Has the world gone mad!?

[Snaketibe]

Yes I'm curious too. Is there a genuine reason for destroying these beautiful items or is it just pure PROFIT/GREED!? Any U grade collectors wanna comment from under there rock?

I have a few U graded items, I personally wouldn't send items to be graded that way but I will buy them, I have had u graded vehicles and tbh I think it is better being able to see the item rather than a brown cardboard box, as for moc's I can kind of understand why people do it if the card and bubble are absolutely mangled, lets be honest a nice carded figure is worth a lot more than a loose graded figure anyway so you have to ask yourself is it just mangled moc's being graded that way

No it's not just beat up cards being U graded unfortunately. It was only on here that I learned of the U grading and realised I had in my collection what are probably the by-products of the process - cut bubbles!

To me they are/were just a nice cheap way of collecting carded figures for display. I'm not a perfectionist, so hey ho! But then you look at these cards and wonder why they were cut in the first place. I have some stunning cut bubbles and reseals. The most tidy looking examples are the ones where the bubble has been slit and the figure taken out. I suspect some of these were done during U grading.

I don't agree with cutting open any MOC no matter how beat up it is. If the bubble is smashed then fair enough. I have a Wicket like that. The bubble has cracked and fallen to bits. He still sits in there but can be easily taken out. So yes, in that case, fine. Worn MOCs, water damaged MOCs, crushed bubbles - just leave 'em in there. They made it this far!

I'm sure you're probably right about some cut bubbles existing because of U-grading, however I also know that whilst most of us that were kids at the time simply ripped the bubbles straight off the cards to get our grubby little mitts on the plastic goodness inside, looking at the Vintage cardbacks still surviving today, there were also plenty of kids (and probably parents!) back in the 70's and 80's who took more care in opening their figures. I'm still stunned (and grateful!) at the number of people that left the bubbles attached to the cards when they opened their figures, and then kept the cards with the empty bubbles still attached for decades!

What I'm basically saying is that some cut bubbles will be products of the 70's and 80's too; very careful kids and parents who quite rightly saw the SW cardbacks as works of art in their own right and wanted to preserve as much of that as possible, whilst also still enjoying the figures as toys of course, so I don't think you need feel too bad about all the cut bubbles in your collection

 

[peekaygee73]

I agree with Snaketibe - the Palitoy Snag MOC I have as my avatar was bought from ebay in the late 90s and has a cut bubble so the figure can be removed.

 

[Wreck-It Ralph]

Just completely guessing here, but apart from it being money motivated and also grading them due to the packaging being very poor, i'm thinking maybe some collectors who have that 'collectors OCD' in having a perfect looking collection have them U graded so they're more displayable next to all their other loose graded figures?

They obviously can't get their loose figures put back in MOC condition and graded to match their other MOC's, so could some of them be having their MOC figures U graded to display perfectly next to all their other loose graded figures, so they have a perfect looking matching collection? :?

I still don't get a U grade does not mean perfection it just means it has not been circulated or played with. The condition it left the factory is what determines its level of perfection so if you are an OCD collector then getting AFA to U Grade an item will not mean you get perfection. Maybe it's not OCD, maybe they just like destroying things as Michael Caine put it in The Dark Knight " Some Men just want to watch the world burn"