RonS2112

….which if you think about it, is how people — up through and including CGC — are finding comics graded at 9.0 missing Marvel Value Stamps.

If there's a takeaway to this whole mess, this is it. We are reaching the tail end (I think) of an incredibly irresponsible and lazy time regarding how this hobby has been conducted by folks looking to make a quick, easy dollar. And the safeguards -- in particular CGC -- have not been safeguards at all, as it turns out.

Seriously though, why? There are those of us here with a minimal number of slabs for precisely this reason. If you: a) are able to competently grade a book, and b) have a network of sellers you work with who can also competently grade and offer fair deals and c) you are able to work with these people to reach mutually agreeable deals on books, then there's no need for CGC or slabbed books. So for those of us to whom this applies, this is all theater and will result in a great buying opportunity for a lot of the books in question.

....and here is the crux of why everyone else posts seem to be going over your head. CGC is SUPPOSED TO BE TRICK-PROOF. These are the guys who's ENTIRE BUSINESS MODEL is that they are the third-party objective arbiter of quality across the community. Again, it isn't hard to imagine a gazillion other similar scams that take advantage of this exact loophole.

Not arguing either. But part of the CGC business case is that they are supposed to catch flaws and grade accordingly. Missing a cut-out MVS in a Hulk 181 seems to be a big miss in accordance with that business case. That's on CGC, not the scammer.

You aren't wrong in any of this, but the above seems to gloss over a simple point: the weak link and underlying enabler in all of this is that the CGC process allows this to happen. You are right that the seller in all liklihood has malicious intent in carrying out this scam. BUT -- if it came down to a legal case, I would think he could easily claim that: a) he was simply submitting a book with a flaw, and it isn't HIS fault that CGC gave it a blue 9.0 label instead of a green 8.5 label and b) it isn't HIS fault that people will pay a premium for a book with that blue 9.0 label. I mean, taken to a (admittely ridiculous) extreme, people are looking for grade bump-ups all the time by cracking, re-pressing and resubmitting, and at least part of that is hoping for a more lenient grader than the book might have had the first time around. And often, it works. How far removed is this scam from that practice?

You are TECHNICALLY correct of course. But it doesn't take a lot of imagination to understand that similar scams can be cooked up which exploit the ability to substitute books within CGC holders. Either way, if it undermines the integrity of CGC's product (which in my mind, it certainly does), then CGC has a problem to address.

Interesting analysis. Don't know if this will be addressed in the documentary, but do you imagine she didn't know about his collecting habits BEFORE they got married?

Really? Seems to me this entire hobby has become such a cash-grab over the last few years that CGC probably figured they'd just fit right in.

.....and this is where all the discussion should start and end. This entire mess is about stupid sh*t. "Influencers" who make videos about stupid sh*t cutting in line to buy stupid sh*t so that they can make a profit on "collectors" appetites for stupid sh*t. Time was if you admitted to standing in a line to buy a facsimile book with an ugly- acetate frankensteined onto it, you'd have been laughed out of these forums. We are officially at the Beanie Baby phase of the comic collecting hobby. I give it a year until everyone who is enough of a f-ing m*ron to care about a book like the one that started all this nonsense moves on. Those left holding the bag can put these Ultimate Fallout #4 Facimile Acetates next to the Superman #75 they spent $300 on. Or maybe not. I stopped renewing my CGC membership the first time they took 7 months to grade five books I sent in. But apparently this business model still has adherents.

Kinda begs the question of what is going to happen to the Mile High inventory when Chuck passes away. Even if he has heirs that can afford to keep the store going with it's large overhead costs, one would think that it would be rare to find someone who can also afford the "I don't like to sell my inventory" philosophy.

Yes, and almost every one of them are about slabbing and flipping, to the point where they might as well be talking about pieces of plastic and not comic books anymore. It's not even clear how many of these guys have ever read the stories they have encased in plastic. I wonder -- if/when prices seriously correct and a few of these guys get really burned, how many are going to stick around?

This is true for internet transactions, but for in-person transactions, both parties ought to be able to agree on a grade while working out the price of the book in question. Which is why I always buy raw books at local comic-cons. It's just preferable to actually be able to look through a book.

No offense to your uncle, but if his "passion" was derived from the perceived monetary value, then he was in the hobby for the wrong reason. I collected stamps for a while as a kid in the mid/late-70s. The cool part of it was the strange shapes that stamps came in from other countries, the artwork, the themes, etc. At one point, I had a stamp for each president of the US, and a variety of rock artists that I liked. It never occured to me what they might be worth. Likewise for my comic book collection. I have long runs of Marvel superhero books, going back to the earliest days. I track their values as a curiosity, but the value isn't a primary driver. Mainly because I never intend to sell.

Yep......I tried selling my collection of Marvel SA books in early 1997 and literally could get no buyers. Everyone thought that a possible impending Marvel bankruptcy would make the books worthless. That was a bit silly and extreme in retrospect, but I have to shake my head every time a younger collector says, "it can't happen again." I think the people paying hundreds for the latest modern variant may have a day of reckoning coming.

"Insulting" may be the wrong word. But I agree with your point that the paradigm of artists' and writers' work and/or significant storylines driving value seems to be a thing of the past. It makes me wonder how many people have READ the ASM 300 that they paid $1000 for.....? I do wonder how long this MCU phenomenon can last. I love the movies, but I'm a bit skepical that lightning in a bottle -- such as the the movie arc leading up to Avengers: Endgame -- can be captured twice. And if the movies do become passe, what does that mean for comic book prices? But Kevin Feige seems to have the recipe for the "secret sauce". I guess we'll see.

Sure, but eventually, they need to sell to stay in business. Can't keep an overpriced book on the shelves forever.

.....which begs the question of what the impact is going to be once all these guys submitting their modern books in the hopes of 9.8s realize that their issue of Nocterra isnt going to make them rich.......

I'm sure your post is sarcastic, but I did indeed just turn off the auto-renew on my account, which expires in a month. CGC may get my business again when they stop being the epitome of everything currently wrong with this hobby.

Long runs of books for me. I have every Fantastic Four from #8 to present. Almost Every ASM from #11 to present. Almost every Hulk from #5 to present. Focusing on filling out my Thor, Avengers and Captain America collections now. Also upgrading the SA books in the aforementioned runs, as there is a lot of 4.0-6.0 material in there at present.

Yes, every Marvel comic IS avaialable digitally. Just not necessarily by conventional commercial avenues. But there are "digital preservation" projects out there that have sucessfully digitized just about everything Timely/Atlas/Marvel has published, and certainly everything since 1961. And even at a clip of say, 20 books a day, every day, it would take 3.7 years to get through 27,000 comics. That's not an insane hurdle.

You joke, but McDonald's in Maine have lobster rolls. And somewhere in Orlando, is the only McDonald's that still features McPizza.

Agree with your points and that it was a good article. BUT.....some would point to the mere fact that Forbes is doing an article on skyrocketing spec prices as evidence that a bubble is getting ready to burst. Heritage auctions is the true rarified air of this hobby and those 100,000 people he cites are probably 95% NOT viable purchasers of the products HA has to sell.

This pretty much hits it on the head. The proliferation of Youtube videos based on identifying investment "trends" based on what happened at Heritage Auctions last week is astounding.

Yep.....Shoff Productions fan here. They've done a great job through this whole pandemic of running a safe convention. Have gone to all that they've set up, with no problems at all. Its been the one place to still find bargains on big-ticket books through all this price-escalation craziness.