Sam T

Why would that matter?

Not sure where you got that info but here's what i found, all gem mint 10 avengers 1 impel cards: https://www.ebay.com/itm/114927944699?hash=item1ac23d43fb:g:tC0AAOSwMm5gnFp8 - $15 https://www.ebay.com/itm/304068008134?hash=item46cbdd98c6:g:ObwAAOSwbZJg8NCz - $14.50 https://www.ebay.com/itm/304081202146?hash=item46cca6ebe2:g:PcYAAOSwGsRg~eXu - $22.50 Basically at 15-20 bucks you're paying for the case. People might like the card and want to preserve it. The value of a graded and sealed avengers #1 impel card is probably a little less the actual cost of getting it graded. Where do you get your sales data? Mines sourced and yours is just pic anyone could make.

I dunno it kinda seems like he just rambled a bunch of on-brand, pro-nft vagueries for 2 paragraphs before saying "yah they're selling folks jpg's that can be copied infinitely while arguing that they're scarce." People who sell NFT's are grifters. It's that simple. If someone can't sell a product to a customer in a way that BOTH parties benefit then they aren't a businessman, they're a fraudster.

People keep talking about NFT's in these vague, abstract terms but they're actually not new and they're not valuable and they're not important. Any physical recreation of existing art can be considered an NFT of that art. This is a physical representation of the art from avengers 1. But its value is in no one related to the value of a silver age copy of Avengers #1. The idea is that the vague language around NFT's keep trying to imply a connection. But folks are kinda being caught in the same hype form the 90's just with a new name. This isn't a digital NFT but its a non-fungible token non-the less. The idea is that a digital NFT actually has less value because you can't download my card but I can download the image from your NFT. NFT's have no scarcity. They're just reproducible data with a Certificate of Authentication and theres a reason no one cares about CoA's anymore...anyone can print one, lol. That card probably sold for $3 in an LCS in 90's. Now its worth somewhere between nothing and $1. At the same time the original comic has probably gone up 20-50x in value. A lotta older folks in the industry seem to be selling weird hype to younger collectors. But these old dudes all lived through the 90's crash. They know what they're doing and they're trying to get new, dumb money to buy them out of their toxic positions. The variant and NFT comic markets are basically the chromium covers and death of superman stuff from the 90's and that stuff ain't even worth the paper its printed on now. Goodluck everyone and remember that hype ain't real and value is a two sided equation: supply and demand. if you focus on one, you'll be lead astray.

Okay. Give me an example...lol. There is literally no actual use-case that makes any sense. I mean we already had databases of real estate ownership so folks just started buying things under an LLC. NFT's are the flawed premise that we don't have an "ownership database" for technical reasons. Who cares if there's an "accurate list of ownership" in the blockchain if the all the names are something like XxBongFiend420xX? Anyone can build a database and charge access to it, that doesn't mean the data reflects anything in the real world. We don't have ownership databases because rich folks are dirty and broke and in debt so they need to hide what they own. Look at the whole WATA blow up. They're gonna get investigated by the SEC just like the 1980's coin fraud that the same folks did. NFT's don't actually have a practical use. They don't solve a problem anyone actually has. The entire pitch for NFT's is a whole lotta vague "could be useful" kinda stuff but no one ever finishes the thought.

I dont understand how an NFT makes my drivers license more effective...I'm sure it'll make it more expensive but ya'll keep talking about NFT's in ways they don't work. Acting like NFT and "the blockchain" are a product in an of themselves is kinda like saying if someone spray paints their name on a wall then they own the building. NFT's aren't some weird objective kind of tool. They are not "natural" and they don't have any kind of objective verification. Your NFT isn't "real or fake" any a global or national scale. That is determined by the person or commercial platform that is selling you the NFT. It's literally a guy saying "pay for this picture and trust me it's real because this expert said so" and he points to a picture of himself. They invented a worthless "asset class". Smart collectors will continue to buy silver and gold books because supply and demand both need to be a factor. NFT's are infinitely reproducible and have no demand but the dealers keep telling us how rare they are...when EVERYONE has one. There will never be more Silver Age. There are a million more jpg's every day. NFT's aren't rare or useful.

Acting like a picture of a comic is a valuable or scarce asset makes no sense. This isn't FF #1. It isn't worth tens of thousands of dollars. It is worth less than $1 on ebay. This value of this trading card has zero connection to the value of a copy of Fantastic Four #1 even if they share the same image., ha Folks trying to sell comic NFT's are doing something real dirty. They're just selling jpg's with a certificate of authenticity. But if the jpg is the product, who care about the cert?

He hasn't actually defined what that would even mean or how it would help a collector. I'm curious. It kinda seems like he's just trying to sell pictures of his books? Weird. NFT isn't a magic word. It doesn't make something valuable. NFT is just DRM (Digital Rights Management). It's just copy protection for a picture...but like not really because anyone can still got the picture. NFT's for visual art doesn't make sense because the value of the art isn't some vague concept of ownership, the value is looking at it. And anyone can look at it. NFT's are just chromium covers for jpgs. They're false scarcity and they are not helpful. The concept of an NFT definitely has technical value in a few use cases...i just don't understand how this is one of them.

The thread that ISN'T linked to here?lol I'm sorry but if this guy wants the support of the community he should actually explain what happened and if half the story is somewhere else he should have linked to it. And if you're seeing me "needing more details" and your response is to try to assign me homework when you already know the answer and could just type it...well that's not how you build a community. Part of the reason we have so many scammers in collectibles trading is that we've sorta accepted a very short term, twitter style discourse where no one is really allowed to have a complex discussion and no one ever does the work of actually explaining their point. How can an ebay user be messaging this person without him seeing their user name? That's not how eBay works for me and I've used it for decades. I been on it since MTG Revised, lol. If you get a message, you get a user name. I literally don't understand how its remotely possible to talk to the same account without knowing it. Ebay has tons of problems. Its filled with bots designed to inflate the values of all assets. It's gross. But the problems this post is about just don't exist in my experience.

I don't understand the story. You're saying that you were talking to the same account and didn't realize it was the same person? I don't understand how you were "talking to them" without having a user name or anything.

What purpose does this serve?

I think ebay is about to take over the whole damn thing...or it already did. they're gonna offer a bunch of free information services that will slowly be slipped behind a paywall. So we'll have one massive vertically integrated monopoly gatekeeping almost all collectible sales....fuuuun!

So no one believes that eBay itself has a shill bidding problem? That it might not be seller specific. I really think this is sorta eBay blaming an outgoing client for their own problems faults. Have ya'll been selling a lot recently? A lot of the accounts that bid on my stuff seem...odd. They'll have one weird auction up for 12 years for an item no one wants, no verifiable transactions but have TONS of positive feedback. I think if you look at how ebay actually works for everyone, not just PWCC it seem clear that they might not be innocent but eBay is definitely guilty. I'm not going to stop selling on eBay, I literally don't have any other option, but that doesn't mean I have to lie to myself about the platform.

uhhh this entire paragraph seems to take place in an alternate world where graded cards don't exist... the point is that the label turns collectibles into a standardized and financialized asset. If I have 100 copies of a card and place a bid that's a little over the FMV, I might not win it and if I do, I just pushed the value of the 100 other copies up. So I might be overpaying by 5% for one card but I might have pushed the value up 1%, meaning my collection went up by more value than "lost" by overbidding. I'm sorry if I'm not explaining it right but this is just sort of a generalized process of inflating the value of an asset but applied to eBay and the graded card market.

Then why were folks on this forum recommending them VERY recently? Do a forum search for PWCC. This forum has not been saying they're shill bidding. This forum has been promoting them. Do ya'll understand the logic behind the fact that someone shill bidding doesn't actually have to be in cahoots with the seller? If I have 10 copies of a book, then I can shill bid on your auction of that book and it actually boosts the value of my copies.

I don't understand how one of the world's largest trading cards seller (PWCC) could be accused of fraud by the world's largest collectibles dealer (eBay) and that a forum dedicated to card sales wouldn't wanna discuss it. Personally, I don't see any reason to believe eBay. I sell books regularly (not a dealer, just an amateur) and I definitely see bids on my auctions from accounts that look like they're probably fake. Short of IP logs that prove the shill bids came from PWCC's computers, I don't see how eBay can back up their accusation. The idea is that there are people entirely uninvolved in asale that have a reason to shill bid. A person might shill bid on a trading card because they have 10 of em they're planning to sell. I could place a bid on the card, and if I win, no big deal. The small loss for overpaying this time will be made up over time because overpaying on eBay pushed up the value of the 10 copies I originally had. eBay has means, motive and opportunity to promote shill bidding. In fact they probably have more incentive than the sellers themselves. If I put a charizard on eBay, a person could maybe get another $50-$100 by shill bidding it up. But that pushes the value up and even though eBay only gets a small cut of that one sale, they're getting small cuts of thousands of charizards per year. Big card dealers have their hands in thousands of sales but ebay is recieving commission from MILLIONS of transactions. Ebay actually has said they're responsible from over a billion transactions per day. Collectibles dealers MIGHT be able make a couple thousand dollars via shill bidding but a platform that promotes and facilitates widespread shill bidding has made eBay BILLLIONS of dollars. The idea that a seller might shill bid to make a little bit more money makes cents. But a platform designed to encourage and protect shill bidders makes dollars. We need an auction site without automated registration. We need a bunch of platforms where a human has to have a conversation with another human before they can open an account. We don't need the most accounts, we don't need the highest numbers. We need honest marketplaces and ebay ain't that. Good luck out there, folks. Don't trust platforms or corporations

For real. This kind of selective enforcement of standards is so weird. I mean look at where we are. Jim Halperin works at CGC. CGC and WATA both having identical relationships to Heritage despite the new one not really having anything other than a board of directors with influence and "relationships". There is absolutely no reason to pretend CGC is behaving any different than WATA. So why aren't we talking about what's really going on? It seems like the entire top-end of EVERY market is just fake. A bunch of insiders transferring some product or service back and forth amongst each other in a way that increasing the value of their assets over time. We want to pretend that this is an issue with a few bad apples but its actually the entire top of the industry. The idea that a 9.8 can be worth 1,000x as much as a 3.0 just doesn't make sense. It isn't actually 1,000x better to anyone, its JUST the speculators. While the frauds being committed are bad and do hurt people but if we actually talk about the issue properly and then adapt our buying habits then we're fine. Sorry CGC but your books are overvalued and your service is very expensive...so a smart collector would actually stop investing in CGC books. They inflated value of high end books so the real value is in low grade keys. Which means if we do some digging, take some time and really collect. Get back to the fundamentals...we can still find fun books to buy and some good long term investments. That's only thing that pays off without a scam involved... A lack of financial transparency is an absolute requirement for fraudsters to do this kind of thing. The fact that census results and GPA analysis aren't free and public means CGC is not a objective. We shouldn't have to find examples of their fraud, we should simply be able to point to an opaque system with hidden data and say "that's where the fraud's gotta be". CGC needs to open up or be prepared to get left behind. I'm not going to create data that help someone turn my hobby into a pump and dump.

thanks! I'm not really sure if selling my joke cards would work but I printed a few up on card stock. There's something awesome about sleeving a card that you made. I gave a bunch to my LCS to hand out, I just like the idea of other people enjoying them. I've been selling random singles (pokemon, magic, marvel impel) on ebay recently I decided to throw in a free epstein card w/ one of em. I wonder if people search ebay for "jeffrey epstein" lol. https://www.ebay.com/itm/284227978518 Also if anyone wants to borrow the idea and make their own parody cards I could share templates (.psd). It was so much fun writing the backs of em. I got to go through all my impel cards and look for parallels between the coolest marvel villains and public figures. The podcast I was listening to at the time was focused heavily on finance but this idea could be used in any context. I'm gonna start working on templates for Impel Marvel Series 2 and 3 and X-Men Series 1.

It's so cool to see people still collecting these! I made some satirical/parody trading cards based on a podcast I've been listening to based on my favorite set ever, Impel Marvel Universe Series 1. When I started collecting, marvel series 3 had just came out so I thought of s1 as their rookie cards and always bought em when I saw em. I guess the design kinda stuck with me, lol. What do ya think?

Hey hey hey, watcha think of this guy? https://imgur.com/a/eVSw52e

What do ya'll think? https://imgur.com/a/4KZxODC

Same! I posted a couple auctions and I'm very glad that the books I'm posting on PGM are coming back with estimates below my personal grading. I'd rather sell someone a 2.0 thats actually a 3.0 than a 3.0 that's actually a 2.0.

Selling some of my old books on ebay and figured I'd post em here for ya'll to check out. Thanks! https://www.ebay.com/sch/sammycrack/m.html?_nkw=&_armrs=1&_ipg=&_from=

Wondering what you guys think of this old guy. The pages and cover are pretty tanned/darkened but it's structurally sound. Thanks guys! https://imgur.com/a/38EfMnf

Thanks a lot guys! I think I quoted the grade as 2.0-2.5 to a buyer. I'm glad to have a little wiggle room in case the stuff ya'll can't see is worse than ya imagined. Probably going to post a couple more books today. Ya'll are gonna turn me into a competent grader in no time!