Iconic1s

I hope they don’t do this. If they do this, no one will ever send in another book for reholder in a cracked, or old holder ever again. With grading be subjective why take the chance? Myself for example, I worked with a guy for over two years to finally convince him to let me have (through a trade) a 9.9 I needed for my run (it’s the only 9.9 with almost 600 graded). It’s a beauty but is in an old holder… I know it would present so much better in the new slab but we all know that the chances of it keeping that 9.9 is almost zero if they regrade it. If they can’t crack a legitimate customer’s book, and reholder it without damaging it themselves then that is another problem altogether.

The only reason I’m leaning the other way is the sheer volume of the books that have been tampered with, and the speed at which books were moved to new holders/images updated. Would be hard to be THAT efficient without some assistance. Either that, or this guy is such an important client, that procedures were circumvented for him (which also isn’t right). In that case, it’s hard to imagine that none of you old timers (no offense) know this guy. He’s like a ghost that appeared on the scene with an infinite number of grails and no one ever even met him?? Weird!! Anyways, that’s all just thinking out loud. Each book that is dug up just makes this that much more fascinating and troubling. P.S. from the tone of CGC’s reply, thanking for the PM and mentioning the length of this thread, it seems that they may not appreciate this lengthy public dialogue. Rather keep it quiet and handle it, or maybe I’m reading into it too much.

+1

Seems like it’s all of the above: 1) he compromises the slab somehow to be able to swap inner well with lower grade books. 2) then, used the reholder process to get a a pristine new slab (with possible updated label info such as the MJI annotation, and/or custom label). This also ensures that image is updated on CGC site. 3) then uses shill bidding to make sure he gets top dollar for all of his “effort.” 4) only gets caught because he did this with such a niche, and ultra rare high grade book. #2 bothers me the most, and all things considered (such as really weird grade date differences, and such sustained success) it is seeming more likely there was inside help. If that’s the case (no pun intended) CGC oughta figure out who pretty quickly when they look at who handled this guy’s submissions (if they decide to look). I honestly don’t think anything comes of this (and I’ve read all 129 pages). Seems like this is A LOT of data (making subjective judgments on spine ticks, etc) to gather and present to “authorities”, and then “they” need to care enough to work the case. While all of this “different book in a different holder” stuff is obvious to us, it probably won’t be all that convincing to these authorities, especially when CGC (the world’s leading authority) is standing there saying that this is not possible. I’m guessing that individual victims of this fraud will have to push their individual cases to be made whole, if they think the juice is worth the squeeze on that. Other than that, I’m more and more thinking “the World” couldn’t care less about some dude selling lower grade books in higher grade holders. CGC may (but probably won’t) see a momentary decrease in subs, and the few hundred people that know what has happened will look at this demographic of slabbed book closer before buying, but other than that, I predict nothing publicly known comes of any of this.

I’ve only cracked about a half dozen and have never succeeded in doing so without it being obvious. I have no idea if someone with better skills, or better tools, or with a different intent could pull it off enough to at least convince CGC it was either a simple case of a cracked slab, or a reholder to fix some data. But, it looks like he either figured this out, or had someone helping him out in the reholder process. Enough documentation (pictures) exists in this thread to show it’s happened somehow. I think maybe he viewed the CGC reholder as a sort of plausible deniability. If a buyer ever questioned the grade he could always say that “hey, CGC slabbed it” and he could act stupid.

The only people that would have gotten to see one of the alleged tampered with slabs would have been the CGC reholdering department. They (the slabs) seem to have been back through CGC hands before ever getting to a buyer. If all he was doing was playing with the market he wouldn’t need to go through all this effort. He could just use a few shills to increase the perceived value of these books without all the swapping.

Man, I sure hope they don’t go this route. I can only speak for myself (as a mostly ‘90ish collector that doesn’t sell anything, and who also despises custom labels). I’ve had quite a few books reholdered, most were simply so they’d present better, and a few were cracked or mislabeled mechanical errors (nothing big $$). All for my PC. I’d never reholder another book if they all had to be regraded.

When this is all said and done (is it one person/group, legal action taken, etc) I hope that CGC can release a list of all cert numbers associated with that person’s/persons’ submissions and offer some kind of evaluation/regrading of those books. Just looking at slabbed books online the last couple days, things don’t feel the same. The label may say such and such but geez, there just isn’t any way to know for sure now, knowing this has been going on. I hope they don’t just ignore this, hoping it goes away! It just seems too big to not address properly, even if it ends up being just one bad actor. Whatever procedures need to be changed to fix this, I personally don’t want to get to the point where all reholders are regraded… that seems pretty extreme and punishes a whole lot of good people that just want their books in nice new slabs.

Not that anyone cares, but my final thoughts as I leave this conversation (it’s honestly just too much of a bummer at this point!). I think there is one of two explanations for ALL of these wild examples of craziness popping up as you guys dig. 1) CGC suffered from a number of VERY loose policies. They perhaps valued expediency over accuracy, and let a lot of this through intentionally because they simply decided that verification/accuracy/suspicion of shenanigans wasn’t as important as speed (particularly during high value reholders) as the hot market was sitting there waiting for these books! or 2) there is a person or persons on the inside working with this guy. I think this would be tough because I don’t know how much autonomy each employee has as books move through the process. If there’s supervision I think it’d be hard for any one employee to pull this off for too long. Also, if it is more than one seller that’d be tough to keep secret for long (loose lips sink ships!). Anyways, hope you guys have Happy Holidays! P.S. looks like the 9.9newsstand guy is doing some type of live update video tonight around 7:00. Take care

This is what I was thinking. A coincidence is all.

Could that just be a coincidence?

My head hurts.

He obviously didn’t see the comparison pics earlier on this thread.

If I were the 9.9newsstand guy that first blew the lid off of this I might be a little worried about potential legal action. Sure, I’m convinced they are different books, but we’re talking about a half a billion dollar company that just potentially lost ALL credibility because you have a good eye… if they can’t completely suppress this, they are not going down easy. Imagine GM having a recall on every car they made in the last 20 years??

I was not saying I WANT it to be the end for them, just that what is the point in ever trusting them again. It’s been obvious that their main concern has been profits for a while now (not fixing QC issues, the whole acetate thing, and I’m sure there is a lot more). And now, they let this get by them for who knows how long?? They turned themselves into nothing more than a gimmick at this point. Look at their social media presence (it’s a joke used to generate business when they honestly don’t have to).. all the in-house private signings, questionable grading, decreasing the number of graders on books. It’s all about volume/money, not the actual integrity of their product anymore. Going back to that 5.5 IH 181 that might be married… it may have just been cracked and resubbed for all anyone knows… maybe they don’t even count pages anymore, maybe they just look at something like a MVS missing, or other common qualifiers and blast on to the next book… who knows at this point and why should anything they say about it be trusted. I really feel bad for the collectors that have gone out of their way to possess the types of books that have been the target of this! At this point no one really will know what’s in ANY slab they got from anything other than their own sub, or from someone they absolutely trust that also subbed the book themselves. Any of these books that changed hands more than once, while slabbed is suspect! Personally, I’m glad I’m just a little rinky dink ‘90’s guy… not much profit in doing this with many of my books. Again, I don’t want any grading company to go out of business, especially CGC (I’ve got books there now and will keep submitting) but honestly, they did us all wrong by not being better, and it should be it for them.

Not so much…

This guy sounds like CGC is paying him

… and getting them past the world’s most trusted third party comic book grading company

No, but I always worry about it! Was trying to get all my books in new holders at one point but quit sending when QC got so bad!! I have one 9.9 newsstand in particular that would look wonderful in a new holder, but it’s never leaving my sight after this!

You are correct, but this is just ANOTHER reason why the census is worthless MOST of the time. I’m not saying I have a problem with CPR, even though we know we’re “supposed” to return the cracked label many don’t. This guy just made it so much worse though, if he in fact did keep making a 9.8 back into a 9.8, so he could fraudulently turn lower grade books into “9.8 holdered” books. Purpose of CPR (I thought) was to bump, lets say, your 9.4-9.6 to a 9.8 and be done with it. if the book’s previous label isn’t returned that’s a bummer but not as bad as this guy adding numerous 9.8’s using the same book. You guys know as well as I do that we often times base asking/offering prices on census population… for anyone collecting the kind of books he targeted, that tool just became as worthless as a hammer without a head. I still think this is all on CGC for providing this window of opportunity. I looked carefully at CGC’s description of their holder and label last night and if you look carefully it’s really all about “preservation” and “presentation.” I don’t really read anything about guaranteeing the holder’s contents as authentic, more that the holder itself is authentic. Very clever I think!

Pretty much every reholder submission the guy ever did is probably a lower grade book that had the inner well cracked out/swapped. That list should be published at some point and current owners should get to resub them for free and be compensated for deficient grades (that is of course after a thorough investigation, criminal trial, and this guy is rotting somewhere in jail). If he was resubbing the same 9.8 over and over to get a new 9.8 cert # to pull his scam then the census is also garbage for all of these issues, and will probably never be accurate. Looks like this guy jacked up Keys for a while. The actual blame for this rests 100% with CGC IMO though! They know it is bad too, hence the silence! Regardless of a scammers intent, it was CGC’s responsibility to engineer a product (and their services) in a way that this should have been a heck of a lot harder to do… maybe someone gets lucky and cracks 1:100 slabs in such a way to be able to get away with this, but for someone to be able to do so with this level of consistency and get away with it for this long is pretty ridiculous! This actually “should” be the end of CGC but it won’t be. Just like acetate gate and other scandals that damaged the brand it’ll be isolated to this forum and a few influencers. CGC is now too big to fail. They’ll issue some kind of statement (maybe) and people will move on and most will keep submitting (I will). Such a bummer this has happened!

No Sir, I wouldn’t buy the book… I was just “liking” the post/train of thought. This does remind me of when I first got to these forums though. I asked what I thought was an honest question about a book I was interested in. It was a CGC 9.8 but did not look like a 9.8 at all from the scans. I was instructed by a highly respected member of this community, to look at the number in the upper left corner of the slab as if I were stupid. Irony In that case, I did buy the book and my concerns ended up being caused by the seller’s scanner. That definitely isn’t the case here though! This is just another example of CGC cutting corners… pretty obvious that reholders aren’t seen/looked at closely by the graders… they go straight to the same people slabbing shards of plastic, hair, etc with our books, and shipping cracked holders back to us. When it comes to reholders, this MJ annotation is probably just looked at as a clerical issue that is delegated to these same people… or graders are just too swamped to take a real serious look. Plus, we already know QC is non-existent… based only on luck and ROI… it’s cheaper to push ‘em through and deal with the small % of books that get sent back, than to fix any ID’ed problem before they leave CGC. This seller, and maybe others, have probably been doing this awhile because CGC has been more concerned with volume, than quality for a while now. This just got attention because it was pulled on a very specific type of book that caught the attention of someone that was a true expert on that type of book. This incident is a super bummer but not really a surprise based on the way that company is being ran. BTW - where is CGC on this?

I've gotten a few of these but have always turned them down for this exact same reason. Even if I was willing to pay the higher price in a fair auction, it always felt like I was now being taken advantage of a little bit with the way the second chance worked.

@CGC Mike as always you are awesome! I appreciate you checking on this! Honestly though, that's kind of a disappointing answer. In my case, I just didn’t want the data to be wrong… didn’t really care what the label said… I had the book in hand and was happy enough not to send it back as it was for my PC. Was more concerned about future submitters labels being correct. I just point this out as it’s another example of the “powers that be” making stuff up as they go. Playing Devil’s Advocate here, from the perspective of the person that has that “Pedigree” book “in-hand” it’s actually pretty messed up for CGC to change that info when they (CGC) did in-fact already have it in their possession at one point and in their wisdom gave it the Pedigree designation. Where does CGC “technically” get the right to do that, whether the owner replied or not without looking at it again? I just wanted to fix some data (writer and artist) on a rather obscure ‘90’s book that very few people care about but I couldn’t do that without sending it back. Meanwhile, CGC is happy enough to remove a Pedigree designation from a book without even having it hand to take another look at it? I’m just saying that when a customer can clearly show that data is wrong (such as when I could show 3 of 4 printings were correct) why not just make changes instead of making us send a book back to “verify.” Seems the standard is… 1) if the mistake inconveniences the customer make them send it back to “verify”… 2) if it makes CGC look bad change it without the book in-hand.

Thank you Sir!