MatterEaterLad

THIS. How long has this guy been running this scam? Is it just this one account? Is it a group of people? Is there someone within CGC who is complicit? There are so many unanswered questions. Has CGC even offered a "We're aware of the situation and are looking into it"?

Sending big love to Jimbo and hoping for a speedy recovery. He's one of my favorite boardies. Such a good guy.

Congrats to the winners! Thanks again, Dr. X!

A former employee said the Flash 1 needed a massive amount of work. Maybe they were waiting to find a back cover, an interior spread, etc. There's no other circumstance where I'd wait that long, and even then, I can't imagine waiting 10 years.

Anyone tried to contact the eBay seller?

Thanks Phil! I'm glad you're 33. You have a whole career ahead of you. I was starting to worry that some knowledge would be lost as people retire from this work.

I think so too. Would be easy to test how thorough (or lacking) the process is by testing it with a few low value books.

This is bad. I've been talking to a friend this morning who is an engineer and their machine shop has a sonic welder. He said they're not hard to use if you know what you're doing. Some possibilities: 1) Someone cracked the slab, switched books, and sent it in for reholdering and perhaps CGC's reholdering process is clumsier than we'd like to imagine. Some employee looks at the cracked slab and thinks, "Meh, the book is IN the slab, so that's good enough." Off to reholdering. 2) A nefarious seller is cracking slabs, switching books, then resealing the slabs and sending them in for reholdering. 3) A CGC employee is switching books. This seems the least likely possibility to me. Doesn't CGC have cameras everywhere? 4) It's a glitch in the Matrix.

It appears that he's the last man standing.

$231.22

I had heard that Tracey wasn't doing restoration anymore because of health reasons. That website doesn't exist anymore and his last instagram post is almost 2 years old

With Mike at Hero Restoration crashing and burning, who else is out there? I heard that Susan Ciccone at Restoration Lab has retired There's Phil at Phantom Restoration. But I think he only does conservation now, not restoration. Is Bill Sarill of Classics Incorporated still in the game? There's Tracey (I forget his last name) who worked for the National Archives in Canada, but I don't think he's doing the work anymore. Kenny Sanderson is doing amazing work. Has anyone done resto with CCS lately? Seems like there's going to be a knowledge gap with so many people retired.

I'm not certain the family of the original owner were even involved, aside from the story. Maybe they were given a piece of the action if they signed an NDA? This dealer who said he recognized some of the books made it sound like this was a collection that was in someone else's hands for decades.

I'm guessing it was never told out of...professional courtesy? Not wanting to fall out of the good graces of Hertiage/CGC? I'm not sure. I talked to a dealer (speak up if you're reading this, but I don't think he's on these boards) who claimed to have sold a few of the books that ended up in the Promise Collection.

I wish more people would talk about the provenance of these books. Yes, there's a compelling story behind it, but that's not the full story. There are dealers who know this is a collection that was assembled from different places, including a storage unit find.

I'm sure everyone's later work is better than their early work. I've had old resto removed and redone with better techniques and materials. I don't know who did the original work, but it was probably Matt or Susan Cicconi, 25 years ago. When the dust finally settles and people learn how the Myers did it, every restorationist will add their technique to their bag of tricks. And once CGC knows what to look for, I'm certain they'll be able to detect.

Yeah, it kind of freaked me out. I thought, wait did I miss that? Then I opened the book and the "color touch" wasn't there and I was baffled for a moment.

I know some people were critical of their business model, which was to restore a book that would head to auction and instead of being paid hourly for the resto they would take a % of the hammer price. The difference is that this allowed them to put a ridiculous amount of time into a single book. They'd spend 200 hours on a book, and if they were charging by the hour, most wouldn't pay that.

I haven't read the legal doc in a while, which I think mentions their early work, like the Bat 1. I've seen books that came after that--books that stumped CGC and at least one of those books was called a Frankenbook here on the boards.

I've refrained from posting too much about this because I've seen their work up close and I've seen video of some of their techniques (including some of the things that have stumped CGC). I don't want anything that I say here to get in the middle of this lawsuit, which I know is ongoing. I'm hoping the Myers do not settle, because then these techniques will probably be disclosed to the collecting community during a jury trial. I agree with @Dr. Balls. CGC has the resources and capacity to figure this out, but they didn't and that's on them. They're not frankenbooks.

So weird. What appears to be color touch is just a shadow cast from my desk lamp. I took photos again with and without the light on. I didn't even notice when I quickly posted the above photo. You can see the cover has that tiny overhang, which creates that shadow.

So cool! Thanks for posting so much history and backstory. Makes me wonder if there might be a few more out there in the Japanese American community, like in some auntie's attic, and they're not aware of the value and significance. Especially among former internees and their families. I'll ask at the JCCCW the next time I'm in Seattle. Also, the artist Roger Shimomura has the largest collection, that I know of, of stuff like this of that era, so if he doesn't have one, it's probably one of the holy grails he's always been looking for.

9.4-9.6

6.5 mainly because of the stain.