BrashL

Wait seriously or is this a joke?

No I get it. Just a few fireworks.

LOL, how’s that copium treating you?

They’ve likely been working on a new slab since they registered the last one, so it’s just a question of timing really. I think it’s all about optics now. The case is frankly embarrassingly easy to tamper with. Pretending otherwise isn’t good for the hobby long term.

1000x this. No one that actually likes this hobby wants to see CGC fail. That said there’s a real problem here that CGC has to solve. Once they release the new case (which is non-negotiable at this point given the bad PR around it specifically) and new process I’ll be happy to send my valuable slabs in to be updated. The stuff that’s not worth scamming will be just fine in the older ones. People will be pissed for a little while but if the new case is an upgrade they’d have likely done it anyway.

You responded so I’m sure it matters to you, as it should. I suspect CGC knows the full extent of this activity but does everything they can to keep it from coming to light.

I totally disagree. We can be reasonably sure this single bad actor has been opening CGC slabs for at least 4-5 years and was only caught by a collector who specialized in a niche of the hobby and followed basically every sale. The slabs aren’t hard to open, and it’s inconceivable only one person has ever figured it out before now.

It’s interesting but I’m getting a change in vibe from a lot of YouTube folks. I think when they thought this was limited to a few hundred books it was exciting and it would get more clicks. Now that it’s blown up and could be encompass thousands and thousands of comics they are freaking out and want to put the genie back in the bottle.

For most buyers, the value of CGC is that they don't have to do that. What it says on the label is supposed to be what's inside; that's the only real value they provide at the end of the day. If a buyer has to take one additional step, why bother. We'll see what happens with sales and submissions in the next month but this isn't going away and CGC has some difficult decisions to make in the coming weeks.

Ewert affected such a small percentage of collectors. It matters a lot to people on this board but most collectors would never be able to purchase them. This affects literally every comic slabbed by CGC until the entire process and product is overhauled. Ewert is blip compared to this.

This scam involves six figures easily. It’s comforting to think this is just some guy in a basement but for all we know this is a sophisticated team that’s got a nice little war chest/escape fund.

I think relying on making an example of this guy misses the point. Prosecuting him isn’t going to dissuade anyone from doing this again or we would have become a crime free society a few hundred years ago. The way to prevent this from happing again is fixing CGC.

Also think about how this would work. You can’t be prosecuted for general wrongdoing, there has to be a specific incident you prove up. So they would have to pick say one of the Hulk 181s. Now you have to establish chain of custody and put every CGC employee involved on the stand to testify. The defense will be allowed to grill them on the process with yards and yards of discovery in hand. Long story short there is no legal pursuit of this going anywhere unless one of the scammed buyers pursues it and even then if I was CGC’s lawyer I would do everything I could to keep them out of it. The story here is the case and process and what CGC will do to restore the integrity of each, full stop.

I mentioned this about a civil suit but same goes for criminal, CGC does not want to engage in discovery around their process. If I was the scammer I would just say I sent the right books in intact and CGC somehow screwed up and swapped them. Hell, there’s zero evidence that isn’t the case.

As a former lawyer I can assure you there is a 0.0% chance of a civil suit. Civil suit means discovery and there is no planet where CGC lets that happen.

LOL. The copium is reaching fatal levels. This dude doesn’t make his money from YouTube.

I mean he used a $50 dollar heat gun and some plastic solvent, that’s basically garage supplies. Nothing about what he showed is hard or expensive.

It's all over YouTube and the socials, I think it's probably a majority at this point.

I think it has to at this point. The value of CGC isn't the slab itself or the grading service; there's an acceptance in the community that grading is inconsistent (which shouldn't really be acceptable but here we are). The value of CGC is that it allows for trustless transactions. Now that trust is broken and a "trust me bro" from CGC isn't going to fix it.

And now that they’re going to make “changes” going forward, you’d have to be nuts to submit a book before they are implemented.

I don't think changes to the case of that nature are the answer anyway, it just creates a new arms race and no system is unbreakable, at least not at a cost that makes the business viable. The solution here is pretty simple actually and I hope they implement something similar: Every book gets Grader Notes, every single one (OK maybe not a 10) Every single book gets a high res picture front and back Every note related to the cover or back of the book is annotated in the picture, with the defect circled, marked, whatever Essentially create a unique fingerprint for every comic, which is essentially what this board has been doing for a week now. Not only do you ensure the integrity of the slab, you ensure the integrity of the grade itself. This would take a little more time, but to be honest this is the bare minimum of what a grader should be doing now considering how much value they are adding (or subtracting) from a book. If they did this, I could care less how easy the case is to open.

Good to see them finally respond, and not surprised as Mike's statement was definitely run by some lawyers before he posted. Liability has to be a huge concern right now. As others have stated, a few hundred books may be related to one individual but realistically the number probably can never be known due to the ease at which the slabs can be opened and switched out. I think we have to assume the worst. The changes to the case people have suggested are all good and something must be changed, but that still leaves the issue of all the books in older cases which would rightly be devalued against the new ones. I think a reasonable compromise is CGC should offer discounted reholdering for any slab with checks for tampering either in the case itself or in the chain of custody. If issues are found they can compensate the difference (in cash, not CGC bucks!) and if not the book will now have the correct market value. Slowly you'd clean up the supply and do right by customers. It's probably gonna cost them but there's no way around that at this point.

Stand up thing to do. Thanks!

Totally agree, but to me this is a matter of personal integrity. If I knew I had a (large!) community that trusted my site for information on CGC and I restricted that discussion, I’d feel responsible if someone got ripped off. He says “80% will never own” one of the comics mentioned, as if 20% is a trivial amount. You’re putting loyalty to CGC above loyalty to your community. I can’t get behind that.