Bob Sacamano

If you want to force Marvel’s hand, as someone noted, just get a viral tweet going that they are displaying an incorrectly folded flag on “their variant cover.”  It’s a disgrace to our veterans!

On 8/11/2022 at 8:53 PM, awakeintheashes said:

Lawyer people, if eBay pulls this listing because it deems it counterfeit, does the benefiting charity have any leg to stand on if it decides to file suit against eBay? CGC did deem this book to be authentic after all. eBay has a partnership with CGC to authenticate items. Also, could CGC also get roped into said hypothetical lawsuit?

No because the hypothetical charity had no claim to that money.  eBay is supposed to adhere to their own terms of service to the best of their ability.

Edit: As you can probably guess I’m not a lawyer.

On 8/11/2022 at 8:28 PM, ADAMANTIUM said:

That's how I feel about some of my posts to this point. I now see that there are people being left holding the "variant" bag by not having a place to sell them etc 

So there WAS more to this issue than the blue label. It took me a while to catch up.

Still I'm not sure if cgc will give another response, but I'd assume if so, it'll only be to the blue label as that is what is concerning them.

Idk if they will answer with all the other fluff being tossed, but we'll see.

The number of seemingly paid for grades should be concerning to them too but that can never be admitted to.  It’s only the label color that can be acknowledged so I think you’re right that it will be the only thing addressed if anything at all.

On 8/11/2022 at 10:49 AM, FFB said:

The First Sale doctrine merely allows you to resell the thing you bought without Marvel's approval.  Marvel only possesses exclusive rights as to the "first sale" of the product, meaning that once they choose who they sell it to, the purchaser can resell the item without Marvel's approval.  

You are confusing this with the derivative works protection that Marvel enjoys.  Even after the first sale of the original item, Marvel continues to possess the right to prevent others from taking their IP and making a derivative work from it without their approval, even if the protected item was legally purchased by the person making the derivative work.  

I’m no attorney so I’ll defer to you but it seems to me that the first sale doctrine wouldn’t even come into play since the retailer, Black Flag isn’t selling these a second time.  This is the first sale.  The first sale does not refer to Marvel selling to the retailer otherwise the whole doctrine would be moot since obviously Marvel can sell to whoever they wish and bind them through contract. 

On 8/10/2022 at 3:51 PM, Axelrod said:

The only (small) concession I can make to CGC here is that, given the absolutely ridiculous amount of "variant" covers that are being produced these days - I mean, I am just dumbfounded by the number of these things - perhaps they just assumed one more "variant" wasn't going to be a big deal. 

Of course missing a few rather important distinctions.  

(edit: and, yeah, with suspiciously high grades on top)

CGC already addressed this possible defense with their first statement.  I’m paraphrasing, ‘we know exactly what these are.’

On 8/9/2022 at 9:16 PM, captainzombie said:

Out of this whole situation and fiasco that CGC has created for themselves along with Black Flag, I do feel bad for @CGC Mike. He has been such a good dude on the forums the little bit of time I have been on here and he can only say so much without getting himself into any trouble.

More than anything, it will be interesting to see which approach Marvel takes here. If they do allow this to pass, then you will see a lot more come out of the wood works to do the same thing if not worse.

I know this situation was the last straw for many that will dissuade people now from sending their books in to be graded. I am still at a loss after sharing a spreadsheet with @CGC Mike a few weeks ago on books that were not graded correctly from past submissions the last few months that I don't think anything has changed from our feedback. For example, I had a bunch of books submitted and graded a 2 weeks ago, with a few getting 9.4. Why are we not getting grader notes for books that are getting even lower than a 9.6? Now that you guys also added the QR code, it is a real shame. To add to this, all of my books in that last submission, not one lick of grader notes yet again.

That used to be the standard.  Now to improve “efficiency “ no doubt, they probably only list large defects.  How many are graded 9.4/9.2 and above?  I bet they can eliminate 50% of their graders notes and increase throughput.  All about the bottom line.

On 8/9/2022 at 9:15 PM, onlyweaknesskryptonite said:

Stray Dogs on using them as an example..

 

LOL, brilliant.

On 8/9/2022 at 8:56 PM, onlyweaknesskryptonite said:

Of the Action Comics  ZERO...

I have the only Sketch 9.8 and submitted it myself. 

The Tec 27 Sketch on the other hand has 16 in 9.9 out of 24 graded so someone obviously paid for those.. 

 

Thanks for doing the legwork.  I’ll admit I thought the answer would be zero for any similarly constructed comic.

On 8/9/2022 at 8:49 PM, CGC Mike said:

While we allow criticism. we do not allow promoting the competitors.  Keep that in mind when posting.

Yeah let’s not let this epic thread get shut down.

On 8/9/2022 at 8:28 PM, onlyweaknesskryptonite said:

These were the only conversation acetate books that I ever thought looked good and picked up.  (And no these were not added "after the fact".)

How many 9.9 and 10s?

On 8/9/2022 at 2:07 PM, Atomic Ponkie said:

I would say there needs to be a little more digging on the relationship between black flag and cgc. 

Have they had legitimate store exclusive variants?  And do we know the grade distribution of those books?

On 8/9/2022 at 2:05 PM, Willbert said:

The Stray Dogs Acetate was manufactured by the publisher, Image, whereas the UF4 was altered by Black Flag. The Stray Dogs Acetate has a unique barcode and a $12.99 cover price versus the Stray Dogs cover A price of $3.99. The UF4 is an admitted recycled facsimile book from 2021. Outside of having 4 staples there is nothing, I repeat, nothing similar about the origins of these books.

But set all that aside, can someone explain to me how 274 copies of Stray Dogs Acetate can be on the census and there is not a single 10.0 or 9.9? But Black Flag can submit 30 books, known so far, and have 3x10.0s, 11x9.9s among the 3 titles? So 0 out of 274 for a legit published book to grade above 9.8 but 14 out of 30 for retailer altered books.

Thank you for highlighting this.  There must be a secret tier where you can pay extra for 9.9 or 10.0 grades.  Maybe we can ask them what the pricing is on this.  If it can’t be bought then how many YouTube subscribers would I need in order to access this tier.

On 8/9/2022 at 1:28 PM, Gary Strange said:

How hard would it have been to admit that you guys mistook them for manufactured books instead of aftermarket bootlegs and you won’t do it again? Fail. 

Exactly. Looking for “digging hole” emoji.

I missed the staining on the Adventure comics so I was off far on that one.  Other than that I Was happy with the round considering I went through real fast.

Thanks a lot @CGC Mike this was a lot of fun and the first one I participated in.  I’ll definitely try to get in the next one.

Finally sent mine in.  Good thing that 4 bullseyes comment can’t be me because I need all five of them.

I did terrible this round.  I didn’t even tally up my total.

Can you post pictures after the clean and press?  It looks very nice to me especially if you’re able to clean up some of those color issues.  It looks better than my copy.  As it sits 8.5/9.0.

Agreed.  These were really tough for me and I basically have to get all bullseyes from now on for me to have a chance.

Damn I thought I had four bullseyes but I was off by one on the GI Combat too.

On 7/16/2022 at 7:19 PM, Azkaban said:

Avengers #41 2001

$2.00

Take.  Also same title 42-56.

I’m sure the deep shadow along the top of the cover is part of the same defect.  No way to know for sure it affects the interior too but it’s a good bet.

Holy mess I got four bullseyes but I was way off on the Hit Comics.  Ended up with four points.