agamoto

The video's intent is to demonstrate the security, or lack thereof, of a case. He didn't limit his examination to just CGC cases, you realize that, right? You have a juvenile understanding of civil law if you think CGC has any right to try and silence him if he wants to record himself blasting their case with a heatgun and posting that on Youtube. You also don't understand how defamation works. It's not defamation if the problems with the case are true.

I would love to see CGC try to sue him, they'd get hit with an anti-SLAPP suit so fast it might actually blow the sonic welds on their cases open.

Quite frankly, if you think Rick Morgan's testing of both the CGC and CBCS cases is somehow intended to be a teaching tool at SmammerU, then your arse is out a country mile.

This is a ridiculous comparison. Testing the integrity of a case and demonstrating the ease, or not, with how it can be opened is LIGHT YEARS away from cracking a case, swapping labels/books, sending back to CGC for a reholder and/or attempting to resell that book to an unsuspecting buyer.

If I could just point something out there... "The scandal started after a pair of online collectors began identifying and documenting cards that were allegedly improperly modified. They have identified 316 such cards, retouched by nearly a dozen “card doctors,” that sold for a combined $1.4 million. The four collectors who spoke with investigators say the FBI suspects thousands of additional cards with similar issues are still circulating through the hobby." To all the folks here who bemoan my insistence the FBI and/or FTC need to be at the lead of this investigation, let the card scandal experience described in the article be exhibit A. It only required a few hundred cards, a million plus in potentially fraudulent sales, and 4 complaints from collectors to get the feds involved. Oh, and as for dropping the Comic Station name... Folks, you gotta be careful here. Correlation != Causation... Innocent until proven guilty. While there is plenty of photo evidence and even a smoking heat gun which appears to link the company to a lot of these books in question, it's all just a tangle of threads that need to be pulled and looked at by actual criminal investigators. No, not the PI's hired by CGC, those don't count. It's totally fine to discuss the obvious connections which exist at face value between Comic Station, i.e. all the pictures of the books we've seen on their social media, all the ads we've seen on eBay for years now... The connections are apparent to anyone... However, it's a recipe for having your handed to you in defamation court if the company is able to demonstrate it lost reputation and business by anyone pegging them for being responsible for these scams before they are ever indicted, tried and convicted for such a crime. It is still within the realm of possibility that this company, and it's owners/operators, are also being played like a fiddle by one of their consignors or something, we don't know. We will never really know unless an actual law enforcement investigation takes place.

The heat gun, while it could be used for poppin' slabs, it could also be used for the rapid evaporation of VOC solvents one might employ in cleaning books. They can also be handy for softening some glues already present on most square bound book spines.

It reminds me of what Mike Nelson once said about the best restoration he's ever seen, and that's the restoration they didn't catch.

I honestly couldn't care what they are planning to do with the certs. Without the feds actually looking into the who, what, why and how much, it's all theater.

I'll give you a predictive announcement: "We've flagged all the suspicious books submitted by the individual and any other books related to the submitter which we deemed significant enough in value or prestige to consider worthy of further assurance investigation. Those books which we have reviewed and deemed not to have been swapped will be removed from the list by striking through the certification number. These books, since they are not affected, will retain their original certification number and slab. We continue our commitment to reviewing more books as they come in and regrading and encapsulating these books with new certification ID's. Above all else, please remember, there's only one scammer, this is a totally isolated incident, and these aren't the droids you're looking for. While we don't intend to pursue any criminal investigation, we look forward to running up the cost of our internal self-investigation so that we can pass them onto the scammer when we eventually nail them with a suit for injunctive relief and a restraining order. Please resume your healthy trade in 9.8 modern variants. Thanks."

I like your tools, just would be nicer to type a cert and see a pretty table of every sale for that cert instead of drilling down through the years sales data and having to eyeball where the cert shows up. Keep up the good work!

I've said it before... A prediction: There will be no investigation by the feds. No criminal charges against the perp(s). A trademark or some other form of civil case against "the bad guy". An out of court settlement and the loss of the perp(s) to submit comics to CGC, maybe some cash coughed up or being forced to liquidate to compensate CGC for their loss. Then probably lock down any further details with an ironclad NDA. Kinda like this... https://www.ngccoin.com/news/article/11938/

Blessing be upon you, GPA... It wouldn't hurt if you made it easy for us to find a particular cert # in your records instead of having to dig through every year's sales. A simple form that looks up the cert and craps out every known date, amount, and venue so we can lookup pics.

You're right, they don't have to tell us a thing, but they could if they wanted to. What they definitely don't want to do is lie and say they are if they actually are not. There is nothing stopping anyone here that either was a victim, knows a victim, or simply doesn't think this situation smells right, from reporting what's going on the FTC and/or the FBI. If enough folks do that, the authorities will take over the investigation and they'll do it properly.

We may never know, because there's no active criminal investigation that I'm aware of, and if there were, they would have thrown the thing in the East River by now.

Well, with a decent calibrated lab oven going for around $1K, the barrier to entry isn't too high.

If you actually want to see someone criminally investigated, you... and CGC... Might want to file a report. https://reportfraud.ftc.gov/ Good question, but I have found two 9.6 IH181's sold on eBay by our New York friend. Oh yes, quite serious.

No, the sequel where he put the slab in a commercial lab oven and found the exact temperature required to pop a slab apart with your fingernails.

I dunno... Stan Lee signed a LOT of books!

They will certainly continue to occur if those with the balls to commit the crimes aren't put in prison for it. Now you've got GoCollect chiming in saying they'll delete records of affected books too. Let's just light ALL the evidence of any criminal acts up with some lighter fluid and a match.

Right, because DELETING any public record of evidence of fraud is EXACTLY what all these companies should be doing. JFC!!

What's really bad, to me, is that CGC is not telling us they are having feds investigate this fraud. All they want to tell us is they are self-investigating the matter. This is a potential $1,000,000+ case of good ol' fashioned federal, felony, interstate wire fraud and those guilty of their crimes can end up serving ZERO jail time if evidence of the matter is not gathered and handled in a manner that is admissible in court.

Do you buy/sell/trade CGC branded slabs? If so, you're entitled to know what the hell is going on.

Everyone needs to be careful when it comes to this particular instagram/brick&mortar seller because they too could very well be victims in all this. How, I'm not sure, but it's possible. Yes, there's a lot of questionable connections that could certainly use some explanation, but let's remember that it's the USA, and you're supposed to be innocent until proven guilty.

C'mon man, you're not stupid. Hiring their own PI team and outside legal counsel does not = involving local/state/federal agencies. One of the first things the feds do in such a case is tell companies NOT to self-investigate before they're on the job because evidence and chains of custody can be easily corrupted.

They absolutely, positively can let everyone know that they have involved local/state/federal law enforcement agencies. You can imagine the poop disturbance behind the fan if they said they were, and actually were not.