lou_fine

Well, of course it should be pretty obvious that I never meant that Rob would be doing the scanning himself. More that the whole thing should be a lot more organzied and at least look like they have their act together which certainly does not appear to be the case on this go round here. All I can say is that if I was a consignor in this particular Event Auction here, I would not be that happy with what I am seeing here so far.

Is CC even going to be close to ready for their upcoming Event Auction which supposedly starts in 5 days when they don't even have the scans for most thir lots up yet: https://www.comicconnect.com/auction-schedule?clear=1 It's very clear to be that the loss of Rob Reynolds, their long time Consignment Director and go to guy is clearly evident with this auction here.

https://itsalljustcomics.com/2020/06/12/comicconnect-to-auction-all-star-comics-8-cgc-9-4-and-sensation-comics-1-cgc-9-6/ This was the promo write-up for these two books in their Event Auction 43, but did they actually sell since I can't find it in their auction archives?

Thank you Mike you're awesome. Mystery solved. Yes, your quick turnaround here is much appreciated and I imagine it will be uploaded tomorrow into your Tuesday weekly census update.

sure, but that isn't happening here... The errors here were never under Matt's scope or control. If Matt is not at least partially responsible for the operational running of CGC as the head hocho there, then who is? Not sure if I am correct here, but I see Matt as being much more of a "working President" as opposed to a "suits President" or more like a COO type in terms of his role at CGC. As such, I believe he would have a lot of say in how the process is run and how security sytems are implemented including things such as chain of custody of books throughout the whole process. If the head honcho of CGC is not at least involved in these making these decisions, then I don't see who is because it shouldn't be anybody lower than him and I don't believe the "suits" upstairs would have the same level of detailed knowledge with respect to the operations and actual running of CGC that Matt would have.

Speaking about Detective Picture Stories, I remember back in the day how much I wanted a copy of of the first issue because it was from the real HTF year of 1936 and with green being my favorite color, I also just wanted a copy with that beautiful green cover. Sadly, every copy I came across at the time was either restored or just not quite nice enough for my taste. Now looking backwards, that was clearly a mistake since I never ever managed to acquire one before it got out of my price range. Books from this short run are really tough to find with the first issue actually having the highest census count at 15 Universal graded copies followed closely by DPS #5 with a total 12 Universal graded copies. Looks like the real toughies in this short run though are DPS #4 and DPS #3 with only a scant 4 and 5 Universal copies graded to date respectively.

Absolutely no surprise that attendance is dropping, with the only real surprise being that it has not dropped even more considering this:

I only checked this one.I couldn't find the CGC # either. What would cause a book or books to not show up not just on the census but on the verification page as well? I saw what it sold for but I'm wondering why there is no record of this book on CGC. Yes, also totally perflexing to me and hopefully just a glitch in their census data and not another scam that's about to hit CGC. Maybe we need somebody like @CGC Mike to dig into the reason for this "missing link" here.

It's actually more like a whole million plus of extra money since it sold for only $126,500 as a CGC 8.5 copy and then $161K as a CGC 9.0 before hitting the jackpot at $1.26M as the CGC 9.4 Windy City copy of Mavel Comics 1. Then again, it was a completely different time, especially in terms of restoration acceptance as the CGC 8.5 auction took place way back in early 2003 while the CGC 9.4 Windy City auction took place much more recently in November of 2019. Back then there was nothing worse to killing the value of a book than to have it residing in a PLOD holder. No doubt the original seller was afraid of cleaning and pressing the book to bump the grade in fear of the book not even hitting 6-figures since the standard accepted definition of restoration as per the Overstreet Guide right through to his 2005 edition was as follows: "RESTORATION - Any attempt, whether professional or amateur, to enhance the apearance of an aging or damaged comic book. These procedures may include any or all of the following rechniques: recoloring, adding missing paper, stain, ink, dirt or tape removal, whitening, pressing out wrinkles, staple replacement, trimming, re-glossing, etc." Clearly, the original seller was NOT a member of the so-called cabal or insiders in the know who knew that although CGC was claiming they were following accepted industry standards at the time for their undisclosed grading standards, they were actually in fact allowing clean and pressed books to be encased in blue Universal unrestored slabs. I guess CGC probably considered this to be proprietary knowledge and something that the general collecting public just didn't need to know until they were eventually outed on these very boards here. An interesting sidenote on these sales at least from a valuation point of view though indicates the relative tepid demand and stength at the time for Marvel Comics 1 back then. That first CGC 8.5 sale at only $126,500 in 2003 for the 2nd highest graded copy came in at a price point of less than 70% of condition guide value and the CGC 9.0 sale at only $161K for a tied for highest graded copy in 2005 came in at only 63% of condition guide. This also probably explains how Parrino ended up losing hundreds of thousands of dollars on his resale back to Geppi for his then tied for highest graded Pay copy of Marvel Comics 1.

Haven't you heard of the strategy to Buy Low and Sell High or to buy when things are out of favor? Case in point, if you had brought up the Slightly Restored rare and HTF GA books when CGC first started up and everybody was avoiding the PLOD books like the dreaded plague back then, you would be sitting in a pretty sweet spot right now.

Ahhhhh.......................was catching up on my email and notice this article from last Friday's Scoop newsletter: https://scoop.previewsworld.com/Home/4/1/73/1012?ArticleID=272929 I guess this goes a long way to explain why they don't seem to be fully prepped for this upcoming Event Auction as their long-time Consignment Director, Rob Reynolds, has landed the same gig in the New York office of Heritage. Definitely not good news for CC's consignors as I heard that Rob was the go to guy and jack of all trades when it came to CC's auctions.

Not sure what's going on over at CC since there's less than 10 days until this next Event Auction and they still haven't posted most of their scans.

You DO realize what you are asking is for both CGC and sellers to FULLY DISCLOSE that a book they are trying to sell for maximum dollars has been worked on in order to artificially manipulate it from a lower graded copy into a higher graded copy. Sure, it's "legit" from CGC's point if view, but have you ever seen any auction listing with a description that says the book bring auctioned used to be a former lower graded copy. There's a clear reason for why this is NEVER EVER disclosed and it's all to do with money.

... and remember that they also added a note under the "verify" scan to contact them if you suspect counterfeiting (or something to that effect) at the same time. Clearly they discovered something back then! Exactly and my thinking also, as CGC is clearly not known for providing a service for free to their customers that they normally collect a fee on. This, plus the fact that their never ending solicitations for Signature signings that seemingly used to come out on an almost weekly basis came to a screeching halt.

Maybe one more press? But only if 9.9 pre-screen is available. Glad to see you have a sense of humor as these are the funny books after all, and it's not good to always take things too seriously. Speaking of which, isn't "maximization of potential" just SO yesterday and shouldn't we be thinking ahead of the curve and thinking more about tomorrow. As such, just imagine a CGC grading world where the CCG ownership group and Blackstone feel they have maximized and pressed all of the potential out of poor overworked and over stressed Matt and given him his well earned and much deserved rewards in greener pastures. Instead, they now have Jason in his place who has raised the level of grading to an even higher standard with his ground breaking new and next level innovative "Edge Of Perfection" process. Although everybody here claims that they just hate trimming or even near invisible micro-trimming of a book, I can just imagine the endless turnaround times at CCS and CGC as everybody rushes in to resubmit their books hoping no longer for only that 9.8 or 9.9, but now happily dreaming about that Perfect 10.0 pre-screen.

Yes, don't we miss the early days of sweet blind innocence when we thought CGC was here just to grade the books and to protect us all from the scourge of restoration inflicted on us by the evil comic book mechanics working in their darkened dungeons. Only to find out some five years later that CGC had over time gone and fine tuned monetized their definition of restoration and their undisclosed grading standards, while not even bothering to inform the collectors and marketplace of this critical change until they were forced to on these very boards here. I guess we should have seen the red flag when Heritage with their checkered history and questionable background in the collectibles field arrived on the comic book scene back in 2002, as per this post from our resident Master Detective boardie himself: Sad to say, but it has reached the point today that some former practices that used to be considered to be restoration has now become so ingrained into the grading standards that they have basically become part and parcel of the whole certification process.

Yes indeed, a very sad state as per an exceprt from a post that I had written the other week: Definitely NOT the same as the current scam that is being discussed here, but clearly a sign that we should all understand how the game is being play and go in with our eyes wide opened when we buy these high dollar value and so-called high grade books. Especially when we have even seen books step laddered "legally" all the way up from a mere CGC 9.0 to a CGC 9.8, or in one extreme example which started this whole pressing debate some 20 odd years ago when we first found out on these very boards here what was happening behind the CGC grading scene, a book go from CGC 4.0 all the way to CGC 9.0 with a pit stop at CGC 7.5, all whilst encased in a blue Universal slab. As the old saying on these boards goes to avoid these kinds of issues........................BUY THE BOOK, NOT THE LABEL.

This message reminds me very much about the time I was visiting my sister in London and we went out for dinner at a restaurant just a few blocks away from the new CCG office that was scheduled to open shortly: https://www.cgccomics.uk/news/article/6392/ccg-london-office/ Anyways, conveniently decided to walk past the building to see what it was like and was able to go inside and need I say, very stately and British. Talked to the gentleman who was in charge of the office as he was setting things up and he was surprised when I mentioned comic books to him and he asked me about them since it was obvious he really knew nothing much about them and the thought of them as collectibles piqued his interest. Not surprisingly, he said that he expected most of the collectibles which they would see would be pretty much all about coins, paper currency, and bank notes. Any bets that this new Tokyo office will also be more about the old boring collectibles stuff and not so much the more new in vogue collectibles like our comic books which we here on the boards love so much. This is a another example of why I find it kind of silly when some boardies here think that Blackstone paid half a billion dollars for CGC which is only the comic book side of the CCG operations when in reality, CGC is just a small fraction of their total operations albeit a growing one.

Like some other boardies here at the time back then, greatly appreciated the masterful detective work you and others like @MasterChief did in flagging examples of books that had been "artfically manipulated" into higher grades at a time when it was still NOT the rampant and generally accepted practice that it is nowadays, and then also with the micro-trim jobs that Jason was performing on his books. Not sure about when this change started, but have been told by some here via PM's that they believe it probably started around the time that Heritage with their checkered or rather questionable history in the collectibles marketplace arrived on the scene back at the beginning of 2002. As for their undisclosed grading standards back then, that has clearly changed over time and sadly at least from my own personal POV, not necessarily for the better. Especially with the current grading regime in place which is headed by somebody whose former expertise and background history was really all about pressing which can lead to a particular bias (whether intentional or not) when it comes to a case of undisclosed grading standards that seemingly change over time. I still remember getting about a dozen of my GA books graded when CGC first started up and in time for Greg Manning's big auction back in October of 2000 and every single one of them came back with a grade ranging from CGC 9.2 through to CGC 9.6. Probably should have gotten my entire GA collection graded back then from a strict grading cost POV, but also from a punishment grading POV because there is zero and I mean absolutely zero chance that the books in my GA collection would grade out in this condition range today without some advanced prepartory "maximization of potential" work done on them prior to grading. Definitely a very controversial time on the boards back then, but I found it kind of hilarious how CGC would eventually spin things so that they could rationalize what was taking place at the time. Of course, the signature line that was coined at the time was "maximization of potential", but the one that I found really hilarious was when Borock came out with the statement that "disassembly and reassembly of a comic book, in and of itself, does not constitute restoration" when he used it to justified how a book could go from CGC 4.0 and laddered its way up to CGC 9.0, all while residing in a blue unrestored Universal slab.

To offset some of the negativism of my earlier post on the previous page, even though this case might not be a sure fire win for CGC once you get lawyers and the courts involved, kudos should also be given to CGC for pursuing the perpetrators of these latest scandals to the fullest extent of the law if only to serve as a deterrent to discourage others from even thinking of attempting to do the same thing going forward. At the same time though, this also doesn't let them off the hook as it sounds like their internal control (or lack of it) and chain of custody of the submittors' books is pretty abysmal and leaves a lot to be desire.

From a strict technical POV, not a problem with this as a straight business policy which they would be more than entitled to make, but shouldn't they at least have been transparent and proactively upfront about it and had disclosed it to the collecting base when they first started up. Especially since they had made the claim that one of the original tenets for the creation of CGC was to protect the hobby and the collecting base from the scourge of restoration, only to find out retroactively after the fact, that they had changed or fine-tuned their definition of restoration to exclude certain types of what had then been considered to be restorative work at the time. More specifically, didn't it take something like close to 5 years before some board detectives here like @MasterChief, @Red Hook, and even Dupchak himself exposed these shenanigans on the boards here through the use of detailed before and after photos of graded books before CGC finally got around to acknowledging what their definition of restoration was comprised of. Needless to say and without a doubt, in the interim, all of the "insider" friends/dealers and people in the know must have made a ton of money "laundering" what would then still have been considered to be restored books at the time into an unsuspecting marketplace via the use of CGC's unrestored Universal slabs. The issue that I have with all of these scandals which we've seen here and the common running theme is that we generally only seem to find out about them retroactively through the hard work of some board detectives here, as opposed to a proactive communications directly from CGC. Then again, kudos should also be given to CGC for allowing us to voice our thoughts and opinions on THEIR boards here, whether they be positive or negative when it comes to these controversial issues.

Ahhhhh, yes...............memories of days long gone by. If I remember correctly, I believe their spin at the time to dig themselves out of the hole which they had dug for themselves and fallen into went something like this..............since they would not be able to determine if a book had been pressed or not if it had been done properly, and as such, they did not want to guess if a book had been pressed or not. It was also stated that pressing had always been done on books long before CGC came into existence which was not a totally true statement since pressing back then in the days of the Wild Wild West was usually only done as a final step after other more invasive restoration work had been done on a book. Stand alone pressing was usually not a cost effective process prior to CGC since the price differential for HG raw books was just not yet there at the time. In any case, these were the two main rationales used to justify placing books with this type of work done to them into unrestored Universal slabs and allowed them to simply spin it as nothing more than "maximization of potential". Interesting to note that the above statement would be equally just as accurate if you had replaced the word "pressed" with the word "micro-trimmed" and yet one was deemed to be maximization of potential while the other was deemed to be "destruction of a book".

Please correct me if I am wrong here..............but I believe when CGC first started up in the beginning, it was 3 graders who had input into both the preliminary and final grades assigned to a book. With their current grading system, isn't it 2 or 3 graders involved in the preliminary grading process, but only the Head Grader gets to say what the final grade is, regardless of what the preliminary grades are? I believe if you were grading only 15 books a hour, you would find yourself turfed out onto the street and queuing up in the unemployment line, let alone grading only 15 books in a whole entire day.

Most definitely NOT, as the Promise pedigree books were higher dollar value GA books, especially with the first batch all hitting 5 and 6-figures, as opposed to lower dollar value MA books.

Collecting comics doesn't inherently involve CGC, although it's a big part of the modern way. But a much greater problem is the impropriety that it invites by allowing them to work with a huge conflict of interest. Once that door is cracked open, you're just asking for something like this to happen. As a long-time comic book collector myself, I clearly tend to see and agree with both seemingly conflcting points of view here. Not sure about their policy of not buying and dealing in graded comic books, but was this a policy that Borock had implied only onto himself or did he also applied it to the graders and other employees within the company when he was heading up CGC?