BrashL

Serious question: Why do you feel like you should get to control what people hear? Why not let them consume the information and decide from themselves, even if it’s different than what you think. Wouldn’t you rather some feathers get ruffled than someone in the group buy a switched slab when it could have been prevented?

Newsstand 9.9 knows who the original scammer is and said he has seen him selling on Instagram and at shows. Even if this was just one guy (and it’s not) it’s not limited to eBay.

No one’s yelling, we can all see the fire.

And so the value of CGC’s service is exactly what? Hint: You can’t divide by it.

I don’t know how you can say that given what we know. For all we know all those 9.8s with 4 spine ticks people have been complaining about for years are all case switches. I think the books go into the thousands at the very least.

The irony here is if CGC would have just come out and said “We know who’s doing this, we’ll release all the certs and regrade for free” or something this probably goes away and they get credit for great customer service. Now the whole value of the service is in serious doubt.

Bingo.

Heating plastic to loosen it up isn’t “criminal mastermind” level thinking, it’s like the most obvious way to open something up. We need to stop referring to “the scammer”, I have no doubt lots of people have figured this out.

https://youtu.be/vONa3k9gnVg?si=RnyOIRUjOpNgksCr This is looking like more of a disaster by the day. This isn’t one guy and a few books. This is a fundamental and apparently easily exploited flaw in the slab. This goes beyond reholdering as well. This might be why a response is taking so long, how do you even begin with damage control? Edit: No clue how to embed video.

I don’t think you’re entirely right. I agree that this isn’t going to make anyone stop sending in comics for grading. What it might do is lower the CGC premium as buyers start to lose faith in the product. Once that happens, CGC will start to lose your business. If raws aren’t worth much less, who would bother.

Has an explanation ever been given for not having notes on every book? Especially the 9.8s? I honestly don't understand, there must be some thought on the book otherwise it should be a 10. It's baffling to me as this is essentially the service and expertise that makes the product worth paying for.

There's another simple solution to this that no one has brought up. Every certification gets a picture online and grading notes. Whoever is making the purchase can verify for themselves if the book in the slab is the one that was graded. It's inexcusable now that that every slab doesn't have notes of some kind, but even more so going forward. (And it might even help the consistency of grading!)

Well what does CGC want to be? They can implement some changes even at higher cost to make sure they can stand behind the product, or they can be a slab mill like PGX.

Its also somewhat beside the point. The question is how did this happen and how does it get fixed. Whatever this seller has been doing, at least another dozen are for sure.

It’s because there’s nothing to do at this point except wait to see how CGC is going to make this right. I don’t see how anyone can be comfortable buying a blue label Hulk 181 or other high value book until we get some clarity though.

if this is as widespread as it’s looking, who you buy from isn’t relevant anymore because of how many times these books have changed hands. The only way to protect customers is release a list of all the mis-graded books after a full investigation. How they handle liability for those books is a whole other problem. Anything less than a full mea culpa is a disaster.

And what about this thread makes you think the humans at CGC are doing any of that either? 😂

I don't disagree with most of what has been posted here already. I don't think the accusations of theft are fair, it sound's like this guy is just in way over his head. From what I've read he's probably a decent presser and restorer but not capable of running a business. The mistakes he made that have nothing to do with bad luck have already been stated, but what I think is missing is that he needs to accept this business has failed. I was small business owner and one of my partners had a saying: "A monkey can sell, it's delivering that's the hard part." The number of AF 15's and volume of work doesn't mean anything and certainly can't be used as a yardstick of success. As he said himself, during COVID there was a boom, everyone was getting more work than they could handle. I imagine most people on this forum could have hung a shingle and started a comic-related small business of one kind or another. When it came to delivery this business appears to have failed on every front, is probably cash flow negative and lacking any reserves. Now on top of that their reputation is destroyed. It's a death spiral. It sucks for anyone with their books there but the right thing to do is get a lawyer, declare bankruptcy, sell whatever assets you can and send back all the books. There is no other way out of this. Small businesses fail more times than they succeed and there is no shame in that, but it's time to be honest with yourself and do the right thing.

I see this thread is still 95% speculation. Until CGC makes a statement it’s anybodies guess what’s going on. My money is still on inexperienced graders under pressure making mistakes. Ultimately grading is a system based on human judgements and humans make mistakes. Put 100 NM comics in front of a dozen graders (especially recently hired) and you’ll get a range of grades on the same book. Despite what the market reflects, there’s functionally little difference between 9.6 and 9.8 on a macro scale. And that doesn’t even get into 9.9s and 10.0s. So long as that’s the case, people will play the lottery and see what they can get away with. In this case, I think CGC is just overcorrecting.

So question: How many books have you had to turn away because you detected previous restoration? Is it common? What sort of things have you seen?

This could all be cleared up if someone from CGC would just come out and say what “cover cleaned” actually means. Does it mean chemicals were detected? Does it mean it was damaged in some way from aggressive dry cleaning? I don’t think they need everyone here leaping to their defense but again, I understand that lots of people have a financial interest in CGC’s reputation. That said, a lot more people watch those YouTube videos than read these forums so the reputational damage will get done either way.

Epic Ad Hominem

I’m starting to think you’re just trolling me. Are the professionals aware of this thread? Or are those people lying and submitting photoshopped pictures. How much of your net worth do you have in CGC slabs to not see this?

Why is that the most likely? You have zero evidence of that. Again, there is ample evidence of graders making mistakes. There is no evidence these books were previously restored. In fact the guy said so far as he knows they were from original collections. The amount if denial here is really something. Hopefully we can get some clarification on this from CGC. If absorbene isn't considered dry cleaning that would be news to many.

“In short, you’re wrong”. LOL. Quite the argument there. Let’s make this simple. There’s two possibilities here, either the guy in the video originally posted is lying or the grader made a mistake. I can provide all kinds of evidence of grading mistakes around wrong labels, missed alterations and the like. Can you find one instance of this guy lying? If not then I’m afraid you just don’t have a point. Also maybe address my point about graders notes.