Editor's Note: As part of a paid partnership with Certified Collectibles Group, cllct is publishing a series of stories highlighting the company's growth and future initiatives.
Superman, Spider-Man, Batman — the characters at the pinnacle of the comic book market have been the same for decades.
And for anyone who has been paying attention, the label atop those key figures has been the same, too.
A little more than 25 years after launching, CGC has evolved from Certified Collectibles Group’s first major gamble to its single greatest asset. After 15 million graded comics and counting — not to mention expansion into magazines, cards and other collectibles — the proof is in the plastic.
According to public records, the top 10 most expensive comic book sales of all time have all been graded by CGC. At Heritage Auctions, the industry’s biggest seller of high-end comics, all 100 of the most expensive graded comic books have been holdered by CGC.
The current dominance atop the high-end market is clear, but the journey to arrive there was far from linear. In fact, if the first impressions from the community stuck long-term, it’s hard to imagine the comic grading space would resemble what it is today at all.
“I think whenever we get into a new market, there's always pushback from the dealer community,” Certified Collectibles Group CEO Steve Eichenbaum told cllct. “They don't think an independent third party knows more than they do. They have the control … there's always a lot of pushback.
“Comics are a really good example of that. I think a lot of the existing players initially were resistant to it.”
Matt Nelson, now president and primary grader at CGC Comics, can still recall the early sentiment from the Diamond Comic Distributors Retailer Summit in 1999. Then working with his comic restoration company, Classics Incorporated, Nelson thought CGC had the right people to launch a grading service, but he saw the apprehension when CGC made its pitch.
Grading just isn't for some people — they still want to flip through the pages of the book whenever they’d like, Nelson thought. Winning over the trust of dealers entrenched in their own ways is hard, too.
“It was a mixture of curiosity and trepidation,” Nelson told cllct. “And you had some people in the room who were vehemently opposed to it. They got their turn on the microphone, and they were like, ‘This is terrible. This is horrible. What about this? What about that?’”
Though today the Certified Collectibles Group more or less has created a blueprint for expansion, after entering a number of collectibles categories, the addition of comic book grading to the company’s portfolio was difficult at first.
Prior to CGC Comics’ launch in 2000, the Certified Collectibles Group had seen significant success with its coin grading brand, NGC. Comics would prove to be far more complicated.
While a coin has an obverse and an reverse, comics have many pages. The company would have to create an entirely new holder, which required months of research, design and development. CGC Comics also had to navigate how to grade restorations, which have long been accepted by the comic community — as long as they are properly disclosed.
The immediate payoff would be minimal, the Certified Collectibles Group has never been captivated by quick flips.
“We always play the long game,” Certified Collectibles Group president Max Spiegel told cllct. “So for comics, I don't think that business made any money for probably the first 10 years. We knew there was a big opportunity, though.
“We knew that we were adding value to the market. We knew that we were starting to see volumes grow. But it was incredibly expensive to get into this category.”
Similar to other collectible categories, grading quickly provided stability for the comic book market. Collectors felt safer buying graded comics than raw issues.
That resulted in higher sales and better auction results, which swayed dealer sentiment. It wasn’t long before comic grading’s biggest critics were its biggest beneficiaries.
Now, key issues are questioned when they aren’t graded by a third party, and the data shows CGC has been the party of choice for the industry’s most important books. According to GoCollect, a website that tracks sales for comic books and other collectibles, the top 20 comic book sales over the past month were all graded by CGC.
According to Nelson, one key factor for CGC’s reign atop the category has been the degree of difficulty required to enter the space at all.
While it’s not uncommon for new grading companies to pop up regularly for a category such as trading cards, comic book and magazine grading has remained small. In addition to CGC, the comic book grading arm of Beckett, CBCS, has been a key player.
Trading card grading giant PSA officially entered the comic book and magazine space this summer, but hasn’t proven itself yet to the comic community. Success in another category is always a good start, but the complexity of comic grading has proven to be particularly difficult for new companies to grasp.
Like coins, trading cards are limited to a front and back. Comics, however, have dozens of pages that must be checked. Staples and spines are important elements, too. Graders also have to note restorations and defects and must assess what all is relevant to the grade itself.
Compared to trading cards, the grading scale is much more nuanced.
Nelson believes another factor in CGC’s dominance has been the company’s efforts to continually update its holders, labels and more. The company launched its Restoration Scale and Conservation Label in 2014 and followed with a new holder in 2016. The Pedigree Label, which recognizes exceptional comic book collections, landed in 2019.
In 2022, CGC began recognizing newsstand editions and added a QR code to labels for easy access to certification pages. CGC also made grader notes free, citing them as an important part of the grading process.
“If you have a large company or a company that is a leader in the space, the biggest mistake you can make is to stop caring, stop evolving, stop innovating,” Nelson said. “And that's one thing that we have really tried hard not to do, given the tremendous amount of influence that we have in the market.”
For Nelson and CGC, that influence has been the biggest challenge the company faces. Market leaders receive the bulk of the business but also the bulk of the scrutiny.
It’s hard to get to the top, but it’s often harder staying there.
“You have to get it right out of the gate, Day 1, immediately,” Nelson said. “Because if you don’t, they’re going to roast you, and you’re going to be in trouble. By far the most challenging thing is maintaining what we have.
“Anytime we innovate or change anything, we have to vet it and make sure that it’s the right thing to do and we’re executing it the right way the first time. There’s no room for error today.”
Ben Burrows is a reporter and editor for cllct, the premier company for collectible culture. He was previously the Collectibles Editor at Sports Illustrated. You can follow him on X and Instagram @benmburrows.