MyNameIsLegion

Precisely.

If he lists a CGC Fartman #1 as a CGC graded 9.8 with photos and shipped them a CGC Graded 9.4. That's misrepresenting the product. eBay wouldn't hesitate to refund that. If he lists a CGC 9.8 Fartman #1, shows a photo of it, and it is exactly that book that is shipped to the buyer, then he did not misrepresent anything from eBays perspective. Nada, zilch. IF CGC missed that it's a 9.4 inside that 9.8 holder is not his problem or liability. He didn't warrant that the grade was accurate or any such guarantee. He sold a thing in a slab with a label, he shipped the same thing in a slab with that label. Pretty black and white if you ask me.

I see lots of talk about how this guy is going to jail, eBay, CGC, the USPS, FBI, the Canadian Mounties, MI6 all all mounting a joint investigation to take this guy down. umm, no. None of that will happen. Not even a remote possibility. The only "Fear" that briva3 has now that his current accounts are "outed" is he's thinking to himself "dude what a major hassle" and he's not going to bank an easy 20-30k this month Now he has to set up a new eBay ID and CGC account possibly. and why is that? Well, if every single book that he sold was graded by CGC, slabbed and labeled by CGC, any inaccuracies in the grade are 100% not his responsibility. He didn't misrepresent the product, he provided pictures, it's a legit serial number from CGC. He didn't break a single law and did not violate any of eBay's terms of use, or Paypal, the USPS, or anyone else. Did he exploit the system to trick CGC in reholdering books? Probably. Did he swap out comics in the sealed slabs? Probably. But CGC had the books in hand and they had every opportunity to catch on to the ruse. It's not materially different than them getting the grade "wrong" or mislabeling something, or not catching resto. Hey, the game is to "get away" with as much as possible to get the highest grade for that serial number (notice I didn't say comic, no one care about the comic itself, that ship has sailed, let's stop pretending) IF and only IF he swapped out lesser graded comics from a slab he opened and swapped out a 9.8 with a 9.4, sealed it back up and sold that on eBay to someone for money, then and only then could it be construed as fraud. It would still be difficult to prove- as it's still subjective that a 9.4 in a 9.8 case is a smoking gun. Short of dusting for prints on the inner well, no one can tell. Until they start putting serial numbers on the books themselves in infrared ink or something there's simply no way to verify the chain of custody of a book relative to what ever slabbed serial number. Whats more, it's not fentanyl, defective cruise control, or peanut butter tainted with salmonella. It's funny books. THE USDA, FDA, NTSB aren't regulating it. No law enforcement entity really cares are about such trivial stuff. Nobody died. Nobody is cheating on their taxes. CGC at most will review their intake process, to make sure they aren't getting scammed. That's all. No redesign of holders, if they have a good price and a good supply they will not change a single solitary thing. Maybe they review their intake forms, and add some legal language that if you attempt to tamper with their product, they at their discretion can re-grade a books, cancel your account, strike a serial number form the registry, whatever. Basically dissuade petty fraud with some tepid warning or penalty that's baked into the terms of use. As for our enterprising briva3- well I'm sure he will be back under some other ID in a matter of weeks.

we have to get to a minimum of 25 pages of rampant speculation for that to even be considered a sensible idea. It's only Wednesday for chrissakes!

"PSA Grading Card Slabs Plastic Ultrasonic Welder" You get 20% off if you buy 5 of them, who's in?

Is what CGC charges regarded as a product or a service? Hard to class action a service as defective. I think what most people envision in their heads about CGC's grading and slabbing process is a lot more perfect and precise than reality. Manufacturing Processes and their resultant quality control systems and quality management systems are far more OTJ and made-up with an eye more towards cost, time, & material. In an unregulated production environment where you aren't making Food, Drugs, Medical Devices, or any hard-goods with specific products claims that aren't subject to certification and inspection you can pretty much do what you want provided worker safety isn't compromised. I doubt many forms of reholdering and resubmission for custom labels go through much more than 1-2 people in a shift opening the mail, reading the order, and triaging which bucket the job goes in. If the order is for something other than grading and pressing it's skipping a lot of steps, and this is by design. Custom label request? Move it along, reholder due to damage? Quick triage where the person was given guidance to bucket the level of damage. 3 point scale, 5 point scale whatever. Scuffed and scratched? Most go right to the same pile to get a custom label, maybe a few that look really cracked, full blown shaken baby syndrome go to the the pre-graders, and if the pre-graders kick it back, off it goes. A full blown re-grade is a last resort. They lose money on the time it takes, and there's little upside to all parties if they find it to be a lower grade, let's be honest about this. If they kept lowering the grade on reholders & custom labels no one would do it, and it's easy money. Any change in grade is more injurious to their reputation if it's not in the customers favor. Whoever is triaging the submissions is likely trained to keep that to a minimum. the slabs themselves and all the materials used: all of it can be faked, manipulated, replicated, don't doubt that for a second. How often does it happen? Probably less than we think, but more than we know. IF someone has access to the right equipment and can be cost effective doing it, game on. However, those things probably don't scale well and not raise a red flag. The only thing truly unique that CGC provides is a serial number. That is all.

To crush my enemies, see them driven before me, and to hear the lamentation of their women!

@Bosco685 this appears to be the Wednesday Franchise link, not X-Files. Edit- NVM, but it's barely even a sentence in the article.

Here's 2 pages I have by Pat Boyette from issue #14:

does a cancelled bid by the seller inside the final 12 hour window register as a retraction on the the bidders account? Either way, if 2 accounts are colluding, or one person controls both accounts (bidder and seller) the effect is the same- you are bidding up the item and increasing the max bid of any other legit bidders.

Wow great post @comicwiz. A lot to unpack here but it speaks to what is happening in different collecting circles in coordinated (collusion) and asynchronous ways of buoying prices beyond what they would be organically. The original comic art market is one prominent area. A small group bid up everything to maintain price perception to protect their holdings while they consign, get cash or credit advances and apply them to future auctions. That’s been going on for almost 10 years thanks to HA and Clink, it’s the last area CGC hasn’t managed to invent a product for. But I’m sure the shenanigans you speak of are legion wherever there’s a lack of transparency and oversight.

I actually have nine pages of that story- it's special to me because it was my first DC book that I got used at a bookstore in the mid-70s. Al the pages can be viewed here: https://www.comicartfans.com/galleryroom.asp?gsub=56119

@Phicks

Well, Matt pressed books for us before submitting them to CGC in 2006. If that was your first incorrect assumption I’d let it slide. Your Roy-splaining about the printing process is comical, as I’ve forgotten more about the printing process in the last 30 years than you presume to know by several orders of magnitude. Again, not your fault that because you’re into comics you’re not the SME on the methods of production you think you are. Lots of that on message boards and you’re hardly unique. But to compare printing on virgin paper on a printing press to the application of heat and moisture and pressure to a printed comic with the cover and staples and glue where applicable already assembled years or decades after its original production with little knowledge of the conditions the book was subject to in the intervening years is naive at best. The simple fact that some press-able defects are only temporarily ameliorated and need to be graded and slabbed in a timely manner before they revert to their original state of imperfection proves that pressing is indeed an artificial treatment of the comic that is pure trickery that is hardly benign. How many times are you willing to repress that book if it’s so benign? Its not Botox. Its wood pulp, it’s not going to get better with time, and you might have just shortened that time to pass it off as a higher grade. Assuming most of the Promise Books went through a cursory pressing, even as we speak some of those 9.4 and 9.6s are shrinking back to the 9.0 and 9.2s they always were. I’m hardly bitter though, I’ve never lost money on a slab. Nothing printed in the last 55 years was ever worth slabbing to begin with. What a colossal waste of money better spent on genuinely rare artifacts like comic art.

you said it wasn't money squeezing trickery and then proceeded to describe exactly that. Matt Nelson himself, the head of CGC, what did he do before that? Provided a service to pre-screen and press books. He charged a fee (part of the money squeezing) pressed the books (the trickery) at a time that there was much handwringing on these boards about disclosing pressing at all, network of disclosure or whatever it was called, and soon a clandestine practice was all the rage and it was a race to find books with money to be squeezed out of them quite literally with a t-shirt press. What did CGC do? They thought and thought, and studied, hemmed and hawed because they couldn't definitively determine if a book was pressed or not, so they gave up and leaned into it. If you can't beat'em join'em or in this case, hire'em to do it better for CGC and make it part of their service. Now CGC is reaping the benefits of the squeezing. no conflict of interests there eh? Sure, the verdict is still out what the long term impact of pressing will be. That Action #1 may be a brittle cracker in 20 year, but pray to god no one ever feels compelled to crack that slab ever again because there's only diminishing returns from here on out if you do and everyone knows it. I daresay no-one is ever going to crack those Promise Books unless they actually have a negative association as a whole for being over graded and a generic 9.6 might just be better if you are willing to gamble it's not a 9.2.

just take my money.

for $@0!

no, I don't think EVERYONE bought them on spec. But I do believe a great many were, more than most given the perfect storm of timing and money in the market. I also believe those that don't regard themselves as speculators bought more and spent more than they would have otherwise, caught up in the hype. That's just human nature. 290+ books is a pretty good sample size as a matter of fact. Pollsters would kill to get those kinds of numbers. NOBODY bid on this blindly without thinking about the eventual ROI. I say eventual quite deliberately as opposed to potential. Eventually all of them will be resold, most in the next 20 years. (I'd wager the median age of the buyers skews to the mid 50's or older.) Anyone who says otherwise is lying to themselves and everyone else. Even if they don't sell it in their lifetime, their heirs will. But no one on the GA board is talking about it today now are they? And no one commented on MaterChief's post from Dec. 1st that MJY linked above. Nope, nothing to see here, let's stop talking about it.... Even some recent Original Comic art has been flipped for a loss recently - and original art was considered far more blue chip than slabbed comics, almost immune to market forces. The next 2 years are gonna be verrrrrry interesting. The question is, where are we now in the chart below? (I find this guy marginally annoying but I do like to FFWD to the graphs he shows and turn the sound down.)

umm, most of the last few years was crack, press, sub and flip to buy more to do the same, movie hype, slab and flip buy more books to hold and flip on the next movie hype, etc etc. Some, likely many. did it to fund their own personal keepers, but that's pretty fluid too- upgrades, sell the lower copy, etc. SA Keys and Bronze Movie hype are taking a 65%-90% hit as a result. Whoever was left holding the bag and didn't get out was hosed. All that extra cash flipping Ms. Marvel and Eternals drove up prices for GA and Pedigrees and high Census too. It's all going down, the question is how much. Those holding Promise Books have lost 30-60% of their value. They may never live to see that break even, which means yes, they won't keep up with inflation. 3 GA Pedigree 6 figure Batman books just took a 60+% hit. The GA board is eerily silent on this, because they DO NOT WANT TO THINK ABOUT WHAT THAT MEANS.