namisgr

While that maybe so, it's based on the assumption that during the reholdering process these tampered slabs were carefully and thoroughly examined.

First off, the chemist posting on YouTube as Immaculate Comics who demonstrated the opening of outer cases using a heat gun and then resealing the posts and the open edge with a thin stream of xylenes stated that the method he used left behind traces that were subtle but still detectable. While he speculated that modification of his techniques could make the process undetectable, he has not yet shown that it is. Secondly, the current scandal involves CGC staff engaged in reholdering. It's entirely possible that the outer casing only received a cursory check for tampering, or perhaps no check at all saving for the confirmation that all the posts were still closed and there was no major damage to the cases. Once again, now that the company has been alerted to possible tampering of two of the corners, and those of us in the collecting community aware of the scandal have as well, it would be premature to rule out that meticulous inspection of the slab corners can detect the tampering now that the process is well known and at least partially understood. I'll believe the sky is falling when I see it falling. But it isn't quite yet from my perspective.

That was the same circumstance initially when the Ewert microtrimming scandal broke. Previously, trimmed comics were getting by CGC's restoration check and given inappropriate blue labels. But the company became knowledgeable about detecting the trimming from the experience. There's neither reason nor information at the present time to rule out that CGC going forward will be able to detect damage to the outer cases that are opened for swapping inner wells and then the posts resealed.

Thanks for getting the CGC President to answer questions and posting your interview. Did Matt ever address whether CGC can detect cases that have been opened (so that inner wells may be switched in and out) and resealed? If so, did CGC agree to share their detection method with the collecting and dealer communities, so that tampered comics that were not reholdered can be identified? And if not, then how can CGC or anyone else, for that matter, be confident that the fraud is confined just to the fewer than 350 suspects on CGCs current list?

Now that Matt Nelson has been interviewed on the detection of tampered cases, perhaps this is not so unreasonable after all.

When I first tried to log on this morning and finally got the home forum page to load, the newest post in the listed threads was 6 hours old. It was a few more hours after that before I could sign in.

Also, shoveled the three inches of snow that fell overnight.

Read some more Manga my son gifted me during the Holidays.

I can see your viewpoint. But we don't yet have an answer to a key question that might make many of those concerns go away. Are cases that have been tampered with and resealed indistinguishable from untampered cases? Because if there's tiny but discernable damage to the top or bottom edge, whichever was opened, or one or both of the corners that were opened, then careful examination of slabs by sellers and/or buyers will identify books that are likely to have been tampered with. If true, this should also be applied going forward by CGC when performing reholdering, and hopefully it will. A second checkpoint comes with careful inspection of the encapsulated comic front and back covers. While it can't find books with clipped coupons or other damage to interior pages, a book that looks much worse than the structural grade assigned to it is suspect, and worthy of avoidance whether or not it may have been tampered with (another way of saying 'always buy the book and not the label'). The encapsulation business has never been foolproof. It's over two decades now that we've seen comics with green or purple labels get regraded with blue labels, and vice versa, or comics that someone bought off the rack and never manipulated being graded as having been trimmed, or comics change two or even more grading units after regrading without any cleaning or pressing having been done, or the page quality being mislabeled for a book, or gentle whitening techniques used to remove stains or dust shadows while retaining blue labels, and on and on. But overall there are many fewer 'shenanigan' comics being sold that have been checked for restoration and graded by CGC than there are raw 'shenanigan' books never undergoing the process.

I was around a 4.5 to 5.0. I could be more certain if I knew whether the interior covers were in nice near white condition or they had edge tanning that is not uncommon with comics this old. It's a very acceptable copy of an early Silver Age Marvel. With that said, I'm not sure you would recover the fees to have the book professionally graded, compared with selling it in its current state.

Another example can be found in the FFs. Ish 121 is a white cover often found to have toned a bit. But the other FF issues with white pages, such as 129, are commonly glowing whitey-white. These were all scanned and image processed by the same method, and while their cover whites are close, they're distinct both in scans (comparing slabbed with slabbed and raw with raw) and especially in person. It's especially interesting to compare the two slabs, as despite both being from the very same collection, the front cover paper looks markedly different. I guess it's from the very different qualities of the cover paper stock:

There's something (extra gloss? higher quality paper?) on Hulk 159 that makes the covers easy to find in whitey-white shape, unlike many other picture frame Marvels with white covers. Another example comes from Marvel Team Up, where ish 5 is super common in glowing white but number 2 isn't.

A few recent upgrades, all cracked out of slabs. Hulk #153 is an issue that has a special place in my heart as the first Hulk comic I bought, read, and saved when starting as a brand new comic collector. The difference in the whiteness of the covers for the latter two books shows the long-term effect of a healthy layer of white ink on the one but not the other issue:

To get them graded, checked for restoration, and either sold or added to one's collection. I don't see how having other books in other people's inventory or collections being possibly tampered with changes that at all.

I also never saw a machine like that. But the look and materials fit for a mid-60s contraption, at a time when plastic parts were just beginning to be incorporated routinely into devices, machines, and appliances.

Very nice haul!

Here are the high resolution scans of the front and back covers of your FF #2 taken by ComicConnect at the time the book was first sold 10 years ago. That should give you a solid foundation to look for any potential differences with the book you have in hand. As for the book being unrestored/untrimmed, CGC has already given it the blue light once, and at a time long after the Ewert scandal when they were forced to increase their sophistication and diligence detecting microtrimming. https://www.comicconnect.com/item/534150

Yeah, it's clearly not the same book. It's being shown to illustrate how different the cover wrap is with the copy under discussion despite them both having a right edge cut that goes through the comics code stamp.' But in the early SA days of Marvel production, there was a lot of chipping and also variability and anomalies in cover cuts. So it's hard to conclude on the basis of a scan alone whether that JIM #83 does indeed have a trimmed right edge or not.

Both!

Pinocchio nose.

For Bronze Age issues, it's often easy to find non-pedigree examples that look as nice or even nicer than several pedigree copies. To my way of thinking, that doesn't justify paying a premium price for an equal or inferior quality pedigree copy. With Silver Age comics, some of the finest known pedigrees are remarkable for the consistent superiority of their eye appeal and/or page quality. It can be especially rewarding to own several examples of a particular pedigree from a single title, knowing that all of these copies came from the same original owner and the same collection. This can hold true for extensive pedigree runs of Bronze Age books, too - for me, it was a special part of my Bronze Age collection to own a continuous 60 issue run of Master of Kung Fu from the Western Pennsylvania pedigree. Opinions will certainly differ among collectors on this matter.

Richard Koos/Danny Dupcak.... wasn't he from around Forest Hills?

It'll be switcherooed into a case sporting a blue label.

That would be useful for the small proportion of slabbed books that have been imaged and uploaded into their database. Unfortunately, rather than doing this archiving from the time they opened, it's been only a very recent undertaking.

Every slab the perp has sold is suspect, until shown otherwise.