namisgr

^ ^ While there were several hugely important creative forces working for Marvel, Stan Lee gave their comics line personality, fun, and appeal to young adults that DC didn't match, and that didn't exist prior to Stan's making it so. It came not just from the comic plots, stories and art, and characters that were the product of several creators, but also from Stan's unquestioned contributions of the content and tone of the dialog, the Bullpen and letters pages, and the Marvel-run fan clubs, as well as Stan's efforts as the public face interacting with college students, the press, and artists from other media. Finally, given that a longstanding thread is already devoted to denigrating Stan's influence and involvement in Marvel's success, it would be nice if this one weren't used for that very same and so repetitive purpose.

I don't think it's a stretch to consider that the more value slabbing and grading adds to the selling price of a comic, the more CGC can charge for the slabbing and grading service. The marketplace has established that the value of their service is much, much greater for the submitter of an Amazing Fantasy #15 (tens of thousands of dollars) than it is for the submitter of an Amazing Spiderman #126 (tens of dollars). LowGradeBronze and NickFurious have made this point already, and I agree with it. In comparison, I suspect that their higher insurance burden for more valuable books is just a relatively small contributor to deriving their tiered fees.

I know you're being facetious, Bill, but Mr. Eichenbaum wrote: We will not tolerate acts of fraud against our community, and we will not rest until justice is served. But it hinders rather than promotes the serving of justice to keep the collector and dealer community underinformed about the submission histories of the outsider swapping fraudster and the insider couple printing their own labels and also swapping and stealing.

It may look big, but it's not a full list of the submissions by the swap-out scammer.

Has there been release of anything conclusive that the in-house fraud was committed on no more than a maximum of 23 encapsulated books? Has there been release of the total number of comics the fraudster couple had encapsulated since they began employment? In other words, are we certain of the scope of the fraud, or is the potential for more slabs being involved being swept under the rug, so to speak?

Missing from the CEO letter regarding the two recent scams involving CGC is the commitment to help the comic collecting/dealing community identify additional possible instances of fraudulent grading. Specifically, the letter made no mention and the company has made no public effort to provide to the community a complete listing of the certification numbers of every encapsulated book submitted by the swap-out external fraudster or submitted by the in-house fraudster using their access to the facility to make their own bogus labels. CGC can do better for us.

The damage control is in full swing.

Early Blade appearances, from my original collection.

Love those issues, especially the ones with Frank Brunner art.

The Oregon Coast collection does not have a pedigree designation from CGC. But being a sweet, sought after original owner collection of high grade white paged bronze age comics, I believe the provenance does have significance.

Last one for now, my original copy and a favorite and underrated Ploog cover:

More Mike Ploog:

Some of the following issues with cool Ploog and John Buscema cover art, from my original collection: found the scan:

I still get logged off on occasion and have to sign back in for full board access.

Reprinted, with different coloration:

CGC must release at a minimum the identities and certification numbers of the seven comics that were stolen and then encapsulated with stolen labels sporting much higher grades than the stolen books deserved, and then sold at auction. They should also ask owners of these slabs to send them back to CGC in exchange for full value of the books as per their fraudulent grade, plus shipping cost and a reward for the sender.

Thanks for the focus on this part of the filing. It says the perp admitted to stealing 23 comics. It remains possible that the true number is actually larger. And of the 23 admittedly stolen, the perp had seven of them encapsulated with labels sporting higher grades that were duplicated from other graded examples - the true number of swaps with bogus grades is, then, a minimum of seven. Over the past couple of years, there have been so many threads on the boards about encapsulated books that don't look anything like they're deserving of the assigned grades. With the outsider 'swap-gate' and insider 'swap-gate' now providing concrete examples of slabbed books being labelled in ways that have nothing to do with their actual grades and conditions, it becomes increasingly challenging for collectors of slabbed books and venues selling them to identify comics that have been innocently overgraded, a normal part of the high volume, subjective, imperfect, and sometimes rushed nature of the third party grading process, from those that may be sporting labels that are fraudulent and have nothing to do with actual condition and grade of the slabbed comic. Here's a post of mine from one of those threads from 2022 wondering whether there might be a problem within CGC that could explain some of these instances of gross overgrading:

Then switch it out for a higher profile judgement.

Why are you screaming at us?

Insiders printing their own labels, then having encapsulated lower grade books, then selling them via multiple online venues - wowza.

Frisco, it's been a long time gone! That's an outstanding way to come back to the Silver Age subforum.