CBCS vs CGC vs PGX vs HALO13936

Originally Posted by GAC
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Originally Posted by cyrano0521
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Originally Posted by Redmisty4me
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Originally Posted by cyrano0521
I won’t use CGC except if a book is too big for CBCS. I hate the lack of inner well. My 9.8 is really a 9.4 at best due to shaking.

CGC doesn't use inner wells anymore?

This isn’t news...i have purchased several recently without inner holders. Like i said, my modern 9.8 isn’t. Not sure about any others. Have been thinking about cracking them all, anyway.

There was a time CGC got rid of their inner well. They have since brought it back. I had one of those slabs and they reholdered it, with an inner well for me, for free.

Originally Posted by IronMan
Discussion is interesting, polite and seems mostly to have accurate - or inaccurate but since corrected - information. But there are a couple of things I'll mention.

The outer holder doesn't need to be archival. It just needs to be clear, rigid and protective. Everyone appears to be using polystyrene, because it meets the criteria and is inexpensive. Same plastic that is used to make the clear CD cases you purchase at Walmart or Office Depot, just thicker. CGC and PGX give more blue tint to their outer holder than CBCS (thus the entire "clear difference" thing). The blue tint is mostly marketing. In the plastics industry the marketing types believe that a blueish tint gives clear plastics a premium, glass like appearance. Clear plastics that are exposed to much light can also yellow. The blue tint helps hide that.

CGC, CBCS and PGX appear to all using polyethylene - PETG - for the inner holder. It's the same stuff used now for a lot of packaging of medicine and food. This is the "archival" plastic. I'm not familiar with Halo since their slabs are pretty rare here in the USA. CGC and PGX had to switch to PETG when the only company making Barex plastic shut down years ago. CBCS started out using PETG because they knew Barex wasn't going to be manufactured much longer. Barex was a plastic used in packaging medicine.

CGC briefly - when the rolled out their Generation 2 holder - used no inner holder but just two sheets of Mylar. It didn't go well because of uneven pressure on the book. Mylar BTW is polyethylene that just has an extra manufacturing step.

No one's slab and inner holder is air tight. CGC has not recommended periodically reholdering books for over a decade now. PGX to my knowledge never recommended such. How slabs are stored is of much more importance than outgassing and such gases being "trapped". Keep your books stored well - in the dark and comfortable to you temperatures and humidity and you won't need worry about trapped gases in your slabs.

Originally Posted by IronMan
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Originally Posted by Jesse_O
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Originally Posted by IronMan
Discussion is interesting, polite and seems mostly to have accurate - or inaccurate but since corrected - information. But there are a couple of things I'll mention.

The outer holder doesn't need to be archival. It just needs to be clear, rigid and protective. Everyone appears to be using polystyrene, because it meets the criteria and is inexpensive. Same plastic that is used to make the clear CD cases you purchase at Walmart or Office Depot, just thicker. CGC and PGX give more blue tint to their outer holder than CBCS (thus the entire "clear difference" thing). The blue tint is mostly marketing. In the plastics industry the marketing types believe that a blueish tint gives clear plastics a premium, glass like appearance. Clear plastics that are exposed to much light can also yellow. The blue tint helps hide that.

CGC, CBCS and PGX appear to all using polyethylene - PETG - for the inner holder. It's the same stuff used now for a lot of packaging of medicine and food. This is the "archival" plastic. I'm not familiar with Halo since their slabs are pretty rare here in the USA. CGC and PGX had to switch to PETG when the only company making Barex plastic shut down years ago. CBCS started out using PETG because they knew Barex wasn't going to be manufactured much longer. Barex was a plastic used in packaging medicine.

CGC briefly - when the rolled out their Generation 2 holder - used no inner holder but just two sheets of Mylar. It didn't go well because of uneven pressure on the book. Mylar BTW is polyethylene that just has an extra manufacturing step.

No one's slab and inner holder is air tight. CGC has not recommended periodically reholdering books for over a decade now. PGX to my knowledge never recommended such. How slabs are stored is of much more importance than outgassing and such gases being "trapped". Keep your books stored well - in the dark and comfortable to you temperatures and humidity and you won't need worry about trapped gases in your slabs.

The only thing I would add to this well stated summation, is that CBCS uses VIRGIN material and not recycled material for the outer holder. They may all be using virgin material, but I have no clue. The only reason I am aware of it, is because within the first months of CBCS starting up, their supplier started using recycled instead of virgin and it caused some major problems.

The problems that were caused by recycled plastics for CBCS was with their INNER holder, not the outer holder/shell.

The recycled plastics in the inner holder did not always seal properly and this allowed some comic books to protrude out of the inner holder suffering damage when coming in contact with the outer holder.