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wow that's great news! The last time I had an issue with USPS, I put in a missing package request with USPS and was told that the earliest they would be able to investigate was 3 months. They sent me an occasional email every few months saying WE HAVE NOT LOCATED THE PACKAGE but then the last one was just a 'too bad' email.

Additionally artist sites - I can think of at least 2 I've bought from in the last couple months, and I'm sure there are more - that list signed 9.8s at around the same price as what CGC would charge for sending a book in - if you use $120 as a base ($80 sig fee, $20 pressing, $20 shipping), you can easily find artist sites selling signed 9.8s for that (or occasionally, less). I'll admit that I do enjoy doing the window bagging and prep work and figuring out where a signature should go - it's pretty fun - to either have a facilitator submit or submit myself for an in-house signing, but between CGC's fees (and any other facilitating fees, extra shipping and etc) that adds up quick, and unless there's something really specific I'm looking for, it's just not worth the hassle & extra cost - why end up paying closer to $200 for a submitted book that you end up with a 9.6 with, vs spending half that and getting a guaranteed 9.8?

I'm totally fine with them taking a breather on the signings while they get all the other ducks in a row. Also it seems like the current ROI isn't worth it - the lowest I've seen any of these signings is $80, and add $20 for pressing and $20 for shipping bumps you to $120, which seems bananas when often signed 9.8s are going for less than that on ebay - why would you risk sending a book in to get a 9.6 back when you can get a signed 9.8 for less money?

The timestamp on the image path (...20240205130419297.png) looks like it was updated today, but yeah - I don't see any differences...

Ok... but I got excited at the prospect of black labels for Comics!

Totally blown away by this cover - really like his work, and... I don't see any other SW Jeehyung work... is this is first Star Wars art..?

ah this should be in Cards not Comics @CGC Mike

I'd say they're taking the middle road. The high road would have been to have a press release, sharing some details of the investigation, but more importantly, make it clear that they're working on figuring out which submissions were affected, and that they would be in touch with any affected customers. That would be the high road.

That's amazing - curious - did you get it pressed?

Of the signature books I've submitted, this might be my favorite. The fact that this book somehow managed a 9.6 with no graders notes makes me livid though - this book was pristine when I sent it in - flat as a pancake, zero spine issues and corners you could sharpen knives with. Update - seeing the book in hand, it was clearly mishandled at some point & picked up some spine bends

I hope CGC can issue some kind of public statement about this & control the narrative a bit - otherwise this is going to go rumor/conspiracy theory heavy quick.

Doesn't look like eBay either knows about the case - the seller still has listings up (seems like they would suspend the account if they were told there might be fraudulent items) https://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_fss=1&_saslop=1&_sasl=omni_collector&LH_SpecificSeller=1 the books and grades are all over the place.

Yeah I feel like this is why CGC should do a press release to clarify what was happening - it may not be as widespread an issue if the perpetrators were pulling ebay items and not submissions

Is there an official CGC press release regarding this case @CGC Mike? Does CGC know how many books were affected?

In for 1x of these - thx!

That looks amazing! Congrats! i wouldn’t send it back to CGC, although label changes seem like they should be the least risky.. (key word being should…)

I’ve sent books to artists to be signed with the CGC provided paperwork, they sign & send it to Cgc & it comes back with the yellow label 👍

I like how this one came out, but again: brand new book, 9.6, no graders notes

This just happened to me as well, except I was on the receiving end - I submitted a 7.5 and received a 7.0 - figured it was just typical CGC handling that knocked it down until the facilitator reached out and said that someone else had my book, and CGC had tracked down the other submitters book and somehow I had it 🙄 it’s not a good look, but I will say that at least CGC was able to figure out that I had the other persons book… good luck!

@MattM CS follow up question here - would it be possible to have prescreens both before and after pressing? Theoretically, pressing a book should resolve any minor issues with the goal of increasing the grade - but I've recently submitted 4 or 5 brand new books with no visible flaws to be pressed & graded, and they've been returned with lower grades - I've received 9.6s & 9.4s, and even an 8.5 - with no graders notes and still nothing obviously wrong with them. My suspicion is that the pressing is actually causing damage, dropping the grade. I understand that this is one of the agreed-to risks involved when submitting books, and there's not much recourse for my submitted books, but what would be really helpful is the ability to elect (or have done automatically) to have prescreens both before and after the pressing - if it the book hits the grade, great, don't press it, if it doesn't; press it, and re-screen. If it still doesn't make the grade, that's when it would actually fail the screening, and would not be submitted into the grading queue. This would be a huge win for all parties: - Faster turn around (no pressing time if it makes the cut) for the submitter with a higher likelihood of achieving the target grade - Less stress / faster turn around in the CCS pipeline - Higher number of books going straight to grading Internally it might also help CGC determine if/how books are being damaged by the pressing stage (if a book is submitted that doesn't quite make a 9.8 prescreen grade, and is graded a 9.2 after pressing, presumably something wasn't done properly)

Zero idea why the joker book got a 9.4, but thought these looked great together. Was thinking to go white, but glad I went with the batmany blue and jokery purple:

I'll take 1x of Star Wars 6 too - thx!

Darth Vader 16 $1 Harley Quinn 1 $1 Star Wars 4 $2

Seems like an odd candidate, but maybe swapped?

!