BrashL

How about answer one of my questions for once. Do you agree the slab is substandard and no longer best in the industry? Let’s start there.

No, I don't think I ever said that but it's another great straw man for you to line up and knock down. I don't know why I even bother with you, it's very clear that your livelihood is inextricably linked with CGC's reputation, to the point that if they ran one of your submissions through a paper shredder Banksy style you'd praise them for the uniform size of the strips. The rest of us can admit that the holder is substandard and needs to be replaced.

LOL, OK I’ll let them know to close up shop. They sell at a 10-15% discount if any, that’s not a hard gap to close. If CGC doesn’t change anything after this (including a new case) that gap can close very quickly. We’ll see.

Can anyone say with a straight face at this point that they're wrong? I understand why they haven't from a business standpoint, but I'd still like to hear CGC admit there is a problem and commit to bringing out a world class case ASAP. Hell, they could limit it to the highest tiers to clean out old inventory for all the modern spec stuff and them fully switch over after that.

I'm in

It's been confirmed that anything they received for reholdering had to be still sealed or it would trigger a re-grade. If they were reholdering open cases that would be much, much worse.

First, It's not like the guy was sending already opened cases (I hope!) so opening and resealing has been confirmed by CGC. Secondly, we know these books were reholdered and there was no inside man (according to Matt) so it's also confirmed by CGC that they were opened and resealed in a way that CGC employees couldn't (or simply didn't) detect. So the only possible ambiguity is whether this guy also passed resealed slabs to buyers directly. I guess you have to decide that for yourself but why he would have any qualms about that lower-risk avenue I can't imagine.

Good point. Curiouser and curiouser.

Just finished listening. That last question from Manu seems to have caught Matt off-guard so it's hard to be sure, but he implies they have a way of determining if the holders were tampered with without opening them. If this is true it's absolute malpractice not to share this with the community immediately. It's also entirely disingenuous to say "just email us if you suspect tampering" without letting anyone know what to look for. The only reasonable conclusion is they know this is widespread and don't want to be inundated with returns and refunds.

Holy mess that plaque is cringy. Maybe he should have gotten them a little junior pilot badge for "helping out" in the cockpit too.

Correct. These were the biggest books in the hobby. They have the scrutiny of the entire community and don’t really tell us anything.

Here I disagree. Given everything we know, there is no way go forward with the new holder. I’ll never be convinced that multiple people haven’t perfected opening and resealing the holder given the money at stake. One guy screwing around in his free time nearly perfected it in a couple weeks. The current slabs are DOA. I think it would be best for the hobby if reholdering them was discontinued and all of them were subject to regrading. We need to restore confidence that what’s in the plastic is legit and I don’t see any other way of doing that. I won’t be buying another comic in the old case or submitting because I think it won’t hold its value once the new ones come out, and rightly so.

I’ve been pretty critical of CGC on this thread but slowly they’re providing some answers and I think they’ll get there eventually. It’s obvious we’re going to get a new holder out of this which is long overdue and Immaculate Comics has shown a much better holder is possible. It will suck to have to reholder books to hold their value but hopefully they offer some specials to make things right. Props to the community for getting us this far. CGC is gonna take a hit in the short term but the hobby will be better in the long run.

Or they could just, ya know, make a slab you can't open with your fingernail.

Should lock pick videos be illegal too?

Aaaaaaaand it’s gone.

Oh that's reassuring, he's only been opening CGC slabs for....2,046 days...at least....oh.

Wow. For all the folks who keep referring to the "scammer" (singular) as if he's some criminal genius, please stop. As more information comes out this group looks like a bunch of buffoons and yet they still pulled this scam (and probably many like it) for years. Now ask yourself, if this insufficiently_thoughtful_person has been this prolific, what have the really smart crooks been up to?

So here’s a question for CGC: if GoCollect identifies a slab that was tampered with between sales, will they allow the buyer to send it in for compensation like the current list? Only if it was reholdered? Isn’t it their responsibility to maintain the integrity of any of their certified comics?

I don’t understand this line of thinking. If we know that we have hundreds of slabs from this one person alone that have been opened, and we have videos showing how easy it is to tamper with them, doesn’t Occam’s razor dictate that’s exactly the case? If not what is your theory?

Man you love those straw men don't you. So easy to knock down.

That's a good point, so far as I know no one to this day knows exactly how Ewert got the results he did. That's rocket science compared to what this group was up to.

I know you keep going back to this out of wishful thinking but it's a useless analogy. That was 20 years ago. CGC wasn't what it is today, the comic market wasn't what it is today, social media wasn't what it is today. I could go on. You keep using this silly straw man like it's some brilliant thought.

With CGC, buying comics is easy and safe! Just take the comic you're interested in, then sign up for a $100 a year subscription service. Next, carefully review years worth of photos in minute detail to make sure they book you're buying hasn't been tampered with, make sure to use a big monitor and zoom in close. Once that's done, you're all set.

This all brings it back to what a lot of people were saying originally, you can't trust any book in the current cases unless it's your book. Even then we need an explanation from CGC how so many books passed through the business without being flagged. Once there is a good explanation for how this fraud was perpetrated under their nose for so long, we need specific actions (what process has been changed, how many people have been replaced, etc.) that have been implemented. THEN we need a new case so collectors know what books they can trust and which ones they need to research to be sure they are what's on the label. Until then you'd have to be nuts to buy a CGC book for your own collection based on the information on the slab alone.