Mephisto

They run in the states. I can't remember if I have been seeing them when streaming or watching cable but I've seen it multiple times recently.

Many, many years ago Philippe Queveau had the original cover to Silver Surfer 3 posted on his CAF.

It was Ray Romano. It was a cop but not undercover. It was his own brother, Robert.

I just don't care because Rey became such a trainwreck of a character in the last trilogy along with many of the other characters. I have no desire to see anymore of their stories.

Well he did...it was just for fraud with sports memorabilia.

Are there really good ones? The eBay authentication ones for cards are a joke. I've had ones that I have peeled with no care at all that peeled perfect with no damage to the sticker at all.

Given your spelling abilities I suggest you read Spidey Super Stories.

Yup same they did with not being able to get the card end of CGC correct from day 1. The cases themselves are very nice but having a CGC brand and CSG brand along with 3 different label changes in just a few years was mind boggling stupid business. They were at least able to get loyalists to take advantage of all the holder changes with specials to get all their slabs uniform. Not to mention they changed their grading scale a bit further getting people to reslab their card. i just couldn’t get over how poorly run the card division was form the start. I said from the start it never made business sense to have CGC and CSG as separate companies. Well that was obviously a correct observation because it didn’t take all that long for the two to combine. Nice clear slabs weren’t enough for me to look past all the obvious incompetence. I also happened to notice the CGC card end of the business being publicly involved with someone that is super shady in the collectibles arena and that was the absolute final death knell for me not put their slabs in my collection. However, I can’t tell you the number of people I saw on message boards (not the CGC boards) talking about how they would take advantage of the limited time special to upgrade to the current labels.

I think my favorite is Always Sunny’s Lethal Weapon 6.

Worse case scenario is what many have said happens sooner than expected and Blackstone finds they’ve made what they can from this CGC acquisition and it’s no longer as profitable as they like and dump it. With a nearly $160 Billion market cap Blackstone can dig CGC out of whatever mess this winds up being as long as they actually find it profitable in the end to do so.

Tree Fity.

It’s all about previous high quality previous images existing. Before Ewert there was the Batman 11 on Heritage I posted was a nice resin that saw a small bump in grade and big jump in sales price. Being a Golden Age boom it was easy to identify it was the exact same copy. Hammer pointed out the book was missing some of its edge compared to the previous auction image. CGC determined someone had trimmed it and then aged the trimmed edges to hide the recent trimming. I think one of the theory was throwing a blow dryer on the trimmed edges. I had been collecting Golden Age Batman and Detective books and after that incident I actually did jump ship after that incident and moved on to art. If you ever play on the sports card section of the Blowout forums there are numerous threads outing sellers who trim and bleach cards and submit them to grading companies undetected. The boards do a good job of identifying the cards in previous slabs with now shorter boarders etc. The vintage cards are easier to identify as the card board on the backs of them often have tell tale marks to basically prove it’s the exact same card that is now rocking a shorter boarder. There is one collector that runs a database so you can search for a card and check the cert number of any previously identified manipulated cards before making any purchases.

Sigh these boards lag terribly.

I know Bel-Air has nicer weather but is it really a S-hole?

I just meant if I was going the raw buying route Bob would be at the top of my list. He’d check to see if the MVS was in a Hulk 181, probably do just as good if not better restoration check as any 3rd party grader and every raw book I have ever bought from him has had spot on grading.

I wouldn’t have said this in the past but I’d actually feel more comfortable not buying a slabbed book especially if it was from someone like Bob Storms. It’s just going to take too much detective work hunting down old photos or hoping the graders notes can prove a book wasn’t swapped. The online scans on CGC just haven’t been around long enough. Buy the book not the label is a good starting point and one I agree with however the issue now does lie in not being able to check the interior. Knowing someone could have swapped out a book with a MVS cut out or even a centerfold missing is too much of an issue for me at this point. I can’t justify paying a premium on a CGC book only to have to crack it out to make sure it’s complete inside.

I stole this from @delekkerste the king of OG slabs. The yellow highlights I recall being sealed the light blue above the label I don’t recall being sealed.

From what I recall at least one version was. I’m sure others can remember better or may have more recently cracked some older graded books.

Why not just use a catch all name like “Dr. Balls” on eBay?

That’s where I am at. I haven’t bought comic books much in the last 15 years. I had been mostly buying art. After selling some art, buying a house, and still having a lot of art to occupy most of the wall space I was looking at adding some CGC comics of books I either had when I was younger or always wanted. Seeing how easy it is for the outer shells to be peeled apart and another well with a different comic slid in I think I’m just going to take a pass since I haven’t really been buying comics much at all for many years. Around 20 years ago I thought it was kind of ridiculous that the interior wells at the time had the labels inside the top interior well plastic as the comic but the plastic was open at the top so you could just pluck out the labels. Had the labels been sealed along the top edge like the comic it would have made doing the old switcheroo on the old slabs (this may have been the OG labels I am recalling this scenario with) a lot harder. Now it appears it’s just as easy with the label not being housed in the same inner well as the comics. I can’t recall if there was ever a time the label was sealed on all sides of the same interior well plastic that comic was as it’s been so many years. Obviously the inner well is a bit more work to get things in and out of with its seal compared to the outer shell.

Not according to George…

Just want to pass this along to everyone. Potter is willing to take your CGC comics off your hands after this latest scandal.