About The Site, About The Author - Greg Holland
CGCdata.com began as "CGC Census Analysis" in 2003. The original website was GregHolland.com/CGC
The easier-to-remember domain name- CGCdata.com -was registered and activated in May 2011.
I have been a comic collector since the 1980s and have designed websites as a hobby since 1996.
While finishing a Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science in the late-1990s, I created a comic book fan website
devoted to VALIANT Comics (1991-1996), ValiantComics.com. The website grew and a messageboard was added,
which is now located at ValiantFans.com.
Around 2003, CGC created the CGC Census population lookup at their official website, CGCcomics.com.
In order to evaluate the CGC Census for Valiant Comics, I wrote some code that automatically downloaded
the CGC Census information and stored it in a database (commonly known as a "webcrawler").
The program took about eight hours to visit each page on the CGC census website,
and download the results to a single, giant file of HTML code.
That HTML code was then processed to extract the numbers from the CGC census
and incorporate them into a single database for querying and analysis.
As a member of the CGC Messageboard (username: valiantman), I provided some basic statistics
from the CGC Census, which later became the interactive website for CGC Census Analysis.
Having permission from CGC to compile the publicly-available CGC census information,
leadership at CGC decided to provide access to a census data file, rather than using
the webcrawler software to continuously visit the website for eight hours after each update.
Though the data is the same as the publicly-available CGC census information,
the data file solution requires less resources for either party.
CGC first began grading comic books full-time in January 2000, however, the CGC census data
analyzed in this website was not available before July 1, 2001. Starting with that census date
and moving forward to the present, the CGC census data files increased in frequency from around
one file every six months to one file per week in the current CGC census update configuration.
At the time CGCdata.com was activated (May 2011), there were 101 CGC census data files archived.
Also in May 2011, a new style of charts were added with software from HighCharts.com.
Though I have interacted with CGC staff on data projects in the past, I have never been a CGC employee.
Since the mid-1990s, my "day job" has been data analysis, which I've carried over to my hobby
of comic collecting. I am currently employed by a local university and collaborating with multiple
state agencies to combine databases for long-term education studies. In May 2010, I completed
graduate school and became Doctor of Philosophy in Applied Science - Information Quality.
(Applied Science, like Morgan Freeman's character in the recent Batman movies, but fewer gadgets.)
My alma mater is another local university, the University of Arkansas at Little Rock.
I have been an Overstreet Advisor since (at least) the 33rd Edition (2003),
selected for knowledge of Valiant comics and for CGC census analysis.
I've also had some interactions with Krause Publications staff,
administrators from ComicsPriceGuide.com, GPAnalysis.com,
and others, providing data and articles for print and websites.
Thank you for allowing me to bore you with the details...
Thanks again to CGC's leadership for almost 10 years of support
and encouragement for the CGC Census Analysis webpages...
and I hope you enjoy the website!
-Greg Holland
greg@CGCdata.com
Information from this website and data compilations have been referenced in:
The Standard Catalog of Comic Books (Krause Publications) - 4th Edition, page 6.
Comics Buyer's Guide (monthly) (Krause Publications) #1599 to present (2004-2012)
Featured article in Comics Buyer's Guide #1633, September 2007, page 143
CGC's eNewsletter February 2005, March 2005, April 2005, May 2005, August 2005.
Overstreet's Comic Price Review, Issue Numbers 4 to 17 (2004-2005)
Overstreet is a registered trademark of Gemstone Publishing.
CGC is Comics Guaranty, LLC, P.O. Box 4750, Sarasota, FL 34230.
CGCdata.com "CGC Census Analysis" is provided by Greg Holland (©2003-2012).
Census data is sourced from the public CGC census (© Comics Guaranty, LLC.)
Used with permission of CGC since 2003. Data is from July 01, 2001 to May 14, 2012.
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