wiparker824

they released this for Miles Morales legacy numbering a few years back when they were on 234 should explain all of the series more or less included. It’s essentially an Ultimate Spider-Man numbering rather than a Miles Morales numbering. Does Marvel’s legacy numbering always make sense? No it does not. But they do get to squeeze a little more juice out of the #300 anniversary issue anyways.

I mean they kinda just told us to figure it out ourselves with this part: Collectors and dealers can protect themselves from fraud in a number of ways: Always look up a collectible in our free Verification Certification tool on the homepage of our websites. All collectibles are now being imaged in high-resolution, and you can compare the images of your collectible to the images that we took. Buy from CCG Authorized Dealers, Official Submission Centers or Strategic Partners. You can look them up using the free Dealer Locator on our website. Choose online marketplaces that offer buyer protection, such as eBay. Do your research and exercise common sense. If a deal seems too good to be true, it probably is. …even though 1. The reholder scam books were often sold pre-imaging existing on CGC’s site and even if you had imaging available what you’d see is the end product of their reholder. You wouldn’t see the before reholder pictures. Which you would need to identify a swap. 2. Most of these books were bought by victims from CGC authorized dealers. And also online marketplaces that offer buyer protection like eBay. Unfortunately there are limitations to that protection in terms of time to seek refund. So this doesn’t help very many people. 3. Doing research and using common sense is what buyers paying the premium for a CGC slabbed book are hoping to minimize. That’s kind of the entire point is that as a buyer you had some assurances of what you were buying, that it not only was a specific grade (albeit subjective) but also that it wasn’t restored or missing things. And given that the holders were resealed in a factory way on the reholder from CGC this left no room for a buyer to determine any sort of tampering with the holder itself. So yeah I found this part a bit out of place to say the least. Not that it isn’t good advice in general, but that it’s not really applicable to the primary scam at play. And no suggestions or help was being offered in lieu of that.

Oh no, I’m definitely not minimizing or attempting to minimize with what I said… my point was more that to me what is now being made public (+- a few details) has been known even before the past few weeks by most that were tuned in. Just now things are becoming more public with the lawsuit. Somehow we are still in the same place in terms of a lot of the questions many of us had been asking… even the simple ones like why aren’t they providing the full list of all books submitted by the parties at hand even those they themselves don’t feel are suspicious, and what is this haphazard method they have for crossing items of the list? so like I said, felt like I missed a lot, then read everything and caught myself back up and realized I really didn’t.

I’ve been away from this thread and CGC news for a few weeks dealing with some real life stuff… and somehow feel like I’ve missed a lot while also feeling like I’ve missed nothing during that time. And that comes after reading the lawsuit, this thread and Steve’s letter. I guess it’s cool we can now say the names and don’t have to talk in codes anymore. That’s something I guess.

I agree with a lot this but will say the same way the “I hate CGC” comments don’t add anything of value is the same way the “nothing to see here” comments don’t add any value. If a person feels this scam doesn’t impact them in any way, that’s fine, but I’m not sure what posting that repeatedly in this thread is adding to the discussion. Especially since we’re almost 400 pages and a month in and some have been doing that since the beginning. The “exhausting” part of this to me is reading thru those, especially when the “I hate CGC” and the “nothing to see here” crowds start feeding off each other. All are welcome to say what they want, but for me it’s just added noise at this point.

Sounds about right. In terms of if the 9.2 or the 9.8 were ever claimed on insta only Grailz would know that. They instruct buyers to claim either in comments or DM but I think most conduct negotiating in DM’s. Neither book has a public claim comment or a public sold comment.

Not sure if the loop was ever closed on this one... I may have drifted in and out for a couple hundred pages so I apologize if this is a rehash, but this book post swap was listed for sale by Grailz like many of the other books on this list for consignment on 8/6/23. I noticed it while I was digging thru their posts. They listed it for 25k. Not sure if they ever got that price... but that's a 5 figure scam regardless. This is more to my earlier point that I am of the belief most of the scammers latest (2023) dirty work happened thru backchannels on IG where things aren't tracked as easily by GPA/eBay. Note: The donor book you provided was also listed on Grailz as well on 3/17/23.

I’ve been collecting images of screenshots… not sure it will matter but also the place where the swap was sold thru consignment (Grailz) has a lot of the books on the list and has posted they are intentionally leaving the sold books up for transparency which I hope they do. I looked thru the last 6 months of their books skimming thru and counted 35 of the 350 books (10%) on this list on Grailz posts but there are likely more that I missed. This one was just one that I found that was particularly peculiar… and it wasn’t dissimilar to the book that’s started the whole thing (252 MJI also popped up on Grailz). I am wondering if the scammer moved to IG consignment sales for more of their recent scams to keep listings out of eBay/GPA trackability.

Yep

After looking thru the comments on Grailz post (middle picture) I saw “SOLD!” and I see an account stating claim. So, very likely it sold and the last image is actually the unfortunate buyer who wanted to reholder to a X-men label since a Spidey custom label made no sense.

Here's a fun one I stumbled across... First image from WP/eBay sale from 7/16/23 direct edition book, direct edition label for $760. Second image from listing on Grailz IG account on 8/15/23 for $2999 but what's this, magically there's a newsstand book inside. Side note - my man wastes no time getting books reholdered, got to say I struggle to even get CGC to open my box in 1 month this guy bought it from eBay got it shipped to him and reholdered, then relisted thru Grailz in 1 month. Impressive. Third image from CGC scans on verify tool. The 2nd custom label, which hey at least it's not a Spidey custom label on an X-Men book anymore, also got CGC to "fix" his label and notate the newsstand edition this time.

Probably bought 2 green label or raw 238’s missing tattooz insert same day as initial buy, swapped into the 9.8 blue label books and subbed both on same day as reholders with custom labels, got em back same day, put them up on eBay together and sold together again. Also resubbed the legit books likely on another submission. 2 green label + 2 blue label become 4 blue label 9.8’s. This is what they really meant when they said “Hard work has already been done for you”.

This is a recently graded book you can see the scans on CGC thru verify tool, it’s not swapped out, just CGC QC issues - which is bad, but not related to this scam.

Not my book but yeah, I agree it is a nice one. And yeah they seem to be claiming the verification is happening before even opening the slabs… which to me says they are either sorcerers or they have images of all these books every time they get sent to them even ones prior to the scans becoming publicly available.

That note doesn’t seem to mean anything. We are still seeing it on every book in the list, even books other board members have come in here saying they’ve had the book cleared by CGC like this one: Some consistency would be nice.

isn’t that this book? hard to make out the cert number in the IG photo but it does look like that book, which has been crossed off the list. Also in the comments they said they got it off CL in Sept which does indeed line up with the CL sale for that cert: https://www.comiclink.com/auctions/item.asp?id=1715892 If it’s crossed off and they’re being compensated does this mean CGC’s just crossing off all books returned to them? Regardless of if they’re verified as legit or not?

Does look like these books are getting new certs as they said but you can still look up both the old and the new in the verify tool which is not what they said, not sure if that’s going to be temporary or permanent. Here’s the ASM 1 8.0 SS new and old cert: https://www.cgccomics.com/certlookup/1341998001/ https://www.cgccomics.com/certlookup/4372423001/ The book is also up for sale in upcoming CL auction.

Option 4 presents a conflict of interest for them. If they start sourcing books that are rare like ASM 238 9.8 MJI like you said they are now inserting themselves into a very small market. It’s not an easy book to find, unless you find a raw 9.6 and it’s close enough and you own the grading company so you can just throw it into a 9.8 holder to get you out of the problem… which is one reason I’d not want that if I owned one of these books. Not to mention not all books particularly in the non-9.8 grade range are the same to a collector. If you’re someone who is buying a IH181 in a 9.0 you may have flaws you prefer in that grade, and flaws you don’t want to see. If you let CGC pick the book they will get whatever one they can find for the lowest amount. Similarly the SS books on this list were often signed on the back, already hard to find books, not going to be easy or even possible to source the same book signed on the back by creators who are no longer living. This same reasoning is why I think just getting a check for FMV is problematic, because in many cases even if you get the check to buy a replacement you may not be able to find one on the market. Sure if it’s just a direct edition ASM 300 you will be able to but some of these books on here just aren’t out there for sale constantly to just get a replacement right away. What I said many pages ago would be the best option is for CGC to pay the current FMV OR the sale price the current owner paid (if you can provide receipt) - whichever is higher. This would give the current owner the maximum amount regardless of if the book has went up or down since they bought it. But I don’t think that’s realistically going to happen.

The other question I have I don’t believe has been brought up around FMV is are they going to estimate the FMV as of mid-December 2023 when the scam was discovered or when they receive your book? Because there will be some people who don’t follow every news story from CGC and don’t realize their book is on this list until let’s say 3 years from now when they send it to an auction house and are notified. Then what? Let’s say the FMV at that time is 50% less than today? What if it’s 50% more? Is CGC going to pay out the FMV at the time they receive the books indefinitely? Because if they are, even if you know your book is on the list you could in theory just hold it until the FMV hits whatever value you’re waiting on to sell if you want to roll the dice. We are now hearing from some people who are getting their books sent back to them as clean books, which is great. I’ll be interested to hear from those that went thru the FMV process though.

Only 1 sold so far in 2024 (tracked by GPA) and it was above the 90 day average. I think with that book, others like 252 I’m looking to see where the more rare versions land… like the Canadian Price Variant for 238 and the MJI for 252. The last sales of these versions of these books were dominated by books from the scammer. So will be interesting to see where those go with his books out of the picture. Could even go up higher if those books are out of the market and there’s all of the sudden a bunch of people with checks from CGC looking to replace them.

There is a copy of TWD1 on the list. Just not the volume compared to the Spidey books. Seemed like the scammer preferred copper or older particularly if the book had some sort of extra rare version like newsstand, MJI, MVS intact, Tattooz intact, etc.

Yeah I think in general when you own over 10% of the market on 9.8 you have the ability to manipulate the market a bit so looking back at the 12M average and lows that include this person’s books is already problematic. I did see that sale from last July and thought the same. I also looked up the low for the direct in the past few years which was $2,000 sold on July 16 of 2023 and I can see why the seller took 2,000 for it. It wasn’t on the list but it does look like one of the uglier 9.8’s I’ve seen, not white pages and a piece of the corner is torn and dangling off: https://www.cgccomics.com/certlookup/4253803001/ In any case, we will see if this book in 9.8 flattens out or continues downward.

I’m not comparing to Covid prices, that’s why I presented the 90 day averages and the last sale price. If I was comparing to Covid prices these would be insanely low since these books were hitting $5,800 in the Covid peak. But again I wasn’t, and there’s no point in doing that so I’m not sure why you’re bringing that up. And also $2100 is 20-30% lower than the 90 day average and the last sale. Not sure why it needs to be an additional 20-30% lower than that but okay. I’m guessing if the next one hits that you’ll move the goalposts again.

Yeah I was watching that one as well. Theres another ASM 300 going after midnight for some reason too, we will see where that one ends up but it appears those are doing better than the 194’s did this auction.

I do believe to pull off these types of scams some of them would require some open lines of communication with CGC. Now, CGC’s customer service is not awful, you can actually talk to people when you email/call so this in it of itself isn’t a difficult task. But getting a non MJI book changed to an MJI is not a standard sub or even a standard reholder, and likely required some communication. Multiply that by many many times over for many years and you begin to have quite the relationship built up between the parties, which is why I’m sure this individual was very confident in their scheme. Due to this level of communication it seems hard to believe when CGC was told the name of the individual they said “What? Who is that?”. They very likely knew exactly who this was once it was revealed due to the high volume of submissions plus the required communication that would have had to take place for this scheme to work. This doesn’t necessarily mean someone in CGC was involved, but it doesn’t exactly rule it out either. Just my opinion of course, which means nothing, since Kroll is in here watching.