CGC addressed this by professionalizing the process. Submissions to CGC were reviewed by multiple graders, compared against standardized criteria, and assigned a grade that represented a consensus professional opinion. The graded comic was then encapsulated in a sealed plastic holder—the “slab,” in collector parlance—bearing the grade, the certification number, a barcode linking it to CGC’s database, and, in some cases, additional information about the book’s history or provenance. The sealed holder protects the comic from further handling while displaying it visibly.
For a market in which individual items can sell for hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars, the CGC encapsulation provides a function beyond authentication: it provides market clarity. A buyer can assess a CGC-graded comic without handling it, relying on the CGC grade rather than their own inspection. This standardization facilitated the dramatic increase in prices for high-grade comics that occurred through the 2000s and 2010s, because it gave buyers confidence in what they were purchasing.
The Cage copy’s CGC grade of 9.0 is therefore not just a description of the book’s physical condition; it is a market credential that identified the copy as one of the two highest-graded examples of the most important comic book in existence. That credential was what made the book worth approximately $150,000 when Cage bought it and $2.16 million when it was auctioned in 2011.
CGC’s role in the recovery story is implicit rather than explicit in the available reporting: if the stolen copy was in its CGC holder at the time of the theft, or if it had been encapsulated before being offered for sale in 2011, the certification number would have provided a definitive identifier. If it was not in its holder—if the slab had been cracked—then Fishler’s identification would have relied on his personal knowledge of the copy’s specific characteristics.