tmac100

That is just about one of the most perfect silver age books I've seen.  I have no idea how a comic remains that perfect after 55 years.  I guessed a 9.8 but was like I must be missing something because there's no way there's nothing wrong on a book that old.

Overall great colors and gloss.  Some cracking along the spine (the lightning makes it look worse).  Interior complete and staples secure with no rust.

thank you 

Hi all, this is more of a general question regarding spine wear and its impact on grade.  Assuming a book is otherwise an 8.5, how much would spine wear like the attached impact the overall grade?  
 

Trying to decide if I should get it graded.  I see lots of info on spine ticks, but very little about this type of spine wear.

Thanks

On 4/19/2024 at 1:43 PM, marvelmaniac said:

Slightly blunted corners, small color breaking crease at the top left corner, color loss/scrape at top edge/right corner, recessed upper staple with a couple of color breaking spine ticks, cover wrap is not completely centered, small ding on the lower/outer edge of rear cover, moderate tanning/discoloration of rear cover edges, spine, and edges of interior pages.

As the book sits right now, IMO...FN+ 6.5

Not sure how lenient CGC is these days, IMO, if all of the discoloration is able to be cleaned/removed, probably a VF - 7.5, by the grading standards I use (Overstreet/Heritage), the two color breaks mentioned at the top edge/corners will prevent this from being a VF 8.0.

VF 8.0 - An unnoticeable 1/4" crease is acceptable if color is not broken. 

7.0 FINE/VERY FINE (FN/VF):  Back to Top
An above-average copy that shows minor wear but is still relatively flat and clean with outstanding eye appeal. A small accumulation of minor bindery/printing defects is allowed. Minor cover wear beginning to show, possibly including minor creases. Corners may be blunted. Inks are generally bright with a moderate reduction in reflectivity. Stamped or inked arrival dates may be present. Minor foxing. The slightest spine roll may be present, as well as a possible moderate color break. Staples may show some discoloration. Slight staple tears and a small accumulation of light stress lines may be present. Slight rust migration. Paper is cream to tan. Centerfold is mostly secure. Minor interior tears at the margin may be present.

6.5 FINE+ (FN+):  Back to Top
Fits the criteria for Fine but with an additional virtue or small accumulation of virtues that improves the book's appearance by a perceptible amount.

6.0 FINE (FN):  Back to Top
An above-average copy that shows minor wear but is still relatively flat and clean with no significant creasing or other serious defects. Some accumulation of minor bindery/printing defects is allowed. Minor cover wear apparent, with minor to moderate creases. Inks show a significant reduction in reflectivity. Blunted corners are more common, as is minor staining, soiling, discoloration, and/or foxing. Stamped or inked arrival dates may be present. A minor spine roll is allowed. There can also be a 1/4" spine split or severe color break. Staples may show minor discoloration. Minor staple tears and a few slight stress lines may be present, as well as minor rust migration. Paper is tan to brown and fairly supple with no signs of brittleness. Minor interior tears at the margin may be present. Centerfold may be loose.

I think CGCs grading standards are very different from Overstreet's.  I pulled these copies of 8.5's (and an 8.0) from sales on the Heritage site (I always find that comparing my copy to previously CGC graded one is a huge help).  Other than the tanning, these have many more defects.  It's just the tanning that I can't gauge the impact of.

X-Men #17 (Marvel, 1966) CGC VF+ 8.5 Off-white to white pages.... | Lot #17850 | Heritage Auctions (ha.com)

X-Men #17 (Marvel, 1966) CGC VF+ 8.5 White pages.... Silver Age | Lot #12126 | Heritage Auctions (ha.com)

X-Men #17 UK Edition (Marvel, 1966) CGC VF+ 8.5 Off-white to white | Lot #11959 | Heritage Auctions (ha.com)

X-Men #17 (Marvel, 1966) CGC VF 8.0 Off-white to white pages.... | Lot #11678 | Heritage Auctions (ha.com)

This has always been one of my favorite covers, but it’s been very hard to find a raw copy that looks good.  Because of the black and red cover, every crease and spine tick is becomes glaringly obvious.  And the colors are often faded.

I found this copy that looks great.  A few non color breaking spine ticks, and some small scuffing on the top right corner and bottom left of the front cover.  After a clean and press, based on that I’d guess at least an 8.5.

However, the book does have some tanning that is visible on the back cover and the interior covers.  I’m not sure how that impacts the grade of this book.

Thoughts?  Thanks for looking 

Count me in

Looks like you had the book pressed after posting the original because all those wrinkles on the front cover are gone.  Amazing what a good press can do.  I would have guessed a 6.0 for the original.

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On 2/17/2024 at 12:27 AM, scburdet said:

If I understand the description correctly, this is a 2nd print & is much more common than the 1st. You can compare the scans at mycomicshop as well, this has edges on the cover than are wider like the 2nd print. They also have an 8.5 2nd print for <$100, so not terribly valuable, especially in this condition, which is probably is under 6.0

https://comixjoint.com/bijoufunnies1-1st.html

Thanks for the link; it was a big help.  I'm pretty sure this one is the 1st print.  Here's what I found on comixjoint:

HISTORICAL FOOTNOTES:
There are two printings of Bijou Funnies #1, both with 50-cent cover prices. The 1st printing (unknown copies) is by Bijou Publishing Empire and is identifiable by the significant overlap of the covers to the interior pages (over half an inch, as seen in the scan above). The 1st printing also has higher-grade interior paper (white pages) than the 2nd printing (6,500 copies), which was published by Don Donahue and Kerry Clark and has newsprint interior pages. There are notable color and printing differences on the front cover art between the first two printings. Nard's nose on the 1st printing has a much redder tip (solid red, in fact) and his vest, hat, jacket and tie are all different colors than on the 2nd printing. The circular pattern in the background of the 1st printing also has a moire pattern that is eliminated in the 2nd printing.

Comixjoint also shows pictures of the 2 versions:

The first print has a deep red tip of the nose, brown hat, and a red vest and tie, for the person pictured on the cover.  And a big overlap of the cover vs interior pages.

The second print has a pink tie and an orange vest, black hat, and interior pages flush with the exterior cover.  

The one I've shown has all the features of the 1st print.  

I’d like to get your thoughts on the grade for this book.  But also if any of you are familiar with it. From what I’ve read, this 1968 first printing is very rare.  I never heard of this book until I picked it up today and it’s hard to find prices on it so I’m not sure if it’s worth grading.
 

Both the front and back cover have a small piece missing from the bottom right corner.  The front and back covers also have a large overhang from the interior pages - that is apparently a feature of the first printing.

Thanks

On 2/8/2024 at 1:47 PM, comicjel said:

I could have actually rationalized that they might "not" have had an inside person if the scam was limited to reholder books, and if many of their original summitted 9.8s looked to be strong 9.8s and were almost always reholdered before sold - that would have made sense and seemed plausible to me.

The problem was, and the reason I think there must have been someone on the inside, was that many of the originally submitted books that received 9.8 were not strong 9.8s (IMO) and were just sold instead of being reholdered (which really made no sense if the scam was to reholder inferior swapped books).  To me the inside guy was more (or equally) for the originally submitted (generous) grades than for the reholdering aspect - and maybe this evolved more recently.

But then, there also seemed to be a reholder person that was changing labels from non-MJI to MJI; and non-newstand to newstand, apparently without checking the original scans (or notes) and, as I emphasized in an earlier post, the part of this label changing swap that I found more difficult to accept, was not that the reholder department might be somewhat lax with such label changes (I could accept that pretty easily), but more so that the outside scammer would have felt comfortable that they would not be discovered by attempting this type of swap / label change... how could the outside scammers feel so bold with such a risky label change, that you would almost expect to be scrutinized more, unless they had someone on the inside?

Now enter Mr. Terrazas, based on the recent filing... he is a grader (check) and he had access to reholdering books (check) and he was able to print labels for reholdered books that did not match the book being reholdered (check) and he had a spouse who had internal access as well (check) - if you were to search for the perfect inside guy for what we see happening, this would be your "one stop" inside guy! (or certainly someone with similar access).

Now consider the case brought against the Terrazas'... what was it, 23 stolen books? - huge deal I agree!; graded (by someone else), and then reholdered with incorrect (higher grade) labels - horrible I agree!.  But how many of you attorneys out there feel that CGC would have brought this type of "public" filing for these 23 books (after they were already fired)? - to me this case had a reason that went beyond getting this already fired couple to return the remaining (if any) books that they had not already sold (or to try to get a recovery from them).  I just don't see this lawsuit (including the timing) being pursued if they were independent of the outside scammers.

There are other things...

- SS books that seem involved somehow (by both inside and outside scammers)

- Unbelievable quick turn around times on things

- Grader notes on 9.8s that seem unusual 

So yes, I feel there must have been an inside guy, and I feel it was possibly Mr. Terrazas or someone with similar access (just my opinion based on 401 pages of reading!) 

    

   

  

 

The confusing part though is that I believe that they were fired from CGC in September, but the scammer was still sending in books in December.

On 1/29/2024 at 3:28 PM, scburdet said:

Call me crazy, but I have a similarly damaged X-Men 49 that everyone on the board thought would get hammered. I wasn't that much more optimistic & then it came back at 7.5. This corner looks a little worse, so I'll give it a 6.5 with very limited potential to do better. If a corner is deemed to be a crunch, then 7.0 is supposed to be the low-end for that defect alone. 

I was leaning the same way.  This is a link to the same issue, a graded 7.0.  It has a bad top corner also (not as bad) but overall this graded 7.0 has many more defects.  Maybe this was just the case of a lucky grade, but I can't see the one I showed dropping below a 6.5 or 6.0 when comparing to this one.  Unless I'm missing something.

Tales to Astonish #64 (Marvel, 1965) CGC FN/VF 7.0 Off-white to | Lot #15783 | Heritage Auctions (ha.com)

Overall, the book has nice color and gloss.  There are some defects that I'm not sure how to gauge the impact of:

Top right corner of the front cover has multiple creases (crushed corner?). 

The top has some creasing due to the Marvel overhand.

There is a very small indentation on the right side of the front cover, about 4 inches down the page, that goes through some of the interior pages as well.

A few spine ticks.  

The interior is complete and solid.

Thanks

On 1/27/2024 at 12:47 PM, comicwiz said:

I appreciate that you mentioned this point. Very early on, when I was looking at the unusual trends/patterns from the sales history of these impacted books, I used the word that it looks almost like someone was trolling CGC. The words I should have used instead was a parading an embarrasment of riches.

When comparing it to scandals like the Toy Toni scandal, he had run the unused Palitoy factory cardbacks and blisters using a post-factory seal, and yes he got them through right under AFA's nose, but there were patterns I identifed (some were reassuring very early on in the scandal) that he didn't have the confidence and certainty of success. The reason is the staggered manner of submissions, sale patterns, and doing his best to cover his tracks.

This is an extremely important point as we compare the trends/patterns in this incident. Even if we apply a "true detective" statistic to help explore this point, not even the most well-planned bank heists have a greater than 60% rate of success.

When you look at the pattern of acquisitions (dates, amounts of books, in the same grade), the frequency of reappearance of the same books, and speculate on the turnarounds achieved between acquisition and changes we tracked, the amount of money and risk/reward had to be almost near certain.

Not 60%. Not 70%, Not 80% or even 90%. I'm talking very nearly 100% certain this scheme was going to achieve the success and expected result.

It's one thing to pull off a heist, because the percentages show it's a crime that doesn't pay.

But there's also a percentage of unsolved and it's fairly higher than it should be, but the reason for this is because when it's pulled off right, the perpetrators don't go around showing off what they did, or talking about it with YouTubers, and certainly not flaunting it.

The pattern that is unmistakable in this specific instance (and the graphic I showed of the amount of books broken down by year certainly reinforce the progression and graduating aspects) but these books appeared too quickly, too soon after, and often very visibly with high value attaintment, with the unmistakable signature of seeming to parade these record prices with reappearances.

That is the red flag that drew me in instantly in, because even when I first looked at the data, I thought could these perps be that dumb?

But I was partly wrong. 

It's because of how certain they were of pulling this off. REPEATEDLY. 

The only part about smarts, or lack theroef, is the parading is what led us to notice that something was very wrong.

So, if I'm summarizing everything people have said so far correctly, then:

1) The scammer was able to get swapped books reholdered over and over again (hundreds of times apparently)

2) He was able to get a surprisingly high percentage of books graded 9.8 (some of which have been reviewed by posters and seem far from 9.8s)

3) He was able to get an astronomically high number of 9.8's that included grader's notes (and all saying the same thing), when 9.8's almost never have grader's notes

4) The turnaround times for getting many of his books graded was unrealistically fast

I'm sure I'm missing some other key points.

If this is all correct, then he sure was one lucky lone wolf to have all these things going for him for so long...

This Journey into Mystery 108 has some writing on the cover, and I’m not sure how it would impact the overall grade.  I know that some types of writing, such as store stamps, do not result in much, if any, of a grade hit.  I’m not sure if this falls into that category.

thanks

Thanks for looking.

My take: The missing piece alone takes you down to a 3.0 max.  With everything else going on, it's probably a 1.5.  Or a 2.0 on a really good day.

I'm basing this on the legendary ETA Nick's Cheat Sheet, but a stain the size of a quarter (which this appears to be) will take you down to an 8.0 max (with everything else being perfect).  Then add in the impact of other defects to lower it further.  The rest of the book looks pretty good (8.0+) so I'm going to go with 7.0, with a best case of 7.5 or worst case 6.5.

Let me know what you think.

Inside is complete with tight staples.

Thank you 

On the top right corner of the front cover, it is complete- there is just a small stain there that makes it look sort of chipped in the pictures.

Let me know your thoughts.  Trying to decide if it’s worth grading.

Thanks

Hello,

I’d appreciate your thoughts on my X-Men 43.  The inside is all intact and very clean overall.

Thank you 

Hello,

Let me know what you think.  The interior is complete with tight staples.

Thanks 

On 1/16/2024 at 11:04 AM, wiparker824 said:

Well done. Of course you know this forum and thread (myself included) are going to be filled with the people who Manu mentioned at the end that are going to be saying “why didn’t you ask this!” But before I get to that just wanted to say thank you to both of you and @mnelsonCGC for doing this and do hope you guys come together for a part 2.

Quick thoughts: 

1. The final note about them not opening holders sent back to them on this list to verify is very interesting. This tells me they have some tool or process already in place to determine a book was swapped by this individual. What that may be I understand they can’t divulge but it is very interesting. I think a lot of us thought that the books were all being cracked, regraded and checked for things like MJI, MVS, if they are the grade they say, coupon cut, resto, live ink on signatures, etc. How they are doing that without cracking the books is certainly fascinating.

2. The lone individual responsible I’d have liked to know if they’ve narrowed it to one individual who submitted the reholders or one CGC account that might have been used by one or multiple individuals. Furthermore was the party that submitted the reholders the same party that then sold the fraudulent books immediately after (thru eBay, CL or anywhere else) or was the person that submitted for reholders using a dealer account to handle their submissions and then reselling later.

3. Since the AF 15 SS was brought up Matt said he’s not seen that book personally yet. Which I know Matt isn’t the only one that works at CGC but that book seems like one he’d have seen if it came thru? Yet the grade date was updated to 1/5/24 on that book. This implies the book was regraded 2 days after the list was provided on 1/3/24. If it’s not in their possession why was the graded date updated? How was it graded? And if it’s a clean bill of health why wasn’t it crossed out after being graded?

 

Regarding the AF 15 SS - My guess is they don't need the book back to tell if it's legit or not.  They likely have pictures of the before and after for all their books already (as others have mentioned), so they can tell that the book wasn't swapped out.  Same for other books that have been crossed off the list which is why they don't need to crack it open to see the MVS is missing - maybe they can link it back to a previously graded 181 with a missing MVS by comparing the pictures.  For the scam to work, he would need a previously graded 181 with a missing MVS still in the holder.

As to why they didn't cross the AF 15 SS off the list, maybe they know that it is legitimate from comparing pictures - but know it is also still part of the scammer's personal collection because there is no recorded sale of it.  What better way to screw him than preventing him from ever selling it unless he contacts CGC to get it off the list...If it was sold off-market, then the new owners can still contact CGC to get it removed.

I'm in

On 1/6/2024 at 9:13 PM, mrd160 said:

I think it is clear they aren’t picking up sales done a shows. All of this persons submissions need to be reviewed imo

I saw you mentioned that your FF2 is not on the CGC list, but that it appears to be swapped out.  There has been debate about whether the list CGC provided is only for books the scammer reholdered.  And also whether the scammer was potentially also swapping out books without sending them to CGC for reholdering by carefully opening them and resealing them.  Maybe this was a case where the scammer swapped the book himself without sending it in to CGC for reholdering.  Do you have any indication from the FF2 case that there was any sort of tampering with it?