LordRahl

On 4/29/2024 at 5:05 AM, 1Cool said:

Wow - that is a lot of red   I'd think we would be seeing a lot more green on the left side of the chart with it being the start of comic book season.  

And everything is over $350 so it was one of their premier auctions with the "great stuff" and we still see so much red.  That's sad.  I don't have GPA but we must be seeing 2018 - 2019 prices at this point with a lot of these books.

This is one of their regular auctions, not the premier ones which they call featured. The featured one is coming up in a couple of weeks. Nothing I bid on, which is mostly keys and "cover" books in high grade, is back to '18-'19 prices yet. I'm sure you can find filler stuff that might be back to that but anything that is broadly desirable is still above. Prices are basically where they should be if you take out the the pandemic madness... about 10-25% higher now than they were in '18-'19. That's on average, as we all know books sell in a pretty wide range of prices and there is no such thing as a set FMV despite what people on the internet try to preach. Even pre-pandemic you could find high and low outlier sales and now you can find high and low outlier sales.

On 4/27/2024 at 9:38 AM, newshane said:

 

I encourage him to abandon speaking through emoticons and images. BRING BACK THE PROSE! 

While I agree and enjoy his, let's say wordier posts (I know that's not a real word), he's doing a fine job of getting his point across with images and emojis so hey whatever works and doesn't get him banned. It's unfortunate that people are so thin skinned that they can't take a poster who has a very deep knowledge base on things he posts about, just because he doesn't sugar coat things. Sugar coating things isn't all it's cracked up to be but that's just my 

On 4/26/2024 at 3:58 AM, Ride the Tiger said:

The 2 people losing their minds is surely a possibility but my guess is a small attempt at market manipulation. As I look thru ebay completed items there are so many sales that don't make sense. Slabbed books selling for twice their value. 

100% it was not market manipulation. I have sold books prior to the covid madness that went for literally 5x their normal selling price. I got paid. There was no market manipulation. As someone else pointed out CL doesn't get reported to GPA or any other sales tracking site... hard to manipulate a market when only the people that bid on the book know about it (typically). I know it got called out here and now more people know about it but that couldn't have been an expected outcome for someone "manipulating the market". Sometimes this happens with auctions, 2 guys really want a book and throw in crazy bids at the end. It's an outlier and likely not repeatable but also not market manipulation.

On 4/24/2024 at 5:28 PM, RockMyAmadeus said:

 

 

I was going to comment on this as well but you beat me to it.

On 4/26/2024 at 7:23 AM, shadroch said:

A dishonest seller doesn't have to fool the CGC, just the general public.

Which is of course no different than how things worked prior to CGC. A dishonest seller only needed to fool the poor sod buying his trimmed/ct'd/glued/married cover book, not "the CGC". I still have my CT'd Phantom Lady 15 that was purchased from "a reputable dealer" 25+ years ago when I didn't know what to look for whereas to someone like the guy I bought it from, it would have been obvious that it was CT'd. It's obvious to me now, but I've gained a lot of experience in 25+ years. I will never sell that book, just keep it as a reminder of the "good ol days".

On 3/31/2024 at 9:33 AM, batmiesta said:

I've been after a 9.6 copy of this for ages, so got a bit excited when one popped up in this weeks Heritage auction, that was until I looked closely at it, all four corner are horrible and will the guy who graded it please grade all my books.

You think that's bad, check out this 8.5 masquerading as a 9.6. With that spine and all the creasing at the top right edge I just don't get it. My raw 9.0 should be an 11.5 going by this book.

On 4/4/2024 at 10:56 AM, DC# said:

And found out via YouTube about this "make an offer" sale on Heritage for Marvel Spotlight #5 9.8 at $360k.    It is the same copy that sold for previous record of $264K in 2021.

 

On 4/5/2024 at 1:51 AM, tth2 said:

Doesn't matter, as that was the publicly announced price and as such, it makes for a terrible narrative for the market.

Well this should help the terrible narrative be less terrible.... a Silver Surfer 1 sold for over $100K. Say that out loud a couple of times just to see for yourself how crazy the market still is even though apparently it's in the toilet. SS1 is a 6 figure book. Everyone that's been around more than a hot minute knows how utterly silly that sounds, yet that's the reality... and it's completely overlooked as if it's totally normal.

On 4/4/2024 at 4:14 PM, Sigur Ros said:

So like the guy said, since this GSXM is the best copy, it gets a 9.9...everything lesser gets graded accordingly.

That's the question, and you say yes ?

No.

No idea. Trying to determine if a book is a 9.9 vs a 9.8 based on a picture through 2 layers of plastic is a fools errand.

On 4/4/2024 at 12:11 PM, Hepcat said:

$348,000?!

Who was that again who was belly aching about comic prices having fallen?

90% of the comic collecting community, because they keep comparing to pandemic pricing and not pre-pandemic, which is comparing apples to oranges but hey it's fitting everyone's narrative of the sky is falling.

A Silver Surfer 1 sold for $108K I thought the market was crashing.

On 4/4/2024 at 12:45 PM, GreatCaesarsGhost said:

Right. They’re still good prices for anyone who bought prepandemic 

I wish people would stop comparing pricing today to pandemic pricing. There were a lot of irrational decisions being made during the pandemic, pricing being only one of them. I paid $5K OVER msrp for my car during the pandemic. People locked themselves away from loved ones. People moved away from jobs and are now in a position where they either need to move again or not work. It was silly times and not remotely indicative of real life. 

On 1/11/2024 at 1:33 PM, jjonahjameson11 said:

Yeah, but the actual sale is for $1.38M once you include the buyer's premium.  Still, well below the $3M I was expecting

You were expecting how much? For a Spidey #1? Why?

On 1/8/2024 at 8:25 AM, sledgehammer said:

My opinion might be different than yours.

Did you look at any of the scans of the 9.8s that I gave you links to?

Do you think that the 238, has a bottom spine front corner that would fit for a 9.8?

I'm open to your thoughts.

Shining light on everything, is good in my opinion.

Yes, I do. 

9.8's have defects, they are not perfect books. And I'm talking about legit 9.8's, not gift grade 9.8's which we all know are out there. If you are basing any analysis on data like this particular 238, and forming conclusions that books are suspect because you apparently don't know what a 9.8 could look like... well that's a problem. 

On 1/5/2024 at 5:10 PM, wiparker824 said:

I understand what you are saying but I’m not sure even if I cracked a slab for CPR after buying from the scammer that I’d have been instantly thinking I got scammed. I’ve spent too much time in the CGC Quality Control thread to know they mislabel books at a regular enough rate that I’d just assume I got unlucky and they mislabeled a book I bought. The only way I’d be suspicious is if I bought several books from that seller on eBay and then attempted CPR on all of them and they all came back as qualified, restored, missing things, etc. Then it’s no longer conceivable to be coincidence with that many book from one source. But one book? No, it wouldn’t be my first thought to think I was scammed. But that’s just me.

You're conflating two different things here. A mislabel which wasn't caught by QC and a book missing the MVS and that not being caught by the graders. In the former (a QC mislabel issue) the graders notes will identify that the book is missing the MVS. In the latter, CGC missed that the MVS is missing. The former happens with some regularity, the latter... well I'm not going to say it's never happened but the likelihood is extremely low.

On 1/5/2024 at 3:06 PM, pdags said:

I'm not saying there are thousands of books out there... but you do understand the scammer doesn't need a qualified book to do this.  Qualified books probably gave him the best profit, but weren't required.  Briva3 could've easily swapped a 6.5 blue into a 7.0 blue.  Someone cracking that for CPR may not notice that.

I do in fact understand that however we know for a fact that qualified books were used so it stands to reason that if the overall sample size were larger, than the qualified to blue sample size would also be larger.

On 1/5/2024 at 12:54 PM, comicwiz said:

On this point, I did want to mention something. I feel like about 8 months ago, someone posted in one of the FB groups that he was going to resubmit a Hulk 181 and was informed it had a MVS cut out. It was in a universal blue that he had bought when he explained this happening. I recall people trying to discredit the person, not believing what he was saying. I vageuly recall someone remarking it reminded them of the 1st Print TMNT YouTuber that claimed his was swapped for a 3rd print.

Certainly a perspective worth reminding people on in terms of believability factor of something like that.

That is until the incontrovertible evidence is found.

 

This probably did happen. There are 19 of them out there. Now imagine if you are correct and the numbers are 20x, 30x or whatever factor you want to use, greater. This would be happening a lot more. Sure, one instance (even 2 or 3 instances) may just not be believed by the general public but if it happened 20 times? My point is that it WOULD have happened 20 times or more if this is as big as some of the posts here are suggesting. 

This is how a lot of criminals get busted. They get greedy and stop flying under the radar. If he was doing this with a few ASM 300's and New Mutants 98's in 9.8 here and there, never would have been busted. No one is cracking 9.8's for a higher grade and there are so many high grade copies of those books, that no one is paying that close of attention to any particular one of them. 

On 1/5/2024 at 12:35 PM, THE_BEYONDER said:

Perps?

He isn't going to say anything of any actual worth. "Pssst... I know something and it's HUGE" but never actually divulges what that something is so as to not be taken to task for it when it's proven incorrect.

On 1/5/2024 at 12:35 PM, comicwiz said:

That is an interesting perspective, but CPR had zero to do with this persons alleged actions. 

What this person or multiple people allegedly exploited was subverting a process where the interior inspection of a book notorious for cut out MVS awarded them the opportunity to buy a qualified example at a fraction of what the universal counterpart sold for once the swap was finalized.

They chose that scheme because of the amount of inventory that exists of qualified Hulk 181's. In some instances, they didn't even try to align the grades between green and blue.

The did it with this book, and MJ inserts because they figured out a way to subvert a process that ordinarily would never allow a book to achieve a universal designation, or as high a grade as attained. 

I not only read what you said, and am trying to understand your point, but know that I also weighed my options very carefully against this opportunistic methodology with the discoveries I made, and I can see books in the waiting on the dataset that would have been the next candidate to pass through in the same embolded manner. I'm sure many here, myself include, are in complete disbelief, given the ultra-conservative criteria CGC uses to assign not only grades, but it's universal designation.

This has nothing to do with CPR. The amount of money made taking a qualified example and turning it universal was a path that might have included restored, if not for the notorious issue for missing MVS. 

Cut out MVS, not CPR, is the reason for the jump in the dataset for Hulk 181's. And if not for the discoveries made, it would have continued, and broadened to other big hitters that follow that above formula.

I still don't think you get my point. My point is, in plain English... the more fraudulent books that are out there, the higher the chances of getting caught. If there were thousands of them out in the market, they would have been caught before now. The CPR part of my post is just justification for why people would crack a book, because cracking it would be necessary to figure out it's a fraudulent book. CPR has nothing to do with this guy's scam. But it does have something to do with catching said scam. I really don't think I can make it any clearer than that. 

On 1/5/2024 at 12:14 PM, shadroch said:

I have no idea how big this is. If one of the names I've seen thrown about is involved, it could be bad.  I know only what I've read and much of it is unverified. I am hitting the pause button on purchasing any slabbed books.  MCS runs four Prime auctions a year.  It's where I buy most of my bigger books and I had planned on continuing.

What name is that?

And I guess I need to check out MCS, wasn't aware they had auctions at all.

On 1/5/2024 at 12:11 PM, comicwiz said:

I don't know what this has to do with an alleged reholder or swap scheme. This person seemingly found another way to be awarded by a grade bump that didn't require CPR.

However, if I might - if you indicated to shad that you agreed the alleged person behind this probably didn't do it one book at a time. I took this to mean you thought he sent books in batches. How do you reconcile that there are books dating as far back as 5 years ago that link to one of the named aliases? 

I have seen a sign on the list that they may have overestimated. That's one book though, I hope I don't start seeing strikethroughs on books I've marked as tampered, because that assessment on a small sample may change the entire complexion of the accuracy of the 'impacted" list.

There are however other aspects of this which concern me. The date/age occurrence of cert numbers associated to this tampering scandal is one. The other is if we go by the theory the person was sending in batches, even if we go by when the last Hulk 181 reappeared with a different book in 2021, 1 year of doing this is already worrying. 3 years is a long time.

And there's certainly older. That first book on the "impacted" list was sold by zaneglor in 2016.

I thought the CRP part of my post was relatively self-evident but I'll spell it out. IH 181, there are 19 on the list out of 350. That's 5.4% of the list. For those of you that believe this numbers in the thousands of fraudulent books... let's say what...5K? If the percentage holds, that would be 270 IH 181's that would be fraudulent. If there are 270 Qualified IH 181's out there sitting in Blue slabs, and this book is frequently CPR'd, you don't think someone would have stumbled on one of them by now when they cracked it and sent it in? That goes for every book on the list that isn't a 9.8, so far more than 270 total books. 

As for batches, yeah I think ASM 300's and 194's, he is sending in batched. There are simply too many for this to be a 1 at a time kind of thing. For the books that don't have that many examples, could very well be 1 at a time. 

On 1/5/2024 at 11:53 AM, shadroch said:

I've no idea how many are out there, but I'd bet a quarter it is far more than 350.  I'm sitting out the Prime auction and refocusing my purchasing for the near future.

I bet it's more as well. You will have to define "far more" before I can tell if we're in the same ballpark. And what pray tell is a Prime auction?