Mephisto

On 4/14/2024 at 8:46 PM, Muno42 said:

These are really well done. No surprise they do not run here in the States!

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.

On 4/2/2024 at 4:37 PM, G.A.tor said:

never seen it?...earliest surfer cover I know is beschara and ff 72...fishler has 74, and clink auctioned 77  about 10 years ago...Ive not seen 75....never seen SS 2 or 3 cover...1,4 up seem to have been out there

 

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

On 1/10/2024 at 9:16 AM, comicwiz said:

If it's the case I'm thinking, different first name

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.

On 1/8/2024 at 2:14 AM, MyNameIsLegion said:

imagine dealers at a show pinching themselves over the good fortune of making a trade for a swapped out blue for all their qualified greens and purples that have been languishing in their back-stock.  No records, no scans. Totally laundered out into the universe.  He's probably doing it right now. Sure, he's gone offline, but he could continue swapping books and simply not reholder anything at CGC.  He can easily make a 6 figure income and never sell online again. Just like micro-trimming DD who's trolling this thread. He didn't go to prison either now, did he?  

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

On 1/3/2024 at 10:32 AM, Junkdrawer said:

Back in the dawning days of VHS stores renting tapes out. They were expensive and the “unscrupulous” would open/tamper the plastic shell and remove the original and replace it with either a copy, a blank, or whatever. The good guys put a security label that was tamper evident. CGC simply needs a tamper evident sticker. 

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.

On 1/3/2024 at 9:45 AM, Bo1983 said:

Go read your graded comics 😂😂😂👍

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

On 12/30/2023 at 12:12 PM, NewWorldOrder said:

But great for reholdering cash grab.

See they win in the end.  House always does.

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. 

On 12/30/2023 at 12:01 PM, MAR1979 said:

LOADED Weapon > Lethal Weapon .  IMHO by a lot!

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

On 12/30/2023 at 11:49 AM, NewWorldOrder said:

If those are proven to be compromised and its CGC fault they will pay.

 

still not a lot of money to them.

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.

On 12/30/2023 at 10:19 AM, namisgr said:

That's throwing out a whole lot of babies with their bathwater.

Sigh these boards lag terribly.

On 12/29/2023 at 8:40 PM, NewWorldOrder said:

I am from Philly burbs originally.  I moved from one s-hole to another.  This one just has better weather!

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.

On 12/29/2023 at 12:30 PM, shadroch said:

I'm sorry about this. It seems obvious the scammers are consistently in front of CGC, and one of the main reasons for buying a slabbed book has been rendered obsolete. I can no longer buy a third-party slabbed book and have confidence in what I'm getting.  

I do no know how they solve it, but twenty years' worth of their product now has to be looked at differently. 

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. 

On 12/29/2023 at 11:56 AM, THE_BEYONDER said:

I don’t recall the inner well ever being open on one side

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.

On 12/29/2023 at 11:39 AM, jeffreyk said:

So in the 1st and 2nd Gen holders, the labels were at the top of the inner well, but the inner well was not sealed at the top? Interesting.  

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. 

On 12/29/2023 at 8:03 AM, THE_BEYONDER said:

Unfortunately, as just seen with the 252 posted above…every book has become suspect. 

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.

On 12/29/2023 at 8:31 AM, THE_BEYONDER said:

Hopefully you’re right, and the switcheroo is a relatively recent phenomenon.

Not according to George…

On 12/29/2023 at 7:34 AM, Mr. Zipper said:

Yes, they are the same book. The two spine ticks are identical. Any difference is due to different lighting.