cstojano

I honestly don't know what sentence is the most shocking in that article, but this one is close: "According to cryptocurrency market tracker CoinGecko, the colorful digital illustrations of apes can now be bought for as little as $52,445"

Posted on their FB page. Now that the issues that happened last week on the web site are resolved, I want to provide an update on what transpired and to communicate that the protocols that we now have in place have made us stronger and more resistant to attacks than the vast majority of firms. The fact of the matter is that no web site is immune to this. Many Fortune 500 companies, banks, credit reporting agencies, hospitals, and governmental agencies have experienced attacks. The only thing any of us can do is learn, adjust, and prepare. Here’s the deal. Though we had previously been lucky enough to have avoided it when other auction companies within the collectibles field were hit with attacks, most notably in 2019 and 2020, last week, ComicLink was a target of a url XSS redirection attack which forced browsers accessing certain parts of the web site to be redirected to untrusted external sites. This was often, and fortunately, accompanied by warnings in the user’s browser or anti-malware software which cautioned against proceeding further. If you do not have up to date malware detection on your computer or mobile device, I strongly suggest it. Due to precautions that we had taken previously, sensitive customer data such as credit cards (maintained by a third party provider) or passwords (encrypted) were never compromised by this and there is no data loss. Attacks were staggered and defended against last week and during this time I worked with my IT team day and night to determine how to best defend against recurring attacks, intentionally bringing the entire web site down while we made purposeful changes. We implemented a major security upgrade in partnership with Cloudflare, whose clients include or have included the likes of IBM, LendingTree, Shopify, Garmin and many others. Early Friday morning we brought the site back up safely behind Cloudflare’s firewall. The web site appeared back up to some users before others. This had to do with one of two things, either name server migration propagating to some Internet Service Providers before others, or caching issues related to the disparate ways that browsers cache web sites. By late Friday morning, the web site was back up for most Internet Service Providers, and by early afternoon, we could see that name server propagation was complete in 99.9% of the world. The likelihood is that any viewing issues subsequently were related to caching or false positives related to security protocols. In the unlikely event that you are still having trouble viewing the site, the recommendation is that you clear your cache and reload your browser and/or restart your computer or mobile device. E-mail or phone us if you cannot resolve it or if you believe you are being unintentionally blocked from accessing the web site. Subsequent to bringing the site back up and implementing prevention procedures, some non-critical error messages were found on the web site. We have spent the last few days addressing those and they have all been corrected. That said, please let us know if you experience any errors or believe that you were blocked in error from a safe connection point. Thank you for trusting us to be your partner in buying and selling collectibles. We will remain diligent about security going forward.

Thanks for saying this. I don't understand why substrate doesn't get discussed more often. And I don't understand why anyone uses canvas. As a non-artist I can only assume I am missing something about the painting process itself because it seems that a masonite (or similar hard and smooth) surface would be superior in many ways. I find the texture distracting as well, from a visual stand point. And why use stretcher bars anyway. They always end of damaging the canvas and it can be framed flat anyway.

I am assuming this means no money was changing hands because at this point you'd have to know whatever market you were trying to create isn't happening. Someone would be in 10 million at this point for what, to generate commissions on a bunch of lower tier pieces to come later??

Very cool piece. This artist is getting some nice exposure with the map she did for the new Conan series. I went to her site, subbed to her newsletter and saw this piece and went "wait a minute"...

I was the seller. It was a global shipping program scam.

All well and good until they let someone steal 900 dollars from you with no recourse and no way to contact a person that actually knows what they are doing. And yes I tried all the normal social channels, it got me nowhere. Now buying a car on eBay is not something I would ever consider.

Always shocking how common it is for sellers to refuse to do this. I get it, Ebay's TOS, etc but man that company has done me wrong enough in the past that...

I thought it was already there actually. A few pieces seem to have slipped out, but these were the covers from the Donning TPBs and the a couple of Marvel re-run covers sold on Heritage many years ago. I'd like an original from this series.

Yup, why I went the route of AFA grading.

Also, its pretty clear we just need the big players to get involved to turn this into a market and there may not be enough product to front run to make it worthwhile. I mean, TPTB turned sealed VHS tapes into multi-k level collectibles.

I assume so. As I said in the other thread my issue is they won't leave them sealed.

They look great in AFA cases, cost for most boxed sets is around 150 all in, not the cheapest option. In the toy world AFA is the dominant grading service.

Yes, per my question about CGC grading modules in the other thread, I am shocked the market is so dull for this stuff. I honestly just like the look of the cases and the protection they provide for some flimsy cardboard in some cases. I consider it like framing a 50 dollar print though. Still it adds up when you have a bunch of modules to grade. Also not sure the AFA modules will look great given the thickness of the cases. Smaller boxes like though are amazing.

This is the second AFA 85 of this exact set they have sold. I won the first one they offered so glad to see they were about the same price in the end.

To clarify they already grade modules, just not sealed and I was told they would open a sealed module to check the contents.

Bit of a side quest(ion) here, but anyone know why CGC doesn't grade modules sealed? They grade sealed video games so not sure I see the difference.

I thought glassine was the standard for protecting painted surfaces??

Probably one of my best memories was pulling my first all-nighter playing Bard's Tale when it came out, the game blew me away at the time. What took so long? Hand mapping every dungeon with graph paper. It was awesome. Bard's Tale, Temple of Apshai and Hellfire Warrior were the games for me back then.

These originals are around. I used to own several of the Grenadier dragon lords artworks including the best two (red and blue).

I assume you are guaranteed a good grade for these metal variant covers??

Funny coincidence, Fire and Ice has its 40th in 2023 and they are doing a new series of comics. I don't collect comics but liked the movie enough as a kid to be interested. Just what is a metal variant comic cover anyway?

Gordon and I exchanged emails over a piece and then in the end told me he wasn't taking any more business. Maybe he didn't want to bother with my project, which is fair enough. It was for a painting.

A mid grade but sealed was on eBay a few weeks back for just under 20k, no takers as I recall. That seller has an endless supply of stuff it seems, reps old employees, etc.

Yeah I am one of the guys paying this because to me its still so cheap for sealed 80s product with out of this world cover art.