Nick Furious

I won't be surprised if this scandal does permanent damage to the 9.8 premium.

Crowd-sourcing the advice and investigation is taking us into interesting territory. Not so much a fraud claim as a potential fraud claim...and the potential for big value-losses based on nothing other than "recently tainted label provenance".

My understanding of Registered Mail is that it is the end-all be-all of USPS shipping. Used by miners to ship gold securely in the 1800's. Packages are segregated out and locked in a safe at each stop until they go on to the next destination. The USPS postal inspectors will immediately get involved with an investigation in case of a dispute. They can bring Federal Mail Fraud charges against a fraudulent party. Just the use of Registered Mail alone tends to scare off those who might be inclined to do something fraudulent. If this guy has been using USPS for his scam, he's possibly vulnerable to federal mail fraud charges. Using Registered Mail should make it less likely that he messes with you or give you the opportunity to bring the USPS postal inspectors down on him if he does mess with you.

@silent06 When you send the books back, use Registered Mail, and insure it for the full amount of the refund that you are expecting. Registered Mail is best option when you are dealing with a squirrel.

If you don't send the books back to him, he keeps the money and wins that way. I would send the books back, and I would do it quickly while he is likely in a panic over being outed. If he doesn't willingly refund the money after getting the books, it puts Ebay right in the middle of it. Also, when he tries to resell the tainted slabs, it could work out poorly for him. Having another chance to sell the slabs might just be enough rope for him to hang himself with. Not sending the books back to him lets him off the hook.

Don't take this the wrong way, but it seems like a good time to revisit this question I've always had: What is it about a 9.4 or 9.6 of this book that makes it so much less acceptable to so many people? Is it actually the appearance of the book? Or is more that the ease of obtaining it in those grades limits the desirability? Or maybe something else altogether?

I'm hung up on the timing as well, for both the grading dates and selling dates. It was graded after, but has a lower cert number.

Is it typical for a Cert starting with 413 to be graded after a Cert starting with 415? I'm not up to speed on the numbering system.

Shill bidding can also serve the purpose of putting a reserve price on the auction and to some degree manipulating public perception of FMV.

I'm not really following how the 02001 cert book is necessarily tied to the 6002 book? Clearly the 6002 was swapped out and got relabeled as a MJ 9.8 (The OG scheme that started the thread), but the 02001 looks to me like a different book altogether.

And there's a really good chance that a married book will not get past the graders with a blue label, creating a financial loss for the would-be scammer. This guy is looking for slam-dunks, not half-court bank shots. I'm not buying the "married pages scam" theory at all. I would bet that if we crack open that 8.5 Hulk 181, page 10 will still be missing.

Plaid on a cad.

It was. I wanted to hear why we know it wasn't just the same re-holder scam as all the others. But he just said that it was likely a marriage scam rather than a re-holder scam because we can't find where that cert number was sold previously. That proves nothing. It's a pretty big leap from re-holder scam to married pages scam. The cost is far greater, and the likeliness of success in changing the label from green to blue is far lower.

Is there some way of being certain that I book hasn't been re-holdered? I'm not buying one of the premises in this video...that not having a record of two sales of the same cert means it wasn't re-holdered. There are many venues for buying books that don't end up getting the Cert number recorded on GPA. I still think that re-holdering is more likely than marrying, unless we can confirm that didn't happen.

Why do people keep mentioning the idea of marrying inserts? I haven't seen any reason to speculate that...but it is a long thread. Where does that idea come from?

I think only if the cert numbers predate the label design, which is fairly common. But that requires having a general idea of both dates.

I'm thinking that a statement would have to quickly follow a thread lock. As the lock itself would be a kind of statement and admission of awareness/activity.

Still gonna sleep ok. I shy away from so-called "keys" with ugly covers that are lacking in artistic effort and imagination.

I'll take the under. For both a statement and a thread lock.

That thought has comforted me the entire length of this thread as well.

Take a break solider. Smoke em if you got em.

It wasn't a real statement. Was forum parody.

I think you need to read more of the thread.

Sometimes what looks like trimming is just a mis-cut. I've had a convention dealer tell me that a book was trimmed, the dealer next to him argued it was a mis-cut. The CGC grading confirmed that it was a mis-cut and not trimming.

I guess I'm not understanding how the old cert numbers from re-holders would have any relationship to the cert numbers from new submissions, even if they were all part of the same submission.