wiparker824

Kind of low for these books even if you add in CL’s 3% buyer premium. 90 day GPA is $2688 for direct (8 sales), with the last sale being on HA 1/16 for $2760 90 day GPA is $2524 (only 2 sales) for newsstand with the last sale being on HA on 1/16 for $2640 Even so 4287881001 was the newsstand cert that isn’t on the list but is on the same submission as 4287881003 which is on the list and that’s the book that went for $200 more than the direct tonight. So I don’t know.

I’ve been following a similar thread with regards to CL and ASM 194. Specifically they have 2 9.8’s ending tonight of that book. One is a direct (4344978004) and one is a newsstand (4287881001). Currently they are both sitting at 1700 and 1800 bids with the newsstand slightly higher. Neither book is on the list, but given that roughly 11% of the census of 9.8’s in this book are on the list these 2 sales are intriguing to me. Also, one other tidbit, the newsstand copy isn’t on the list but a book from that same submission 4287881003 is on the list and has yet to be crossed off. Is it because the 003 book was submitted for a custom label and the 001 book was not? We don’t know because we aren’t being told how this list was compiled or how books are being determined to be clean and then crossed off. Im not saying CL is listing a bad book, or has done anything wrong, but I can’t see how these books being sold without the full picture isn’t at all concerning to the buyers who are aware of this situation. I guess we will see how the final hammer price compares tonight.

Of course you don’t have to share anything further once you find out but it would be very interesting if you find out a book CL “cleared” actually isn’t legit and CGC has to pay you out. I hope that’s not the case, and you get your book back ASAP, but it would be very interesting if that’s what’s holding things up.

What I expect the zoom call to look like… the baby chickens who made it out alive are now ready to talk.

I’ve been busy dusting off my 9.8’s for the 9.9 pre screen program.

Have we considered the possibility Flake Tapper, new account, isn’t Mike claiming to be someone taking legal action to get victims to “sign up” with him for “legal action” that isn’t actually happening just so that they don’t pursue legal action of their own? Just a thought…

Got to say I left the Hero thread or the original Hero thread when we were still talking about baby chickens and have been pretty much ignoring all threads in favor of the reholder thread… after getting caught up on this new thread of 32 pages I’ve come to the conclusion the reholder scam isn’t really that crazy after all. Thanks Hero Restoration for adding the perspective I needed.

This. Plus a lot of other factors that would impact weight - the most fun one being CGC isn’t consistent with how many pieces of microchamber paper they add to slabs… anyone who has cracked slabs knows you may find one, you may find none, you may find two ya never know. How are you going to estimate weight of a book in a holder given you don’t know how much weight you’ve added with microchamber? They definitely aren’t weighing them for MVS stamps. At least I hope not because there’s no way that would ever work.

Yeah that seems like the best guess, CGC can’t force anyone to send it back but they can still clear it if they have scans before and after the reholder I guess? This is what I thought was going on when some books crossed off weren’t in the verify tool while others were. Seemed like some books weren’t popping up because they were given new certs after being sent in and others were not sent in but still verified as not fraudulent so they remained under the old cert in the verify tool. But now all crossed off books come up in verify. So I don’t know anymore.. I guess we will have to wait for those that posted they sent in books to tell us if they got new cert numbers or not.

also weird for it to still say this at the top. Got to say if I was trying to sell this book on HA who provides a link in the description to this CGC cert verification it wouldn’t feel great that my perspective buyers are being told to report it as fraud if they are offered the book. Yes I’m aware it’s been crossed off the list but not every buyer is aware of that. They just click on this link and see that and are probably going to look for another book.

Good find. Yeah that’s in line with what I thought was happening when I looked at all of the 20+ books that have been crossed off this morning. None have new cert numbers, all are now searchable in the verify, only 3 still have old graded dates, the rest were given new dates.

“Sealed” is not the word I’d use. I’ve personally sent books for reholder where a corner of the slab was chipped off and had them sent back without being regraded. This was the main reason people used to use this service before the custom labels came about. In the cases I’ve sent it wasn’t feasible to slide the book out given the minor corner damage wasn’t enough to pry out the book. So I believe reholdering without regrading was fair. But the question remains if the scammer was sending in books that appeared to have minor damage to the holder but actually had enough damage to slide the books out and CGC didn’t regrade them OR if the scammer was sending only fully sealed books (that they resealed themselves) back for reholders OR a combination of the two.

Very interesting they seem to have updated many of these in the last 24 hours, and all of the books that are crossed off and weren’t searchable are now all searchable thru the verify tool again with new grade dates, most with grade dates of 1/16/24 (yesterday) or 1/12/24. Of the 18 books crossed off only these 3 I’ve found have been crossed off and retain their graded old date: 0233579-004, 0800641-009, 1152116-001. But all of the books are searchable again. Not sure if this is temporary or if they’ve decided now to leave these books in the verify tool now with the new grade dates after they’ve reviewed them rather than removing them. But it does seem like they might have changed their plan which was: “As impacted books are returned, the certification number will be struck through, indicating it is no longer valid and the book has been given a new certification number. Certification numbers that are no longer valid will not be searchable in the Verify CGC Certification database” Everything is currently searchable in verify CGC at the moment. If this is the case I’d expect the ones that have updated graded dates like the AF 15 but aren’t crossed off will be shortly.

My point wasn’t whether it’s legitimate or not, it very much looks legitimate. My point was he said he hasn’t seen it yet. Why was the graded date updated to 1/5/24 if it wasn’t re-graded on 1/5/24? None of the other books that I’m aware of had their graded date updated and also still retained their cert. Consistency matters right now. Also have never bought the idea CGC put books on this list to “punish” the scammer. The punishment should be in the form of criminal charges first of all, second of all they have no idea if this person sold the book privately or not. And even if this book was put on the list for this reason it still doesn’t address my main point which is why was the graded date updated if it’s not in their possession and they’ve not regraded it?

That’s so weird these board are so glitchy I wasn’t even in this thread. lol.

…

FWIW I genuinely was impressed by both of you. We learned things we had not previously and a lot of the things people are demanding they answer we all know they won’t answer and you’ll just get the line of “I can’t divulge any details into an active investigation”, there’s not a lot of value in just asking them question after question where they just say that line. I thought you all did a good job in skirting around those so we didn’t have to hear that repeatedly and getting what information could be had.

I thought about this it’s really the only thing that makes sense… they’ve been imaging all books before and after reholders (without making them public) for years and then they are comparing those photos with the books in hand.

Well done. Of course you know this forum and thread (myself included) are going to be filled with the people who Manu mentioned at the end that are going to be saying “why didn’t you ask this!” But before I get to that just wanted to say thank you to both of you and @mnelsonCGC for doing this and do hope you guys come together for a part 2. Quick thoughts: 1. The final note about them not opening holders sent back to them on this list to verify is very interesting. This tells me they have some tool or process already in place to determine a book was swapped by this individual. What that may be I understand they can’t divulge but it is very interesting. I think a lot of us thought that the books were all being cracked, regraded and checked for things like MJI, MVS, if they are the grade they say, coupon cut, resto, live ink on signatures, etc. How they are doing that without cracking the books is certainly fascinating. 2. The lone individual responsible I’d have liked to know if they’ve narrowed it to one individual who submitted the reholders or one CGC account that might have been used by one or multiple individuals. Furthermore was the party that submitted the reholders the same party that then sold the fraudulent books immediately after (thru eBay, CL or anywhere else) or was the person that submitted for reholders using a dealer account to handle their submissions and then reselling later. 3. Since the AF 15 SS was brought up Matt said he’s not seen that book personally yet. Which I know Matt isn’t the only one that works at CGC but that book seems like one he’d have seen if it came thru? Yet the grade date was updated to 1/5/24 on that book. This implies the book was regraded 2 days after the list was provided on 1/3/24. If it’s not in their possession why was the graded date updated? How was it graded? And if it’s a clean bill of health why wasn’t it crossed out after being graded?

GPA isn’t a site that logs “certs” to be removing “certs”. They log sales. There’s a big difference. If you crack press and regrade a book and send in the old cert CGC will remove the old cert from the census but every sale of that old cert is still valid. So, there have always been many certs that appear in GPA that don’t appear in CGC’s census and no longer exist in the world. Because again GPA isn’t a site for “certs” and cert verification it is purely a record of sales. So removing sales data is problematic and should not be done just because CGC has removed it from their database.

Well after. Again, I recommend reading what they wrote on page 332. Would seem to answer all of your GPA questions.

“We also spend time checking previous sales data and, as best we can, remove erroneous sales and identify relisted books. Unless these current books under investigation need to be adjusted (with respects to sales not having gone through) then we won't be removing anything from GPA. Including any certs that no longer appear in CGC's system.” This is what GPA said in this thread. Not sure what more you’re looking for, but they are telling you they won’t be removed.

They posted a response on pg. 332 of this thread.

I watched this last night and had the same reaction hearing that as you did. I know some people seem to disagree, that’s fine, but let’s put it this way. If this person was a random submitter who sent in a few books a year, yeah, it’d be hard to believe they had any sort of line of communication into CGC. If this person was working at or with a larger dealer that also ran a pressing shop for the past decade+ and that submitted a high volume of slabs on a weekly basis and was submitting books under that dealer’s account. Well, it’s not that hard to believe they’ve had some direct conversations with CGC before. Of course we don’t know if that’s 100% true or not, but it remains a possibility. That doesn’t necessarily mean even if that is the case that the conversation this person claimed happened with CGC where they announced the number of MJI they believed existed in such and such grade actuallY took place. That might have been 100% just blowing smoke. But there’s usually some truth in a lie. I don’t think it’s that much of a reach to believe this scammer or scammers might have had an open dialogue with their subs at CGC at some point.

The interesting thing I find from this data is things seemed to ramp up after 2016. That’s the same year CGC rolled out the custom labels if I recall. Of course you could reholder a book without a custom label before 2016, but this limited data we have suggests the scammer may have not ramped up that particular exploit until the custom labels rolled out.