LordRahl

On 1/3/2024 at 3:41 PM, THE_BEYONDER said:

I doubt CGC is going to reimburse the purchase cost.  Most likely they will offer current going rate 

I'm not a lawyer but I work with them a lot. They are a risk averse bunch. I will bet that they will advise CGC to just pay out the purchase cost so as to avoid any chance at a lawsuit. Most likely CGC will offer one of two things. A) they buy the book from you outright at your cost and now CGC owns the book or B) they will regrade it and you can keep it with CGC making up the difference in price between bought at grade and current grade. CGC's preference would obviously be the latter as they don't want to own these books and it leaves more room for negotiation but if they are just buying the book from you outright, I think it will be at cost (assuming you can prove your cost).

On 1/3/2024 at 3:35 PM, bc said:

or will be in the next 24 hours.

-bc

At this point why would you try to offload when you'd likely get busted? CGC is going to buy it back, presuming at the price paid for the book. In fact people that bought during the pandemic bonanza are probably ecstatic that this guy scammed them because they just made their money back and most of the books on that list are going for considerably less now than they were during the pandemic craziness.

On 1/3/2024 at 3:29 PM, bc said:

Maybe it was a "practice book" to test the waters?

-bc

There are 57 9.8 ASM 194 in that list. That is like 11% of the total population of 9.8 copies. 

On 1/3/2024 at 2:50 PM, bc said:

That's quite the list. 

Some big $$$ altogether.

-bc

Someone isn't getting a bonus this year after they pay out on all those books. That is a lot of high dollar material.

On 1/3/2024 at 3:22 PM, THE_BEYONDER said:

No kidding.  The scammer really likes 194 as well.  

Ok, this is twice we have posted pretty much the same thing at the same time. There is a glitch in the matrix

On 1/3/2024 at 3:17 PM, EastEnd1 said:

There's an awful lot of Spidey #300s on that list.

And 194's weirdly enough. I think it's the second highest number of books after the 300. Why 194's? Am I missing something about that book in particular? 

On 1/3/2024 at 12:20 PM, comicwiz said:

Yes. And not by a little.

So you and @sledgehammer think this

Looks better than the below?

You can clearly see the paper on both the front cover and back cover in the zangelor pics is crumpled and bent backwards whereas it's straight in the Heritage scans. 100% pressed and 100% looks better than the crumpled up pre-press book.

On 1/3/2024 at 11:45 AM, EastEnd1 said:

Yep, totally agree. 

Hope I'm wrong but I'm left with either the scammer was able to get into both the outer and inner wells and reseal them both without an obvious difference (apparently Heritage didn't notice anything) or an insider was involved.  Or, I guess was simply "a clerical error" by CGC, if we want to be optimistic. 

Obviously this is all going to be speculation by me but I've been thinking of the most likely scenario and here is what I think.

Despite what CW and sledge claim, the Heritage book is clearly pressed and looks considerably better than the zaneglor copy. Now the question is how did it get pressed and regraded but keep the serial number.

I think whoever bought it from zaneglor got the book and thought "holy cow this is badly overgraded". He called up CGC and basically told them they F'd up a grade on a high dollar book. CGC will, at their discretion, review books in cases like this. So the buyer sends the book to CGC, they look at it and figure either they really screwed up the grade or it was a bad press job and reverted in the case after they slabbed it. They offered the new owner a free CCS press and re-grade. In this circumstance, the book would be re-graded but keep its original cert number.

On 1/3/2024 at 11:51 AM, comicwiz said:

Lots of confusion here for certain, but a few things that run through my mind. How does the 9.2 zaneglor list even get that grade (if it passed through CGC's hands). And if you look closely at the 9.2 after it reappeared at Heritage, it actually seems worse, and still got a 9.2. And no change in certification number. 

You can't script this as a "how to troll CGC" any more definitively than what we are seeing unfolding here with the way these switches occurred. 

You're not being serious are you? You think the book in the Heritage scan looks worse than the book with all the corner and edge folds in the zaneglor scan?

On 1/3/2024 at 11:26 AM, EastEnd1 said:

That's what I originally thought but the thing I don't understand though is that the book has the same serial number after the CPR??  Wouldn't it get a new one?

Hmmm... not sure about this. It should if it was re-graded. It's clearly pressed based on the difference between the zaneglor and Heritage pics.

On 1/3/2024 at 11:26 AM, sledgehammer said:

Why are you sure CGC graded it?

Maybe I'm missing something? It's clearly the same book but has also clearly been pressed. How would this happen without CGC grading it again?

On 1/3/2024 at 11:18 AM, Silver Surfer said:

Great work. Just so I’m following correctly:

- Book acquired through Sparklecity for $6k.

- Gets a new label and a switcheroo is done, fake or real sale for $21K?
- Same label number sells on Heritage for $12k? 

I'm slightly confused too but I think what happened is original book was bought from Sparkle. It was then switched with an 8.0ish book and sold as 9.2 by zaneglor. The person who bought it from zaneglor CPR'd the book and sold it on Heritage. Coincidentally it got a 9.2 after being CPR'd, even though it was a lower grade book than the original 9.2. 

On 12/29/2023 at 9:39 PM, BrashL said:

I totally disagree. We can be reasonably sure this single bad actor has been opening CGC slabs for at least 4-5 years and was only caught by a collector who specialized in a niche of the hobby and followed basically every sale. The slabs aren’t hard to open, and it’s inconceivable only one person has ever figured it out before now. 

Believe what you like. Matters not to me. However, consider this. 1st gen slabs are easy to open, this is common knowledge (at least to those that have been around more than 5 minutes). It isn't just about the knowledge that something is easy to do. Simple math and logic would dictate that the more examples you have of something that is irregular, the higher the likelihood that someone will notice said irregularity. There are a LOT of eyes on high grade comics. There are a lot of high grade comics being cracked and re-subbed in the hopes of a higher grade. CPR is a thing. IF there were thousands of examples out there of switched out books, more would have come to light by now. 

On 12/29/2023 at 9:25 PM, BrashL said:

It’s interesting but I’m getting a change in vibe from a lot of YouTube folks. I think when they thought this was limited to a few hundred books it was exciting and it would get more clicks. Now that it’s blown up and could be encompass thousands and thousands of comics they are freaking out and want to put the genie back in the bottle. 

It is highly, highly unlikely that this is running rampant and there are dozens and dozens of scammers out there doing this to thousands of books. If there were thousands of books involved, it multiplies the chances of getting caught and some other books would have been caught prior to now. The likely scenario is that this is fairly limited and because of that has stayed under the radar. 

On 12/29/2023 at 9:19 PM, agamoto said:

I know you guys aren't lawyers, and MAN does this subject need some lawyering, but I'm surprised you guys seem to think CGC can be trusted to self-police on this thing. 

I don't trust CGC as far as I can throw their president... which isn't very far. I do trust in the instinct of self preservation, even if it is at a corporate level. CGC will do what it needs to in order to stay in business, and ONLY what it needs to. CGC is in the business of making money and they know that policing this to the extent possible will alleviate enough doubts that it will allow them to continue to make money. So they will do what they need to do.

On 12/29/2023 at 4:05 PM, EastEnd1 said:

Have you seen the videos posted in the last few days of how to do it?  And have you noticed how EASY it is?  Take a look at how many people have viewed these videos since they were released... 10k in TWO days on the CGC holder.  This has less to do with who's already done it.  It has EVERYTHING to do with how many can potentially do it going forward with 7-8 million susceptible slabs.  Once the trust in CGC is gone, it's game over for the slab gold rush, my friend. 

I'm not trying to downplay this but I will bet dollars to donuts this exact same thing was said in the Ewert thread. 

On 12/29/2023 at 3:35 PM, ADAMANTIUM said:

Ewert scandal was one guy? We have yet to determine how many people were doing this "scandal"

No. 

On 12/29/2023 at 3:16 PM, sledgehammer said:

This thing is going to blow the Ewert scandal away.

This is something that is likely to have a "fix". I don't know what that is, but it will be fixed. I bet if you put a properly micro-trimmed book in front of CGC today, they wouldn't be able to tell at least 50% of the time.

On 12/29/2023 at 3:16 PM, sledgehammer said:

This thing is going to blow the Ewert scandal away.

Nope.

On 12/29/2023 at 2:45 PM, pdags said:

It's kind of a solution, but it's dependent on high quality pics.  Sometimes pictures, specially on eBay, aren't high enough grade to compare.  Also, even with good pics it can still be very difficult to be 100% certain.  There was a discussion this morning about a book, some people thought it was the same others didn't.

But let's be honest, we shouldn't have cross check pictures for every purchase we're considering.   Just make cases that are tamper proof.

Might not be possible. Where there is a will there is a way. Too much money in comics these days and too many yahoos out there trying to get rich quick and easy. Also, what happens when someone out there figures out how to forge a CGC case? It can't be that hard to get some factory in China to manufacture a duplicate, figure out how to copy the labels and off you go. I'm surprised it hasn't happened yet but I'm betting at some point it will. Consumers need to do their due diligence, you can't leave it all to CGC. Like I said, someone will figure out how to forge a case and label, what is CGC supposed to do about that?

On 12/29/2023 at 3:07 PM, THE_BEYONDER said:

Exactly.   Looking up the image of the book does nothing but confirm it’s the same book you’re buying.

Yeah I get that. I guess I was thinking more for the books that might just be switched without going to CGC for reholder. Definitely a loophole there that needs to be closed and I imagine already has been.

So I get that there are literally millions of slabs out there that don't have this but for anything from the last few months and going forward, there are pictures of the book for all to see, correct? So really this has inadvertently already been corrected by the imaging that CGC instituted a few months ago, correct? Or am I missing something? 

Anyone know approximately what page has the video that shows how to open a CGC slab without damage? Would be useful to me as I pretty much have to destroy the outer well to get into it. 

On 12/29/2023 at 1:42 PM, THE_BEYONDER said:

I’d be surprised if the micro-trimming ever stopped, and even more surprised if CGC would currently be catching it.

In 20 years I think this is the first time you and I have agreed on something... see my above post