading sealed manga! If you send a manga volume in the original plastic, they will unwrap it to assess page condition 🤐
Also to look at the print edition on the copyright page.
It was inevitable. In Japan, this is normal practice, to care about edition and condition for legendary titles. Right now there are people who go to every comic book and anime shop and buy up stuff they know is low in supply. In Japan, this common place with these people who hunt down old versions of manga to resell for profit. And old classic volumes can go for hundreds and thousands each.
Also, unless the manga is an adults only rating manga, it doesn't normally come sealed. That's just some person getting minimum wage with a shrink wrap roll and a blow dryer. And that plastic seal in the long run is likely very bad for the paper. People have been serious about pop culture paper collectibles since the 70s and in the 80s, both the baseball card and comic book collector industries realized that plastic holders/sheets/bags and boards were all highly acidic, turning the paper yellow and sticking to the paper.
Well it's not uncommon for Japanese shops to seal manga themselves.
I'm people
LOL
I just hope that doesn’t influence the price of the regular manga that would be catastrophic
I was a Comic book collector bought some CGC 9.8, 9.2 blah blah blah now there companies been lying outta there butt causing problems grading Blemishes now at high grades. I'll be buying Manga like crazy and wrapping it in nice protectors but having graded companies do there thing complete waste of time customize your own display case and be proud of it.
This is probably be negative press. I was looking and the shipping cost + grading + express was like 70 bucks for one One Piece volume. Dumb idea
It may be negative press, but it’s still lots of publicity. I’m curious how much Beckett has invested into this project (advertising, labor, materials) and how safe of a venture this is for them given they’ve been offering similar services forever
Like you said, this is cool for special editions/ singed books, but other than that, I don't see many people using this. In American comics there are 2 types of comics that people get graded : first appearances and more modern 1:25 , 1:100 variants. Manga doesn't really have this system in place for creating artificial scarcity with variants. That said if this does start to happen I can see cgc jumping on this but with the recent debacle with people opening their cases I don't see this happening any time soon.
It might be too soon, but it will eventually take hold. Old stuff needs to be encapsulated for protection. Anything old, OOP, misprints or simply fat bank $ are the perfect candidates for grading. It's the same with American comics. Barely anyone is sending in modern comics unless it's a key issue. The same will happen with manga. No 1 is going to grade and encapsulate a new issue, it serves no purpose. I say in 10 years grading for manga will take off hard because it will be needed then. The 90s and early 2000s are going be prime real estate and even Japanese releases or doujins.
Grading manga just says we see this as big as comics and games. Sure you can argue a card is for looking and playing. Vs books and games are for playing and reading. If people want to test the waters and grade their items fine. But if this was unprofitable then the ones that were graded will be.
I’d understand someone wanting to grade say a 1st edition gold lettering one piece volume 1. But who would grade chainsaw man… it’s literally common as the cold.
I can easily see Beckett pairing with Viz or Seven Seas to sell variant covers of popular manga already pre-graded in a 9.8 slab, just like comics. And yes, people will buy it.
damn i missed u 💕
I ain’t go nowhere 😭
To me, it looks like Beckett is trying to do this with certain harder-to-obtain manga like collector's editions or signed copies which I think is cool to an extent. Having a framed signed copy of a manga from my favorite Author is great. However, paper is still paper and regardless it will still yellow and fade over time which I feel defeats the purpose of grading them compared to comics which have better print and paper quality. Also, will this be specific to normal, viz-sized manga or stuff larger like the Berserk Hardcovers
They’ve said for now grading will only be available for normal-sized tankoban volumes, but I bet they’ll expand to bigger sizes if this is successful. And I agree, I hope they market this more towards special books and not your typical common ones
i think it is cool - if you have a manga worth $300 or more - cuz i love rare mangas
Really cool, but I personally will not grade anything from my collection, almost impossible to find mint condition manga nowadays and I don’t think the cost is worth it and I’m sure the graded volumes are gonna go for ridiculous prices
I'm not gonna lie, I've bought plenty of perfect condition mamga from my Barnes and noblie. I've gotten them straight out the back, right of the truck before they even put them out cause I ask if they have it. I've also gotten them straight from the shelf in perfect condition. It very possible, but it don't always be their fault.
Yen press corners are horrible and automatically be come to the shops with ripped corners. Even manga tht be in plastic be having a light blck or brown line on a random page in the chat bubble😂😂😂
lmaooooo the only people that spend less money than manga readers are anime watchers. this aint going to pop off.
That’s something I didn’t even consider lol. Physical collecting is still a bit niche and the majority of readers just rip scans
I feel like manga grading is like any other collectible grading, it seems great in theory but it doesn't really offer anything that you can't tell for yourself. If a volume is in mint condition or has minor blemishes, you can see that already. I get paying for it if it's something super rare and you're going to sell it but beyond that it kinda seems like a waste of money to me. As for using as a display or conversation piece, it's definitely an option but there are cheaper shadowbox alternatives if that's all you care about. I mean do what you want with your money but it's not something I'm gonna be doing anytime soon!
I’m very interested to see how the “grade and flip” market will affect manga as that’s what I most closely associate with grading: You do it for the chance to earn profit. Now will any volume actually be worth more to people sealed up and unable to read it? I think some will see it that way but who knows 🤔
This came out of nowhere.
We won't really know for a while if people actually buy slabs off people.
I could possibly see something like Gold Foil OP volumes being desired.
Other than that not much else
Interesting to see where we'll be in 20 years
Those Viz 1 in 5000's holographic covers from back in 2003 graded in a 9.8 would be insane though.
Damn it, you beat me to it. Great video man. Hope this becomes a regular thing for you.
Haha it seems like anytime something noteworthy happens I find out after dark 😅
Well maybe there will be a standard on pricing based on condition in resell market. I think ex-lib being sold at maximum resell price is more ludicrous.
I think the fact that ex-lib copies of rare volumes ultimately don’t affect the price or desirability in super substantial ways is a negative for grading. We’ve seen historically that OOP collectors can look past things like that for the sake of just owning and reading a rare volume they need
It’s funny that the highest was a 9.6 haha, didn’t even have a 9.8. But damaged books drives me nuts, I will re buy a book if I’m not fully happy with the condition. Most of my manga is near perfect condition.
If BGS was smart, they would copy PSA and make a set registry since manga is often in volumes and people who really want a manga want every volume/issue. The PSA set registry allowed highly specialized high end collectors to build public sets for all to observe. And thus building collections became a huge thing in grading. For example, if you want to build a particular favorite set like 1990 Marvel (Impel) 162 cards or 1983 Topps baseball 792 cards at PSA 10. Then you have to get every single card in PSA 10, including the commons. Then you get some weird anomalies like card 562 in PSA 10 is worth $250 bucks because it's rarely seen in PSA 10, only 2 have been graded to 10 or worse, 0 have been graded to 10. You can also see who is building such sets and who is ahead. Other people may collect a certain player like Derek Jeter in baseball or Wayne Gretzky in hockey and they want all 10s, they will collect every single card of that player that PSA says is a legitimate licensed card and again you can see everyone's progress.
BGS was late in the set registry game for sports cards but if they're the first in manga, they can get their foothold in that first and own it. But, BGS will need to not be so strict on grading if they do this...having the 9.2, 9.7 like these kind of grades will make it difficult to get whole sets like that and so it won't take off. And given the nature of manga, collecting graded sets seems to just make sense if you want to get graded at all...
i hate this so much, entire one piece in 9.8 condition lets go. Old manga should go in book offs not slabs. People do not read their collections to the point of now putting the books in plastic slabs.
i like picking up a 20 year old manga to read, now i have to consider it a collectable ???????
It's like slabbing collected editions... signed or variants would be fine but old/rare would drop in price the moment a reprint/collector's edition comes out...
This is just gonna result in graded manga not being sold lmao
I can definitely see this happening
5:39 Oh wow, what is that One Punch Man? I’ve never seen that before.
Just came to say that when the fable comes out u will be buying the manga.
Grading is stupid anyway. Never understood that people think this looks nice.. some stupid plastic brick on your shelf with a number on it.
graded by a minimum wage warehouse worker with entirely inconsistent standards based on how they fucking felt that day. 😂
From a collectors point of view and how comics having been graded, I think this has been forthcoming a long time ago. Manga has basically moved across to the mainstream of Netflix like One Piece, Cowboy Bebop, Dragonball etc. You will have ppl like me who have old manga comics sitting somewhere in the garage and wanting to preserve them and if it adds any value, then sure it’s a bonus, the only thing is the grading prices is too steep at the moment.
NGL I don’t hate this. Haven’t checked the dimension requirements but I hope they allow Japanese volumes to be graded. I literally have a few that I use as display pieces next to statues.
I think since most Japanese volumes are smaller than English prints they would grade them. Whether they have the expertise for Japanese volumes or not is a different story
It’s absolutely ridiculous, the entire reason for graded comics is the number of them is limited, once a floppy comic comes out DC don’t reprint the comic a year later. Most manga is always in print.
But what matters are 1st prints
Passing. This is just a money grab. With no real benefits this is gonna flop
Speaking of dumbest things people spent their money on in manga. That One-Punch Man "variant" cover. You got scammed by the publisher, because everywhere where manga comes in dust jackets that's the standard cover under it.
dumb lol i remember reading about game grading and how the company was manipulating the prices for games and ppl would buy expensive rare games hoping to resell and end up losing money. they just want to take advantage of idiots. they see ppl pay crazy amounts for out of print manga on ebay so they think its good to bring manga grading
I think the WATA Games market manipulation was an isolated incident, and I highly doubt Becketts intentions are malicious. I wonder if we’ll see a massive drop off eventually with graded manga though 🤔
It's not an isolated incident. Some consolidation already happened with graders and high-end auction houses in the collectible space. I believe that happened after Jobst's report.
This whole plan to grade manga is as cash grabby as graded VHS. Grading only works if you can trust the people rating things. If you are a collector, you should be skeptical simply because you don't know who is doing it and what their credentials are.
As collectors, we already know that different types of manga are printed with different paper, and different types fade differently. Some editions are even printed with different types of paper.
This announcement proclaims that Beckett has people who know the history of printing of each manga published and is able to make an assessment on the quality of editions to give it a grade.
We should know WHO that person is in the community by now if that person existed - that person would be an amazing subject matter expert who consults with other collectors about manga. But we don't. Hence the whole "third party unbiased declaration".
This whole thing feels like they are just going to a different collecting community and reusing their comic/card grading people to expand simply because they've graded paper and cardboard in the past. THAT screams Logan Paul resealed booster boxes to me. Would they know a manga-ka's signature if they come across one?
Be very wary and only treat grading as a novelty and that number (which creates the FOMO) should not be chased. Know that grades could change due to improper storage deteriorating paper despite it being slabbed. If the scene for graded copies ever reaches an insane amount, you SHOULD be cautious.
This is stupid. It was stupid for gaming. And its stupid now. Its just a cash grab.
I don't think that this is bad. I can see this useful for really rare and old volumes. As any collecting hobby, grading is part of it. Why should it be different for manga?
Now when it comes to me, I'd rather spend the money for new volumes rather than buy an expensive volume. There's a lot of manga out there to be read.
Long time comic collector. These will be worthless. Single comic issues are representative of huge, captivating moments in history with the best artwork the time could offer. Even cover art on tankoban is lack luster in this regard. These books will be worth less than the cost to slab.
99% of people who consider themselves having a manga "collection" actually just have a pile of books they read. They aren't collectors and these bunches of books are not collections. For example, if you buy mass produced Berserk hardcovers and you consider Berserk to be one of your most favorite manga, then you're a reader, not a collector. And that's perfectly fine. If you value the original versions more than hardcovers and box sets, with a few exceptions like Akira, then you're a collector. 99+% of those who buy manga are of these reader types and for those manga people grading is not for them. But that 1% who want status symbols and value the OG over the latest thing, a high grade sealed manga volume they never plan to touch again and didn't want anyone to touch it, grading is for them.
Grading came to coins first, in the 80s. 99% said it was dumb. It became such an institution in coins, PSA and Beckett BGS brought it to sports cards in the 90s and then to all cards including gaming cards. Once it became an institution in card collecting, in the 00s it came to comics. And now that it's an institution in comics, it has come to manga.
Will it work in manga? Not sure, since the industry is not really that much of a hobby...the manga people paid a ton for in the 2010s like Monster, now are worth cover price (which is low, the farther back you go, the lower the cover price is in history). And in comics, people routinely paid more money for individual comic book issues even after they were reprinted in trade paperback volumes. For example, you can buy a New Mutants trade paperback of the Rob Liefeld run for cover price or less, like $12 plus ship on Amazon right now for a used copy. But a copy of New Mutants 98, the content of which is in that trade, went for well over $800 (1st Deadpool...by the way this book tanked with the recent Ryan Reynolds news...). So that's a difference. People in manga pay a ton for stuff that is out of print and are willing to pay anywhere near double cover price to like over $500 per volume depending on what it is...to read. But once a book is reprinted, often times the prices tank.
Not sure how you grade that...
Me personally, I think I would like to see manga in English become actually collectible, especially the comic book issues that came out in the 80s and 90s. In the past, they were, but now things have shifted to read only and consume rather than collect.
I love how *professionally* is in quotes… what’s that mean ya think?! 😂
I am also working with Beckkett and they are giveing me some graded manga so it should be a fun unboxing and a closer look at them. I see this as a personal collection type of deal. Got something thats special to you or something you want to keep and or display this will be cool. Manga is not a CCG or like american comics in any way in the secondary market so it seems fun and less for reselling. Also the special tops you get to pick for them behind the grades do look sweet!
I actually would be interested in having 1 or 2 in my collection one day (I look for perfection with my manga) and I think it would be very cool to have YKnow ?
this sounds like the most ridiculous thing I've ever seen
They should’ve done this in 2020 little too late for this now😂😂😂
I have a feeling the hype beast r gonna ruin it (kinda already happening)
Manga will never be looked at with high regard like comics. And those tweets should tell you why