Superman2006

The guy on 23 could have just shot the wolves. That's what I was thinking at first, but I guess he must have run out of bullets or gun malfunction.

https://www.cllct.com/cllct/posts/meet-the-man-who-always-believed-in-the-world-s-most-expensive-comic-book Good article. There's one thing that appears a be amiss in the article, unless I'm missing something. The article says that if Mitch's copy were a 5 today it would be worth around $300,000 today. Did the author mean to say $3,000,000 (i.e. a simple typo), or was the author's estimate just way off?

I think that last pic is upside down : )

In please

I hate it when that happens. Awesome book!

That's when you have to find a replacement copy of the middle book that's a sure thing 9.8, and then resubmit all four and hope that one of the other books doesn't get graded a 9.6 on the second attempt. If it does, then you keep repeating the process until you get four books in 9.8s, with sequentially number certs. After that you try doing it for a longer series; the 1985 Strawberry Shortcake set of 6 books is the logical next target.

That's not uncommon for golden age books with very minor glue or color touch, as discussed in the following thread (there are other similar threads as well; just google select key words (e.g. minor resto but blue label church comic books)

You did much better than me (I did okay on the first book but was off on the other two). I can see where I might have been a bit off now, but those tie-breaker books will be giving me nightmares for years to come. I usually score around a 20 on every contest +/- 4 points, but I'll probably get like a 50 on the next one

Bright scans are known to fade the book covers.

Congrats to @pastandpresentcomics and @Ride the Tiger on the strong finish, and thanks to Mike and CGC for another great contest!

Good luck guys, and thanks to Mike for another fun contest!

Grades submitted

Per Mike's post above, sign up for the next one is on April 1st.

I plan to switch up the timing a bit going forward, and will release cumulative rankings through the current contest shortly after the start of the next contest. Thanks to Mike for another awesome contest, and good luck to all participants the rest of the way! P.S. If there are grading contest participants that didn't make it onto the cumulative rankings list and would like to see how far off they are from making it onto the list, feel free to shoot me a PM and I'll let you know where you stand.

I agree that grading companies provide a valuable service, as they provide a 3rd party grade and resto check, but that said, I don't think it's fair to lump all dealers in the same bucket. I've purchased from &/or wouldn't hesitate to purchase raw books from some dealers like Bob Storms (highgradecomics), Mr. Bedrock (bedrockcity.com), James Payette (jamespayettecomics.com), and mycomicshop.com (which even has a reputation for undergrading), to name a few. No offense to anyone that I left off; just naming a few that came to my mind first...

I think, and I could be very mistaken, that some of the issue is not just the book swapping, but also shill bidding by the people that are at the center of this. Swapping out the books and manipulating slabs is the headline, but the shill bidding and price manipulation are also a key component of the overall. Side note: as a non-slabber still learning about the hobby, I'm happy to see all the "Joined" dates with two zeroes popping up in this thread. As an offset to potential shill bidding is the fact that some bidders look at the actual book and not just the big number on the top left of the slab, and for a book that has been swapped that has more wear than normal for a 9.8, they will bid accordingly, or not bid at all, which would bring down the sales price. Not that it's my call, but I don't feel strongly one way or another as to whether GPA should exclude such sales; maybe an asterisk would be appropriate, but can understand why GPA might deem that to be more trouble than it's worth.

"Any fraudulent sales can be reported directly to GoCollect for removal from our database" That is the line I and others have issue with. Not the "remove the threat" line. Thanks, I didn't see that verbiage in the post that I responded to, but looking back at GoCollect's full comments in Adamantium's original post I see that now.

Not just directed to you since everyone seems to have read the gocollect statement in the same way, but I don't see where gocollect's statement indicates that they will be deleting records, instead they state they will "remove the threat" of buying a book that isn't what it claims to be by providing you with prior scans for a given cert #. At least that's the way I read it.

How much less % do you now feel they are worth? ball park guess Are you by chance writing a Swapgate choose your own adventure book?

I'm in, please and thank you.

As I mentioned earlier, strongly adhesive hologram stickers on every edge of the case would mitigate opportunities for fraud. That is one option, but I could think of a way that scammers could try to get around even that, but I won't share publicly since I don't want to give scammers any ideas in the off-chance CGC ever goes that route.

All the way up until the Gen 3 holders started in late 2016. They used to partially seal to the inner well (or were supposed to) and part of the reason for the Gen 3 redesign was to make label swapping harder. I think one root problem to all of this is that the outer clam shell isn't always sealed as well as it could be. MOST of the books I've cracked make it impossible to not notice it's been tampered with, but I have heard and read of reports where this hasn't always been the case. Regarding bold part above, I totally agree. I haven't cracked many Gen 3 holders but every one that I have cracked make it obvious that it had been cracked on all sides of the case. If the seller has been doing those for a while, I don't understand how he's able to get into the cases without making it obvious that it was cracked on at least one side; maybe he has a stockpile of slabs that weren't properly sealed that he's using to seal / send the books back for reholder?

I don't think I ever cracked a slab with the label sealed to the inner well. They were always just pop out of the top. What years were they used? Per Adamantium, slabs pre-June 2016, i.e. pre-June 2016 slabs were either Gen 1 or Gen 2 slabs. I think you easily discern between Gen 1, 2, and 3 slabs as follows: Gen 1: Tiny word and number grade on label e.g. "G+ 2.5" Gen 2: Big number grade box on the label in the top left (but not quite as big as the number grade box on Gen 3 books)

Sure a 9.0 blue label, but what is former grade of the book in the inner well?

They stopped sealing the certification label inside the inner well when they changed to this newest outer case roughly circa early 2017? These newest cases (I call them Gen 3) initially had the "creep engine" problem, but shortly after that problem, the solution was to use the older (previous Gen 2) style inner well structure, but they needed to cut the top off it off those older wells to fit inside the latest style outer holders. The newer style holders had no room in the design for the taller, older inner well with the label at the top, because the label already had a designated area within the newest outer holder. The label AND outer holder were redesigned for 2 specific reasons: 1) to both replace the top label sticker (which always used to come off over time and annoy people) so this is why the new CGC label folds over the top of the book and is visible from outside and 2) to prevent swapping labels out between books the way some of the older inner labels used to allow. The entire design rested on the premise that the outer case was the final deterrent and that any tampering would be clearly evident. I am fairly certain that the inner well is roughly the same or similar design that has been used from the previous Gen 2 cases. Expand Expand Thanks, man. That's consistent with my recollection about the various iterations of the slabs over the years. I was thinking it had been roughly 5 years since Gen 3 was introduced, which isn't far off from your 2017 estimate. So I guess Gen 2 and earlier slabs (from roughly around 2016/2017 and prior) should be safe from this particular scam since the label was sealed to the inner well. Just fyi clarification it was specifically June 2016 Thanks buddy, I knew someone would know a more precise date : )