VintageComics

X-men #101 CGC 9.4 White pages - 1st app Phoenix Asking $1100 (shipping included)

X-men #95 CGC 9.8 White Asking $2400 (shipping included)

Tomb Of Dracula #2 CGC 9.8 White - Tough black picture frame! Asking $2750 (shipping included)

Thor #225 CGC 9.8 White pages - 1st Firelord Asking $2900 (shipping included)

Marvel Premiere #28 CGC 9.8 White pages - Legion Of Monsters app Asking $4100 (shipping included)

Incredible Hulk #181 CGC 6.0 White pages - great looking RED copy. Asking $4400 (shipping included)

Incredible Hulk #140 CGC 9.8 OWW - 1st app. Jarella Asking $2750 (shipping included)

Conan #1 CGC 9.8 White pages Asking $8250 (shipping included)

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Payment: Check / Bank wire preferred. Other payment terms available. Shipping: Certified books, shipping is included FREE within North America, ROW we split it. Raw books, include $10 for shipping within North America. ROW I will split with interested parties.  Who wins: Time stamp seals the deal as to who wins regardless of the form of communication (including PM, in the thread, text or phone conversation). A negotiation is not a deal until both sides have agreed on terms. If there is an unconditional posted (or communicated) it will trump all negotiations unless we have already both agreed to terms before the was posted. In that case, the will have been in vain. Except that it will give you street cred and look cool to passers by. No House Of Shame or Probationary members or any others of ill repute. I reserve the right to choose who I sell to. Returns: I am considered a very good grader among my peers ( Here is a link to my kudos thread ) but since even CGC is inconsistent I will not guarantee a CGC grade. I will guarantee to be within one grade increment in either direction - so if I am calling the book a 9.4 it could go 9.2 or 9.6. If it falls outside of those parameters (and it does happen that they go in both directions), I will offer a refund. But I don't expect anyone to complain if I undergraded it. I will accept returns if item is otherwise not as described or shown. Consider all books pressed. Pricing: I try to price books close to fair market value. I am open to offers but it's not very likely I'm going to be accepting offers at 30% off fair market value.

To implement the laser tech is an added cost. It also adds a new level of complexity to a process that already has Quality Control issues. Just imagine mixing up the laser serial numbers the way some labels already get mixed up. I'm not saying it's impossible. I'm saying it adds lots of time and cost and uses up resources in an already strained encapsulation system.

Yeah. Now when I think it through, it does seem like it would divide the market. Probably won't happen as an optional service.

Logistically, it would take extra time and money to do this. They'd need to slow down the 'slab a million books a year' assembly line down to a crawl to match each book to the plastic holder, print the serial number on the slab and then encapsulate each specific book. It would create an even bigger backlog and increase the price of encapsulation greatly. As a customer would you be willing to pay and wait an extra time period for them to be able to afford this service? I guess it could be an option. Pay an extra $50 for this security feature...some people may go for it. But for the masses? I don't see it happening.

It was a spatial reference and not a sexual one.

"Recalibrating the index of suspicion" is a great way to put it. We all need to do that regularly in life and this is one of those times.

Good point. And this is why I like FREE SPEECH and OPEN ENTANGLEMENT OF IDEAS rather than suppression and censorship. Without it, you would NEVER get to the truth of a matter.

I wasn't pulling numbers out of thin air. You'd need to engineer and machine moulds for the outer case halves and the inner well halves. That's at least 4 moulds. But maybe more to be convincing since comics are all different shapes and sizes. You'd need to come up with a supplier / manufacturer. You'd need to come up with a plastic compound. The plastic has to look and feel right. It has to be the right hardness and clarity. Not cheap. You'd need to inject / create all the separate plastic pieces. There would be trial and error. And the machines that do the sealing? Let's just say they're not cheap (yes I know how much they cost). I'm vague because I'm choosing to be. I don't want to put too much info out there. Maybe you can make something similar but cheaper out of wood?

Who is blaming the victim? There was an air of "I can't believe they didn't catch this" vibe coming from a few posters. But I agree with you and others who stated that slab did exactly what it was supposed to do. I don't think anyone is blaming CGC either. -------------------------------------------------------------------- Any business that wants to stay in business needs to adapt and CGC will adapt. The GOOD news is that the way the slabs are produced and more importantly, the way they are sealed take significant resources and effort. The barrier to entry is not small to do it properly. You're not going to have a clear, exact slab made for $1000 or even $10,000. Short of some sort of industrial espionage or theft, we're talking a significant, likely big 6 or 7 figure investment to manufacture slabs and a similar investment for the technology to seal them. Putting aside the unfortunate loss that some buyers may incur from the fraud, all of this is actually a good thing over all because it makes the community more vigilant for fraud and more aware of what to look for and that's always a plus.

One thing is certain. @mycomicshop caught it and that's a strong endorsement toward what a quality organization they are.

You mean, it's like picking up someone at a bar? If you get too excited without doing your diligence it may come back to haunt you? Like that?

You're baiting me into a political commentary from a conversation elsewhere. Nice try. And you're misunderstand / mixing different ideological principles. When someone IS EMPLOYED IN YOUR SERVICE you should expect full transparency relating to the employment and nothing less. They work for you and owe you that. You can demand it and if they don't give it to you, they can't be trusted and need to get fired. Imagine you hire someone and they won't tell you what they do for you in an 8 hour work day? But in CAPITALISM, when buying and selling, it's every man for himself. So buyer beware. Proceed with caution. Road may be out ahead. etc. The two are TOTALLY different things. Hopefully that helps.

I agree. That's the illusion of fraud. Much like magic, it preys on where you're NOT expected to be looking and strikes deep in the heart of it. I think if we had a 100 boardies in a room passing around books at a swap meet before this was exposed, many would miss these fakes. And another reason to deal with established sellers with a good track record.

Yes I have. I also have a good eye. In fact, I've been told by many that I have the best in the biz. If CGC who are the "indisputable experts" make quality control errors like putting the wrong comic in a holder with the wrong label (please reference the "Where was 'Quality Control' thread if you need more examples ) I think it's OK to accept that NOT EVERYONE is going to catch subtle differences like this. Not everyone that is a "dealer" is an expert. They should be, but dealers aren't trained professionals with some controlled standard of greatness. They're all taught by the school of Hard Knocks. --------------------- Tangent: I often turn to my past career in the automotive industry for parallels. In Canada you need to go through a formal training and certification program to become an auto tech. You MUST pass the course to receive a certification with a MINIMUM standard. You can't operate as a tech without this certification. You stay an apprentice for life without it and always need someone else to sign off on your work. You would be SHOCKED at how many techs are completely clueless, even after passing certification. Many should not even be working on your car in my opinion. But they are. And they spend a lifetime doing so. And this is a job where the lives of people are involved with potentially fatal consequences. --------------------------------------- Many 'dealers' can't even catch resto on a comic book. It's why they use CGC. So how much expectation do you have for them to catch resto on a SLAB which is supposed to be guaranteed and designed to absolve them of any need to have skill? That's what CGC is for. That's their claim. That's their guarantee. That's why they are legally going after these people. The entire point for CGC's existence was to guarantee trust in the product. And once you do that, until something like this happens only the people with sharper eyes catch this stuff. To be clear, I am not saying they SHOULDN'T have an eye for these sorts of things. We all should. But we all don't, and I wouldn't be too hard on the people who don't. That's all I'm saying. Oh please yourself. I don't know. Everyone is different. I've seen people gamble with 7 figure deals and I've seen people who won't gamble a 2 figure deal. I guess that will depend on their risk tolerance. Everyone's is different...because everyone is different.

I don't understand why it's so difficult to understand that not everyone has an eye for this sort of thing. What is obvious to you may not be obvious to everyone. In much the same way that an 'obvious' CGC Quality Control error can slip under the radar, you can miss a lot unless you're attentive and looking for it. The entire point of the slab is TRUST in the slab. Up until this incident, most dealers didn't look for fraudulent slabs.

Great taste. I'm a lifelong Porsche fan. Porsche. There is no substitute.