namisgr

Kept the 'starburst' but not the price.  Either April or May cover date was the month of the price change, depending on the title, and probably the week of the month the particular title was issued:

On 1/4/2024 at 1:57 AM, szav said:

Detailed and surprisingly extensive graders notes on 9.8s seems to be a new thing, so it may not mean anything in this case.  Hope this 9.8 with multiple defects doesn't end up on "The List"!

It's too well known for shenanigans to escape the attention of the hobby.  It's well known, for instance, that the book was previously graded 9.6, with high resolution scans available from the Heritage archives.  Consequently, to get the 9.8 label the book was re-graded, and the grader's notes for the 9.6 version are no longer available in the CGC database.

https://comics.ha.com/itm/silver-age-1956-1969-/superhero/the-amazing-spider-man-1-curator-pedigree-marvel-1963-cgc-nm-96-white-pages/a/7141-91233.s?ic4=ListView-ShortDescription-071515

But yes, it is weird that books recently graded 9.8 are suddenly showing up with grader's notes describing wear, when they predominantly weren't in the past.  The Curator ASM #1 with its new label and grade has the following noted: Spine small stress lines, very light wear bottom of spine, very light wear top of spine

Maybe making deadlines?

That's a very sweet batch of books.  

So my question: what is the motivation to bother with reholdering in this instance?  The copy that is either below an 8.5 grade, suffering damage deserving of a green label, or both, carries an 8.5 blue label when switched into the top case.  Is it because there's is perceptible damage to the top outer case after the switcheroo, which the fraud launders by the reholdering process?  Or is there another reason to reholder that I'm leaving out?

If the reason to go ahead with the reholdering after the switcheroo is to hide perceptible damage to the outer case, then these switchouts leave a stigma that they've occurred, in the absence of any reholdering. 

I'm buying the comic book.  Many are like that.  The numerical and page quality grades are very helpful guides, but I would never buy a book without seeing any scans of it, and my buying decisions depend on issues of eye appeal and quality of both cover and interior paper preservation that the CGC label doesn't fully reflect.

Don't get me started on the Birds, John.  

He states at two different times, once after re-joining the two corners together and again in his finishing summary that the plastic shows signs of the separation and prying apart.  He categorized it as subtle, but detectable.

On 1/1/2024 at 4:55 PM, Doctor Dositheus said:

Uh oh

 

This was informative, thanks for posting it.  While he shows a relatively easy heat-based method for opening the top and removing the label, he also admits that upon careful inspection one sees damage to the plastic along the top near and at the two posts.

On 1/1/2024 at 10:57 AM, Steven Valdez said:

OK, thanks again. So does this mean there could be incomplete blue label books out there from the time when CGC stopped doing label notes? If so, there'd be no way of knowing if an internal piece was missing...?

When did CGC stop doing label notes on low grade books, especially those missing interior parts?

On 1/1/2024 at 8:48 AM, Steven Valdez said:

Where did you get all that BS about people gluing them back into the comic??? You are off your face.... I get that it's probably still New Years Eve wherever you are, but I think you've had enough

He linked an auction in which the seller or the person the seller acquired the copy from did just that.  So could you lighten up on the hostility?

On 1/1/2024 at 8:37 AM, sledgehammer said:

I've seen a qualified .5 book before. people keep saying that, but there are qualified books for every grade on GPA.

But the submitter can decide whether they prefer a blue or green label.  And for any book in poor condition and having received a 0.5 grade, the submitter might as well choose the blue label, don't you think, since it's not a book that would receive a higher numerical grade going green rather than blue?

On 1/1/2024 at 2:40 AM, Steven Valdez said:

Another scary possibility that hasn't been touched on yet is those counterfeit key issues that at least a couple of guys have been producing.

I have the impression that only a single seller has been definitively outed so far.

Your quote conspicuously leaves out whether the poster thought the slabs that he'd opened and resealed were undetectable after doing so.

On 1/1/2024 at 2:31 AM, Steven Valdez said:

There's a CGC #181 with page 10 missing on eBay now... with a blue label?? "Condition is Like New."

https://www.ebay.com/itm/166510757271?mkcid=16&mkevt=1&mkrid=711-127632-2357-0&ssspo=NtUhIwj5Tou&sssrc=2047675&ssuid=08cSBa6BRJy&widget_ver=artemis&media=COPY

It's a blue label sporting a 'poor' grade.  That's why it's got a blue label.  Also irrelevant to anything happening here.

That's a leap to ascribe the downfall of reading comics with third party grading and encapsulation of valuable back issues.  There are still a couple of orders of magnitude more unslabbed back issue comics for reading and collecting than there are slabs that can no longer be read, unless the owner chooses to crack the books out.  And linking back issue encapsulation with the long running decline in the new comic book market doesn't make sense.

On 12/30/2023 at 1:07 PM, Steven Valdez said:

Does CGC have the skilled workforce to deal with the tsunami of regrading/reholdering orders that may start flooding in (depending on what damage-control measures they decide on)?

With certification numbers in hand tied to the perpetrator, why would people who have books not on the list flood CGC with regrading and reholdering work?

On 12/30/2023 at 12:59 PM, Steven Valdez said:

And complacency is yours.... it all equals out.

We'll see.  Having been here and active in the hobby through the Jason Ewert microtrimming scandal, at least I've got a bit of prior history on my side.

Besides, so far there's nothing that's been revealed in this thread to support the notion that there are thousands upon thousands of tampered slabs in the wild.  True that if I owned a high grade late bronze or copper ASM, X-Men or MJI book and it's in the newest holder, then I'd at the least have to take a magnifying glass to the bottom edge, while hoping it does not show up on the perpetrator submission list that CGC will soon release.

Perhaps the story will change over time, and additional perpetrators identified.  But perhaps not.

On 12/30/2023 at 12:11 PM, Steven Valdez said:

The tamper-resistant case they come up with next is going to be wonderful... wonderful at devaluing all their previous cases, that is.

We get it, alarmism is your thing.  

On 12/30/2023 at 9:59 AM, Steven Valdez said:

The last 20+ years worth of CGC'd books are unverified now in terms of their stated grades. ANY of them can be (or have been) swapped out from case to case. If the book inside is actually the grade stated, it'll need to cracked out first to verify that.

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

Doc Savage was a popular pulp adventure hero created in the 1930s, decades before Marvel issued their comic book version of the character in the early bronze period where they started up a large number of new titles.  The series, unfortunately, never caught on with the buying public and only lasted 8 issues plus one giant-size reprint comic, starting with these two picture frames.  The first ish has John Buscema cover art, the second Jim Steranko creating a fantastic Central American Mayan spectacle, and the interior pencils for both are by Ross Andru.