Ebay related stuff.

[murph0]

Hi CGC people, just wondering if it'd be possible to get an eBay forum? There's a lot of posts that just kinda talk about eBay...that might be cool if it had it's own forum. Maybe it's a stretch right now, so I thought I'd poll everyone

Oh and also, what's everyone think of ASM 16 CGC 9.2 going for over 1,100 dollars? :\

 

 

 

[CGCMINT]

Hey Brian,

 

A CGC 9.2 $16 went for $1375 on April 13, Off-White Pages. I think that people are anticipating the Daredevil movie and the prices have started to go up. Personally I would'nt pay over $1000 for #16, maybe I would pay that kind of money for #20 (1st Scorpion).

 

John

 

[murph0]

Oh. Guess that makes sense since that 9.4 went for 6000 dollars. Anyone think it odd that with this Daredevil stuff on fire...that ASM 50 has done relatively nothing. Could it be a book that's gained as much as it's going to? Who'd a thought!

 

Brian

[murph0]

Also, anyone seen that run of ASM that notch_top put up? Wow those are some nice books. It's a shame he's beginning to look like comic_keys. Already started doing private auctions.

 

Brian

[fantastic_four]

I mentioned in another thread that I bought a Spidey 3 CGC 9.0 from somebody who told me and 30-40 other people his comics were stolen after we had already paid..."notch_top" is the same guy, but with a new E-Bay account. The old name is "infinitecapacity"...check out infinitecapacity's feedback.

 

The Spidey 3 he's selling right now has a scan up from a comic-keys auction from about a year and a half ago! I dunno if notch_top bought it from comic-keys or not, but it's the exact same scan. I happened to have it saved because that was the first one of his comics that I thought looked mega-trimmed. I compared the old scan to notch_top's, and they're identical.

[fantastic_four]

Isn't "Marketplace" a pretty good place to talk about ebay stuff?

[murph0]

I thought marketplace was more of a buy and sell place. I'm talking more about eBay price realized, weird auctions, ridiculously high auctions, auction finds, etc.

 

Brian

[CGCMINT]

What is notch-top's real name?

 

John

 

[mr_highgrade]

According to Bob Storms he goes by the name of Matt Lester or Matt Stanley.

His ebay names used to be Infinite Capacity and Silver Age Fan.

The word on the street is that he is a Comic-keys clone.

[blazingbob]

Notch_tops name is Matt Stanley. He will go by Matt Lester when initially emailing you unless he's "come out". If you win an auction you will get a mailing address of Matt Stanley.

 

Bob

[Guest]

matt stanley claims he had a whole bunch of ultra hi grade cgc spideys and keys stolen.

 

included were spidey 28 9.6, tta 9.4, strange tales 110 9.4 etc, spidey issues 20-100 in 9.2 or better.claims he picked up alot of these issues in the early 90's in new mexico at a convention

 

i had a master list of these books when he was using infinitecapacity on ebay as i was trying to purchase some of his books back then.

 

then, just b4 the time his books were allegedly stolen, he went to visit an aunt in chicago whose late husband had left a trunk of comics in the basement or something. the story goes that there were 200-300 golden age books including action 1, tec 27, major keys etc

 

matt did not respond to email correspondence after this point, i believe he was going to dub this golden age find, "the chicago rose" collection after his aunt rose.......

 

never heard anything more..........maybe matt can respond on this forum

[CGCMINT]

thanks guys.

 

John

 

[Guest]

 

 

Hello All,

I really wish that instead of a forum of slander that this would be more productive. Whatever happened to confronting your sellers?

I am not here to defend myself any of my actions as they are completely justified. Just to clarify a little of the BS that I am SICK of hearing these last two years. I'll make it very brief.

I operated under the Ebay screename infinite-capacity a few years ago, where I started to generate a pretty succesful collection and invested alot of mine and my families money into. I developed a good relationship with many dealers as I was buying lots of high grade books. During this time period I sold some pretty high grade stuff as well, it was then that what I would call a "conspiracy" against me was enacted. Without going into the specifics of who and how ,(You all know who you are)

I listed around 20?? or so super high grade CGC books on ebay that aroused the interest of the parties that were watching me and I was robbed.

Payment for some auctions that closed had already been sent and I was left with almost a $200,000 loss. INCLUDING my Ebay final value fees and my andale auction listing fees.

I am still unable to recover from this financial and emotional loss.

After the robbery many bidders were very bidder that instead of books they received their money back as timely as I could manage at the time. One dealer taht I was doing many transactions with at the time was out around $4000 in books that he had sent me on approval. I was unable to pay, and he and others began to make up stories. Talk of insurance fraud was the main agenda. I still to this day hear it. Let me set the story straight there, State Farm did not pay me a penny !! The comic collection that I had been building for my family was deemed a business and they would not pay a dime .

To top it off I know who the culprit is and I am sure he is reading this e-mail now, according to the FBI he submitted over 100 books to CGC 2 weeks after the robberty that matched my inventory. But I was still and "unclean" victim because of

all the hearsay generated from Dealers and Ebayers. Mostly dealers!

After all the money spent through them they could give a s$%$ less about me now Minus a few unbelievable souls such as Josh Nathenson, and Dave at want list.

Two of the finest guys around!!

After two years I have tried to repair things and get back on ebay, I was not always honest about my identity at first to feel things out and to protect myself and those I love. I did assume the name Lester for a few transactions, but after many discussions with several ebayers I soon "came out" as BOB would say

If any of you have made it through ths long e-mail and have made any sense of it please leave with these final thoughts.

1. If you have any collectibles in your household be sure that your insurance company will cover their loss.

2. Never let an unannounced person in your house

3. Don't believe everything you hear.

4. Believe that I am not out to defraid or rip anyone of as that would be the ultimate travesty. If you have any concerns let me know I really am a very nice guy.

Do you think that all the positive feedback I have generated is BS?

 

 

And Bob, the ASM 59 you purchased from me was graded a NM- or your mony back.

Rather than slander grading, just return it if you don' feel like you got your money out of it. I posted very good words about you as well no??

Auction is here :http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=2105088777

 

As far as private auctions go, this is the first run I have done privately not all books are listed as such. I had originally thought that it would encorange higher bids and those that "Say" these defrauding things but know that my books are represented genuinely might find themselves bidding

I have done everything I can to stay in this wonderful hobby , most of you are honest people that are great to get to know. But I am beginning to think that this incestuous industry is very unforgiving.

 

Thank you for you time I hope to see some of you around.

Matt Stanley

notch_top@hotmail.com

 

[fantastic_four]

That was a largely great response, Matt, thanks for posting it. Matt didn't want to name names, so I will. I was as responsible for his bad image as anybody. Keep reading if you'd like to hear a mildly sordid tale of theft and deception in an E-Bay deal gone bad.

 

In October 2000, Matt Stanley (notch_top/infinitecapacity) sold a huge run of CGC 9.0 to 9.6 copies of mostly early Spidey issues ranging from 2 to 129. You only see a run like this once or twice a year at public auction, so it was rather memorable. If I remember correctly, there were duplicates of many early issues like 5, 13, and some others, all at or above 9.0. I won a Spidey #3 CGC 9.0 from him around 10AM while I was at work. I wanted to pay right away from work, so ten minutes after winning the auction, I sent him an e-mail asking him to send a PayPal invoice to my work e-mail address, which wasn't attached to my E-Bay account. He did so a few hours later.

 

Two weeks later, no comic. I was new to E-Bay and had never spent $3000 through it before, so feeling a little vulnerable, I sent him e-mail asking him whether he had mailed the comic yet. He told me--two weeks after I paid--that the comics had been stolen from his house.

 

After a lot of back and forth with him about the robbery, I ended up calling the police department in his area. They verified that he had filed a police report about the robbery--two days before his huge run of auctions on E-Bay had ended! When I told them he had collected our money AFTER he had filed the report, they wanted to take a statement from me, but I declined. I needed to know more, especially since I didn't have my refund yet.

 

Next, about 2.5 weeks after auction end, I sent an e-mail to EVERY person who had won an auction from Matt asking them if:

• He had told them about the stolen comics yet
• He had sent them their comics yet
• He had sent them their refund yet

In every single case except one--Bob Storms--his buyers were all hearing about the robbery from me for the first time. I called Bob on the phone and talked to him about it--somehow, he had heard about the robbery at a convention within a day or two of his winning one of the auctions! So Bob never sent him money, but the rest of us had already paid.

 

After I faced Matt with all of this, he told me that he hadn't cancelled the auctions because E-Bay requires you to manually remove every single bid from the auctions before you can cancel them. Since he had somewhere between 75 and 125 items up, I said fair enough, sounds like a lot of work. When asked why he still collected the money, the answer was that he was using Andale to send automated payment reminders, and that he couldn't cancel THOSE either. I asked why, but he just became hostile and unresponsive after that point, either because everybody I had e-mailed was chewing on his or because he had no real answer.

 

The reason I mentioned his name in a negative way in these forums was because he knew about the theft, yet still collected everybody's money. The LEAST he could have done was send a mass e-mail to the buyers informing them about the situation and warning them not to pay the automated Andale invoices. Earlier in this post, I mentioned that I was at work when I won my auction and asked Matt to send me a PayPal invoice to my work e-mail. He did so, manually. Two days after he had already filed his police report. You tell me--why would an honest seller deliberately collect money for comics that he knew he didn't have? He stopped answering my e-mails after I posed that question to him.

 

Anyway, that's where his bad rep comes from. Everybody who had won his auctions was e-mailed the info above by me, so I'm sure a lot of people heard about it. The reason people thought he was collecting money for comics he didn't have was to present evidence to the insurance company that the 9.2 to 9.6 comics he had sold were worth more than the Overstreet NM prices by showing them credit card receipts, check copies, money order copies, or other receipts of payment.

 

I felt all along that he probably was robbed and I felt badly about it. However, since I couldn't verify it, since he was uncommunicative about it, and since I caught him in a lie when he manually sent me a PayPal invoice, I knew there was something going on under the surface and couldn't tell what it was. His reputation got trashed when I, Bob Storms, and possibly others started telling people about it.

 

To the best of my knowledge, all of the buyers got their money back, so Matt definitely isn't a full-blown crook. Matt was around 25 years old when all of this happened, so he probably got overwhelmed by the theft, the high-dollar auctions, and the poor, deceptive way he tried to handle the mess in his life. He probably didn't deserve the amount of misery that he claims he fell victim to.

 

Do you think the FBI will take action against the guy who ripped you off, Matt?

[murph0]

Ok, I can see stuff getting stolen here..but I think someone posted that "Matt" was restoring comics and selling them...anyone care to confirm or deny this...because I would certainly be interested in some of that ASM run.

 

Brian

[Guest]

James.

That is pretty much the summary of the events that occured a couple of years ago.

Your response is both informative and brings back memories that fortunately weren't so clear.

At the time of the robbery I had received payment for some auctions, but MOST were received after the fact. That is correct!

I e-mailed ebay immediately after the robbery to have my account pulled and auctions ended. They did not reply. Andale automatically invoiced many sellers that is correct.

Many things were done poorly and "the wrong way" on my end that is for certain.

But during something as horrendous as this event , clear thinking is not always there.

Rather than banter back and forth however I would like to thank you for your understanding at the time , and your belief in me now. Your ending paragraph means worlds to me.

 

You say "Do you think the FBI will take action against the guy who ripped you off, Matt? "

Ask Mr Borock they inquired him for CGC info that he provided proving submission of around 100 issues that matched my inventory exactly two weeks after the robbery.

 

Take care

Matt

 

 

 

[Guest]

Restoring comics?

I would not even know how to begin there, I can assure all that I would not be in this hobby to rip anybody off , not after what I went through,

This I can assure you of.

I offer a solid 5 day tire kicking return policy and guarantee against restoration for 120 days.

Additionally I offer a CGG guarantee on some books , guaranteeing their advertised grade or your money and grading fees back. If I was selling restored issues why would I push a CGC submission.

Personally I think CGC graded books are the only way to go, but when money gets tight and I need to sell not alal of my now much smaller collection is encapsulated. Not with the 3 month lead time now. Liquidity is better in a holder but much faster selling raw.

ANY suggestions you have to make you at ease please let me know ,

 

Best Regards

Matt

 

notch_Top@hotmail.com

[fantastic_four]

The only thing I said about Matt and restoration was that his scan for the Spidey 3 he currently has for sale came from a comic-keys auction from late 2000. If you look at Matt's auctions, you'll notice that the Spidey 3 has a blue, textured surface in the background that the comic is sitting on. Comic-keys uses backgrounds like that for most of his auctions, and since I happened to have that old Spidey 3 scan still on my hard disk, I compared Matt's scan to mine, and they're the exact same image. Which doesn't necessarily mean that Matt restored it.

 

The other reference I heard somebody make was wondering why somebody would sell unslabbed ultra-high-grade keys if they weren't restored...

[murph0]

Ok then, I could've sworn someone claimed Matt as a restorer. eh oh well, nice comics.

 

Brian

[fantastic_four]

!

 

Less than an hour after reading all the stuff here about him, notch_top de-listed the Spidey 3 he was selling saying he "sold it to the high bidder" and put up another "unrestored" 9.0 with an image taken by a different scanner!

 

So that's TWO top-notch Spidey 3s he was feeling a little lazy about sending in to CGC with the many others he's slabbed. Such kindness to his bidders!