wiparker824

The FAQ wasn’t there on 1/3. It’s been added.

Thanks @CGC Mike. This sort of communication is appreciated by a lot of us.

Has this had a response? It does seem like this would go a long way into the clarity of the situation. I also don’t think this necessarily has to replace the current list. This list could be added and noted separately as not suspicious for XYZ but it would certainly help at a minimum for those of us to understand the thought process in omitting these books.

I agree with a lot of this but I don’t think it needs to be an either or. Both can and should happen. Punishment for the individual is a deterrent to some degree. I’m not saying it should let CGC off the hook, but if you tell people “keep trying to trick us, the worst that will happen is a slap on the wrist and you lose your annual membership” you’re inviting a lot more problems. If people know the individual(s) responsible were facing federal crimes it may deter some people. Not all, but some. Hopefully in addition to that additional prevention measures on CGC’s end will take place. But again I don’t think this needs to be an either or debate.

Yes CGC regrades a book after it goes thru the signing process. Further, they don’t guarantee grade, so if Stan Lee ripped your AF 15 in half when signing then oh well, you’re about to get a big grade drop. But Stan would never.

I think it’s pretty clear they’ve sold books on the list or at least they’ve claimed to. I have no idea why else you’d post this otherwise: now, was that book switched, trimmed, or any wrongdoing evident - not to our knowledge but this wasn’t many years ago, this post was from 2021. They also have this book posted before it got the custom label going back as far as 2016. You are correct though that people should be careful making accusations, and we do not have any hard evidence they’ve been involved in any wrong doing.

That’s one I’ve tried to figure out as well. The top right 2 with the custom labels I think I have a guess at, but it’s just not clear enough to confirm.

I can tell you it’s a lot more than 351.

they have a lot of social media accounts and they like reposting. The oldest one is from one of their IG accounts 6/6/18.

6/6/18 to be exact.

Yeah, if you scroll thru their accounts you will see a lot of interesting equipment. Should be noted they run a separate pressing company and often post grade bump before and afters and I don’t recall seeing any going from blue to purple with trimming, some going the other way though… but just to be clear for all the lawyers who may be in here I’m not accusing this shop of anything just posting neat things I find on IG.

Well yes, but if you’re doing that you’re a mad man. I’m not talking about Immaculate using it on low end books for educational purposes… using that kind of heat next to a high end comic book is crazy to me to remove a sticker, might not be crazy to all though.

Explained away: sometimes I like my comics roasted.

another photo from that shop’s IG that should make the heat gun theorists go wild… note the heat gun casually sitting next to all of these mega SA keys in the background.

The JIM 85 SS 8.0 that was triple signed and @Crimsonira confirmed bought not from eBay but directly from the NY shop being discussed a few pages back I can confirm was in the shops possession both before and after the reholder/custom label. On one of their other IG accounts (they have several) they posted this in Sept of 2016 captioned with “Personal Collection.”: They then have posted it several other times but the first time after the reholder was in Aug of 2017 this one included the caption “before and after” The last post with it was this one in January of 2021 captioned SOLD!: So, the idea they might have been sold the book by the scammer after the reholder doesn’t appear to be true. Should be noted this particular book appears to be the same before and after and have the same grade but it is on the list…

Seems like all of the above may be true, there isn’t any real consistency: This book has a new graded date, but isn’t crossed off the list and has retained its cert number: 1589872-002 Amazing Fantasy #15 ("Stan Lee '86" written on page 1 in pen) 1962 Also it says this when you look it up now: CGC Cert # 1589872002 - Contact reportfraud@collectiblesgroup.com if you own or are offered this book. But if it was graded on 1/5/24 like it says then wouldn’t CGC be in possession of it? This book has been crossed off and doesn’t appear when you try to verify anymore presumably it got a new cert? 1341998-001 Amazing Spider-Man #1 (Signed by Stan Lee on 11/1/15) 1963 This book has been crossed off and does appear when you verify but without an updated graded date or an updated cert: 0800641-009 Avengers #57 1968 So yes, all of your questions are valid particularly because there isn’t really any pattern to what’s happening with books being removed.

So they bought it for 5k and sold it for 1300 a year later? Guess they were better at scamming comics.

True, I’ve seen a lot of debate even amongst the people on here as to what the extent of this was. But I do think there will be a lot of people afraid of a low cert number with a custom label for a 9.8 of certain books for a while. But then again it only takes 2 people bidding on an auction to not care or know about any of this to just run the price up to its normal FMV level lol.

That’s not what’s been confirmed to be happening though. Nobody has confirmed they’ve been able to swap out a book without having any evidence of tampering on the case. What was confirmed was that there was evidence of tampering and CGC’s reholder process didn’t catch it and reslabbed the book into a case that of course no longer looked tampered with. If someone can produce a CGC slab without the help of CGC’s faulty reholder process and without any evidence of tampering then yes CGC would have to admit their case has been compromised. I’m aware of the videos showing the case being opened with a heat gun but in all of them I’ve seen there was still subtle indications the book had been opened. Would I prefer a better case that made it not as subtle? Sure. But again to my point about CGC’s assessment, if they don’t feel the case is the problem and the problem is the reholder process that’s what will change. And anyone expecting anything different is going to be disappointed.

I don’t really expect to see any seismic shift in the market because of this. Not yet anyways based on what’s been made public. The thing I’ll be watching is do custom labels actually become less valuable. I can’t speak for everyone but if I was in the market for a 9.8 ASM 300 right now I’d prefer to buy one that has no custom label, preferably slabbed in the past year where images appear on CGC. And I’d be willing to pay quite a bit more for it than that same book with a low cert number and a custom label with no images on CGC. If I was buying a mid grade or low grade book I’d not care as much but those 9.8’s with custom labels are going to be very interesting to see how they do going forward.

I think if you can prove you have another book this individual tampered with they’ll be willing to listen. That’s not just for GoCollect it’s for anyone capable of ID’ing a book. But I think if you just claim you bought a tampered book that doesn’t necessarily mean CGC is responsible. In the most extreme case let’s say you bought a book that was obviously tampered with and duck taped back together. It’s not on CGC, that’s on you. The problem with these books is that the reholder made them appear completely tamper free, which is on CGC.

Has CGC said they agree with the assessment that the holder is completely compromised? Until then I don’t know why anyone would think a new holder was even being considered. The reholder process was compromised, and they’ve said they’ve already “made significant improvements to their processes” whatever those are. But that doesn’t mean they believe the holder was the problem, the problem I’m sure they believe is that the reholders weren’t checked well enough for tampering. Even if they ever do release a new holder I’d not expect them to ever say the old ones were compromised and are no longer valid. I’m not saying I wouldn’t mind a new holder, I’m just realistically not expecting one.

Not everyone has the same financial means or the inventory on hand. When you have said financial means or inventory on hand sometimes you may hear a “get rich quick” scheme pitched to you which is usually a scam. Not saying this did or didn’t happen, but there are many reasons why a scammer involves other parties, this is one example.

Well yes but you’d also think if someone submitted over 10% of the total ASM 194 9.8’s in the census likely entirely as reholders they’d have started looking into the submitters history too… but apparently that didn’t happen. I don’t know that they have the best record at the moment with monitoring what are to most obvious red flags.

There are things about your case that are unique and largely important even if the book you bought happens to be legit. A lot of the sales of these books were funneled thru an eBay account or two or three, which are also important but don’t have the same interactions as a private sale. I really do hope the effort was not wasted and that it’s being investigated.