wiparker824

On 1/4/2024 at 2:06 PM, Lightning55 said:

I am surprised that some books are already being crossed off the list, presumably because some "authority" called CGC and explained why it shouldn't be on the list, because no one could have mailed their slab to CGC so quickly to get a determination. 

I would like to see that the number comes off the list because CGC only has in fact removed the book from the holder, authenticated it, and then reholdered, new certification.  And the new certification # should be posted on that line item for a clear paper trail, as well as the old cert # added to the lookup information.

This is a bad situation and needs a clear resolution.  Anyone "fixing" specific books other than CGC only muddies the waters.

ComicLink posted that they were doing just that. Not sure which books they had crossed off but they did say their proof was they have a record the person bought it from them, then reholdered it, then resold it thru them and the book is identical in images they have from the before and after reholder. 
 

But it is a really weird look to put out a list asking for people to send the books in and the next day start crossing them off.

interesting that they crossed off one of the big Spidey yellow label books but the other remains.

On 1/4/2024 at 8:43 AM, GDN said:

Maybe the AF15 is for his personal collection and he wanted a new label??  Maybe that AF15 is not a scam book?  A little present to himself purchased with some of his scamming profits. 

Seems likely, there doesn’t appear to have been any record of it being sold. It was signed in AZ at one of Stan’s last signings before he passed. And AZ is one of the known locations of the scammer. I’m guessing they had it signed for PC and wanted the custom label that came out later so they sent in for reholder/custom label. There’s really no monetary benefit to just get a custom label which is all that appears different in this particular case.

On 1/4/2024 at 7:27 AM, pdags said:

Maybe I missed something, but 

• Before sending to CGC, I have a book encased with a mis-matching label (clear fraud)
• After re-holdering, I have a book in a case with matching label. (normal book)

Until I know legal authorities are content with their evidence, the situation, and are recommending this behavior, I'm not relinquishing my best evidence to CGC.  

Well that process will only happen if they’ve determined it wasn’t fraudulent and retaining its grade. In which case you have no “evidence” that would matter unless like I said you believe CGC themselves will do something nefarious. If your book is actually evidence they said they will be contacting you so that they can review with more documentation. And even if they do that and at the end you decide to have them send the book back regraded and relabeled correctly you’re going to have a paper trail to link these 2 certs together if needed in the future. I don’t see a lot of risk of loss of anything sending these back in to CGC, but again if you or others do by all means you’re entitled to hold on to them.

On 1/4/2024 at 7:11 AM, pdags said:

I'm not saying CGC will do anything illegal like that...  I'm simply saying, shipping your book back in for a re-holdering is the loss of your best evidence.   Without knowing CGC is working with law enforcement and this is what law enforcement wants, I would feel incredibly uncomfortable in that situation.

I guess, to me it’s only a loss if you assume they won’t send it back or they will do something illegal. Otherwise you’re not losing anything. You will get it back. But there’s nothing compelling you to send it if it makes you feel better to hold onto it, just wouldn’t be too much of a worry for me.

On 1/4/2024 at 6:56 AM, COMICLINK said:

 

 

No, this was not an inside job.

How could possible know this with certainty unless you’ve been let in on their internal investigation which I’m sure included an investigation of the employees who handled the books and may still be ongoing?

On 1/4/2024 at 6:35 AM, pdags said:

This is tricky...  If I've been scammed the only * evidence * I have is the book/slab itself.  If I send that into CGC for review and possibly a re-holder, I no longer have the evidence.  CGC needs to inform people that they are working with the FBI, otherwise they may tampering with individuals evidence and ability to personally prosecute.

I don't know what legal advice CGC is getting, but individuals of very high valued books should consider getting their own legal consultation before shipping their books off to CGC; who may or may not be working with the FBI (or equivalent).

Even if CGC regrades and reholders your book you’re still going to get your “evidence” back, they’re going to send it slabbed back to you. They’re not going to slip in a Hulk 181 with a MVS and destroy your evidence. If the fear is they would simply reslab the book without checking it, or check it and purposely still put it in with the wrong label well, you’d still get your evidence back if you want to crack it yourself when they send it to you. Even so, I think that’s a bit far fetched. If they did that and were caught it would spiral this entire thing to a much much worse place than it already is for them. 

On 1/3/2024 at 11:35 PM, Yorick said:

It'd be a bummer to have won one of those dream 9.8's, find out it's not really a 9.8, have CGC reimburse your purchase price, and then have to go track down another 9.8 at possibly a much higher cost.  If I had one of those books, I'd want CGC to obtain a real 9.8 for me.  Forget the money.

All depends on when you bought. If you bought at the pandemic peak you probably prefer the money if they are reimbursing at the price paid, buy another 9.8 for less money and keep the difference in cash. If you bought before the pandemic then, yeah, even if they reimburse the price paid that still sucks for that individual.
 

I’m not sure how they plan to reimburse but the only way for them to avoid this problem entirely is if they agree to pay the purchase price if you have a proof of sale OR the current FMV, whichever is higher. In that case nobody would be screwed over. But I guess we will have to wait to see what they do.

On 1/3/2024 at 9:21 PM, gmasstermcd said:

I have about 60 9.8 slabs from CGC none have a single note with various grading dates and I think before today I have only seen 1 9.8 universal label with a graders note. Anyways I checked all the ASM 194's I counted 55 9.8's and  37 of them have notes and many of them seem very generous to get a 9.8. Seems like a crazy high percentage, and if it is as you say that means CGC has graders notes that they just don't put on the website and keep them internal for no reason what-so-ever. 9.8's don't even really need graders notes the most important grade for needing graders notes IMO is 9.6 so you at least know why it's not a 9.8.

This is indeed the real scam. I can’t even get notes on a 9.0 consistently this person is getting notes on 9.8’s???

On 1/3/2024 at 9:40 PM, Buzzetta said:

Doesn't necessarily have to be forged.  Stan would sign his name and the year on the interior and back cover before CGC had a signature series.  My ASM is signed on the top of the front cover in ballpoint pen with the words Stan Lee 1979 at the top.  I picked that up before CGC was grading things.   I am confident it is real. 

Yeah I believe the one on the interior is most likely real or if forged it was done many years ago, but probably real just unwitnessed. The one on the back cover, if this book is fraudulent is likely the forged signature. 

On 1/3/2024 at 9:25 PM, Buzzetta said:

Signatures with pen on the interior page are treated much differently grade wise than an unverified sharpie signature on the cover.   

Yeah I see now that it was signed on the back cover. I didn’t previously see that, makes a lot more sense now that they forged the back cover signature. 

On 1/3/2024 at 5:50 PM, agamoto said:

1. Get a silver Sharpie. 

2. Get a lower grade donor AF15

3. Learn to sign the way Stan Lee signed his signature in the waning years of his life or buy an autopen machine for $300.

4. Sign your lower grade AF15 and put it in your SS case.

5. Grow a pair of massive, iron balls.

5. Submit for reholder/custom label. 

6. Sell your reholdered AF15 upon its return

7. Submit the real one to the "other grading company" and pay $25 for them to verify the sig.

8. Sell that book too. 

Edit: Nvm, didn’t scroll to see the actual images with the signature on the back cover. 

On 1/2/2024 at 3:12 PM, Mr. Spider-Woman said:

I scanned through the last 10+ pages or so and didn't see a link to a post at the Comic Book Collecting group on Reddit about the CGC scandal: 

140 comments so far. Not sure what that means long term but awareness of the ongoing situation definitely seems to be growing outside of this forum. I don't see anything written about the scandal at Bleeding Cool, CBR, or The Beat. There is an article at ComicBook.com:

https://comicbook.com/comics/news/cgc-comics-issues-statement-on-holder-tampering-controversy/

Yeah… keep in mind this same Reddit user posted a thread on that same sub titled “Why I stopped buying slabs (and why you should too)” and filled an essay of campaigning against slabs and CGC about 5 months ago and it got twice as many replies as what this new thread did. So, you have 1. A person who has previously hated CGC still hating CGC and 2. Getting less interaction with this post than his previous drivel. This isn’t to dismiss CGC’s failure in this debacle, just that that user on that sub isn’t a good barometer of anything. 

https://www.reddit.com/r/comicbookcollecting/s/5wp6pJ3hlM

On 1/2/2024 at 6:38 AM, pdags said:

Even more importantly... I've spent no money collecting comics this year.

Edited:  On second thought, that might depend on when the Credit Card charge clears. 

I’ve already made some raw purchases in 2024… but I’ve not sent a dime to CGC this year 

…until they open the package I already sent them sitting on their warehouse floor. 

On 1/1/2024 at 9:42 PM, ADAMANTIUM said:

Thanks for speaking up and somehow getting the gist of what I meant. Slab doesn't need to be perfectly intact for a reholder.

I'm tired and kind of stressed, but if someone can drive that point home when these videos are posted, it'll serve a purpose.

No one should be making these videos without expecting trouble.

The only people videos like this will fool is buyers on eBay and etc.... not cgc

I’m not entirely sure why it was ever a debate. They literally say that on the submission form:

The problem of course is the last bit, they clearly were taking those that had been opened and were beyond a minor chip or crack. 
 

Also it’s not like people were unkowningly catching a regrade. These services (reholder vs grading) have and always have had entirely different TAT’s and most importantly prices for the fees. If you’re book was too damaged to qualify for a reholder you’d have been contacted by CGC, they didn’t just regrade it and not tell you. This of course does bring up one other nuance to our bad actor who pulled this off. Which is, even if the inspector for the reholder decided their slab was too banged up for a reholder, they’d have emailed them and asked them if they wanted to proceed with the regrade to which they’d have obviously said no to to avoid being found out.

On 1/1/2024 at 9:07 PM, THE_BEYONDER said:

To avoid a regrade…it does 

I think you’re talking about what should have been happening, but as someone who submitted multiple reholders with things like a cracked corner of the slab and had no regrade, just straight reholder with the same cert number retained I can tell you the slab definitely didn’t need to be flawless to get a reholder without a regrade. Will it need to be going forward? I guess time will tell. It certainly could have been one way to have avoided this mess.

There were some reholders that people would get rejected, and they’d have been sent to regrade, these would be cases where the case wasn’t even close to flawless. The case essentially completely shattered or shattered enough to where it was obvious the book could easily be taken in and out. The other way people hit regrades on reholder attempts was when the book looked like it had been damaged within the holder from whatever caused the case to be damaged in the first place.

On 1/1/2024 at 12:16 AM, migmtl76 said:

There are a few eBay sellers that always have Hulk 181s, ASM 300s and other big keys for sale like on an almost weekly basis. I wonder what they are really doing. 

You’re describing dealers. This is what they do… they happen to move a lot of books like IH181 and ASM300 because those are very common books that have a high enough price tag still to be worthwhile to flip. Dealers have bought and sold those two books in bunches since before CGC was even around. It’s much more suspicious if a dealer was flipping books with low census numbers every week… if you told me they just happened to have bunches of Action1’s listed on eBay every week, then yeah that would sound a bit suspicious. 

On 12/31/2023 at 11:32 PM, Lightning55 said:

It's not as easy as it sounds, and may require very deep pockets.

Keep in mind that you are going to need 2 CGC copies. Let's say you don't have either, but you want to get a blue 9.4 and a green 9.0 to swap in for it. Besides the crack and reseal challenge, you'll have to pony up about $16k for the components. And take your chances that you are not found out.

If you want to start higher up, a green 9.2 into a blue 9.6 case, that will cost you $23k. And if going for big money, no whammies, you need to start out with a $56k 9.8 blue. Then find something green that could pass for a 9.8, which sure won't be easy. At least another 10 grand for that, totaling $66k+.

So now, armed with your sharpened screwdriver in one hand and your trusty heat gun in the other, you stare down at $66k worth of comics and you're gonna risk the crack and reseal. Hope you had some practice. 

Yeah, tons of people every day will be doing this. No.

And the lower the grades, to make it more affordable to do it, the reward drops exponentially. Low grade green CGC copies really aren't a lot less than their blue counterparts. Not enough to incur the risk.

Well said. And just to add it’s not just the risk of 66k in your example if you bungle it. It’s also the risk of being caught and prosecuted. I think a lot of people are skipping that part of this. Even if a YT video drops showing it can easily be done with 0 evidence of tampering (which hasn’t happened) it’s still not something many people want to risk legal consequences for. And I don’t think it’s a low risk either. If someone came to me with this plan they thought was a genius get rich scam I’d advise them not to because beyond being morally reprehensible they are likely going to get caught. I know when I spend that kind of money in a book I look at all the past sales of that cert, heritage, eBay, etc. I’ve never been looking for differences really but mainly for bidding history so I can see sort of the landscape of how it played out previously. I don’t think I’m alone in doing that sort of research on high dollar books. Others will do it, and eventually they’ll find you out. Especially in the day of CGC imaging everything. 

On 12/31/2023 at 7:33 PM, grendelbo said:

I miss @etanick. 

I thought I was meticulous and generally good at self-grading… until I stumbled across his videos probably a decade ago now. Genuinely learned a lot from his YT. Don’t see channels like that anymore. Every channel is just MCU leaked so and so is playing the next villain in Doctor Strange 6, buy this random book now! now! now!

On 12/30/2023 at 8:18 PM, grendel013 said:

Yeah. 227 pages and Brees Larson Rivas still hasn't showed up to the party.

Probably didn’t help that we had a rather large section of pages talking about how we can get the FBI on her case. That wasn’t very welcoming of us. Drew Brees Larson Rivas if you’re out there lurking please join us we will hold on the FBI until we hear your take on “Are prices still climbing or have they eased up a bit???”

What say you?

On 12/30/2023 at 4:46 PM, Sigur Ros said:

100%

If the workforce was skilled, this wouldn't have happened.

I don’t know that this is a skill problem, certainly hard to believe anyways. This is a process problem more than likely IMO. It seems that more than likely the books for reholders weren’t even looked at, likely not even removed from the inner wells. Because if they were it isn’t hard to flip thru and verify a MJI. That’s a “skill” I can teach my 4 year old - find the books with the jewelry ad. Because if you’re going to keep allowing for ME and reholder on books where the corner cracked and the book can be slid out then the process must be to look at the actual book. The issue of course is this process costs more time, which is ultimately money. In hindsight I’m sure the CGC execs would agree that it would have been a good investment, but in the moment it was likely a cost saving measure on a process rather than a skill issue. 

On 12/30/2023 at 10:14 AM, Steven Valdez said:

And that's all the way here in Australia, just for context.

I’m just picturing a bunch of Australians waking up to a newsfeed on their phone saying WTF is a reholder? Who is CGC? And then proceeding to stomp out some deadly creature that wondered into their home.

On 12/30/2023 at 10:05 AM, NewWorldOrder said:

Yup expect a shutdown by 1/2/2024

The hobby is over.  Action #1 are now worthless.

I don’t think 3 days is enough time for me to prepare for the zombie apocalypse. I need to find someone willing to trade slabs for antibiotics and bullets asap. 

On 12/30/2023 at 9:51 AM, Steven Valdez said:

As CGC themselves have stated, there are 'hundreds' of books involved. And Hulk #181 seems to have been a scammer's favourite.

Still a drop in the bucket for CGC/Blackstone. Now if the scammer’s favorite was ‘Tec 27 they might have been in trouble.