Doug Schmell cashing in his vaulted massive collecion. Poll: Is this the top?

[lou_fine]

It was not a post CGC occurrence. It's a post CGC phenomenon though. As others have said....with CGC allowing it to pass with a blue label and giving bumps on grades due to pro pressing....it opened the floodgates for everyone and their brother to press their books.

 

 

Now, this version of history, I can definitely agree with! (thumbs u

[MasterChief]

Pro pressing exploded as a result of how CGC grades books and disregards pressed books as resto. However, I am reminded of the fact that CGC wanted to get into the pressing business when they started but then backed out of it due to pressure. They wanted to get into the pressing biz...so maybe their standards are designed that way for a reason.

 

Your assumption is likely correct given that their coin business has been structured exactly this way with a restoration arm separate from the grading arm before CGC ever started. They likely didn't realize that comic collectors wouldn't be as accepting of non-additive, undetectable restoration as coinees are. I can't say I understand it myself, why coinees are fine with non-additive restoration but half of the comicees get completely uptight about it.

 

Hey, FF, I'm not exactly sure the coinees (and at least one certification company) are fine with "non-additive" procedures.

 

According to the article below and the filed lawsuit (see link) it appears as though it may be the exact opposite.

 

***************

Federal Lawsuit Filed Against “Coin Doctors” by Collectors Universe / PCGS

 

Professional Coin Grading Service (PCGS) today sent out a Press Release announcing a major lawsuit has been filed in United States District Court, Central District of California, against six individuals claiming they engaged in a pattern of racketeering activity, breach of contract, conspiracy, unfair competition and fraud for allegedly submitting “doctored” coins to PCGS for grading on multiple occasions for a period of years.

 

The suit claims the dealers violated federal laws, including the Lanham Act involving interstate commerce and RICO racketeering statutes, and also alleges “unlawful, unfair and fraudulent business practices” for submitting coins that were deceptively altered in an attempt to increase their value.

 

The Complaint states: “Defendants knew that these coins had been ‘doctored,’ by themselves and/or other persons engaged by them for that purpose. Their methods included lasering the surfaces of extremely rare proof gold coins to remove surface imperfections, building up commonly-worn or weakly-struck portions of coins, and other physical and chemical processes. Defendants represented to PCGS that these coins had natural surfaces, intending to deceive PCGS’s graders so that the ‘doctored’ coins would be certified by PCGS and then sold in the rare coin marketplace.”

 

The suit claims the “Defendants have caused, and are continuing to cause, substantial and irreparable damage and injury to Collectors Universe and to the public and Defendants have benefited from such unlawful conduct and will continue to carry out such unlawful conduct and to be unjustly enriched thereby unless enjoined by this Court.”

 

Collectors Universe is suing for triple damages as well as all profits made through these deceptive submissions.

 

“Every owner of a PCGS coin should be confident in the fact that PCGS stands behind its product guarantee 100%. Over the past 24 years PCGS has paid over $7 million under its guarantee program for coins which have developed some type of problem due to coin doctoring or some other issue,” said David Hall. “Occasionally our graders have been deceived by the very clever application of foreign substances only to have these substances eventually spoil the coin and necessitate our buying it back. We believe we have compelling evidence against several individuals who, working together and separately, have made a business out of this practice. We hope the courts will provide a suitable remedy to this problem.”

 

“We firmly believe coin doctoring to alter a coin’s appearance is clearly illegal under the law,” Hall continued, “and we know that it often ruins coins long term and certainly deceives grading services and future coin buyers. Today’s announcements of the development of scientific doctoring detection and also the lawsuit filed against alleged coin doctors is another big step in this process, but we will not be finished until we eliminate this unsavory practice once and for all.”

 

http://www.coinlink.com/News/pdf/CU_vs_Coin_doctors.pdf

 

[MasterChief]

Pro pressing exploded as a result of how CGC grades books and disregards pressed books as resto. However, I am reminded of the fact that CGC wanted to get into the pressing business when they started but then backed out of it due to pressure. They wanted to get into the pressing biz...so maybe their standards are designed that way for a reason.

 

Your assumption is likely correct given that their coin business has been structured exactly this way with a restoration arm separate from the grading arm before CGC ever started. They likely didn't realize that comic collectors wouldn't be as accepting of non-additive, undetectable restoration as coinees are. I can't say I understand it myself, why coinees are fine with non-additive restoration but half of the comicees get completely uptight about it.

 

The assumption is not correct.

 

When we were setting up standards for CGC grading and resto check, pressing never entered into it. We knew pressing was being done, but did not care.

 

So in another words, what I get out of your admission, and by stating "we", you conspired with CGC and its parent company CCG to defraud a collectables industry, its dealers and collectors, by intentionally ignoring a recognized form of restoration (pressing), as defined by the Overstreet Comic Book Price Guide, the industry standard, by falsely and fraudulently certifying comic books as "unrestored" that would have otherwise been deemed restored by the industry public.

 

 

[MasterChief]

Are these comics identified on the label as being from Doug Schmell's vault? That would be useful in the future for collectors such as myself who may want to avoid these comics in the aftermarket because of their history/provenance.

 

Marnin refers to every PC book on his site as "Pacific Pressed Coast".

 

http://www.comiccollectors.net/archive_image.php?issue_id=2675&func=front

http://www.comiccollectors.net/archive_image.php?issue_id=2681&func=front

 

Well there you go, Mr. Hepcat.

 

You wanna avoid these books in the future?

 

Just look for the CGC Seal of Approval…

 

The Pacific "Pressed" Coast Collection.

 

 

 

[lou_fine]

Greg Buls purchased the Recil Macon collection in 1991. The way those books were stored a huge majority of them had a pronounced wave to them, some extreme. Greg sent these to Susan Ciccone for flattening. Susan Ciccone also later became a member of NOD. Upon the advent of CGC she also took the stance that pressing was bad. Oddly enough I do not think she ever printed up any of her famous resto certificates for the Recil Macon books, though many of them were and are pressed.

 

Richard;

 

I thought the Macon books that had been worked on by Susan had been both cleaned and pressed at the minimum. I also thought these books received the PLOD from CGC upon grading or were they able to pass CGC 's resto check and still made their way into blue slabs?

[sterlingcomics]

So in another words, what I get out of your admission, and by stating "we", you conspired with CGC and its parent company CCG to defraud a collectables industry, its dealers and collectors, by intentionally ignoring a recognized form of restoration (pressing), as defined by the Overstreet Comic Book Price Guide, the industry standard, by falsely and fraudulently certifying comic books as "unrestored" that would have otherwise been deemed restored by the industry public.

 

[dr_manhattan]

So in another words, what I get out of your admission, and by stating "we", you conspired with CGC and its parent company CCG to defraud a collectables industry, its dealers and collectors, by intentionally ignoring a recognized form of restoration (pressing), as defined by the Overstreet Comic Book Price Guide, the industry standard, by falsely and fraudulently certifying comic books as "unrestored" that would have otherwise been deemed restored by the industry public.

 

 

+1

[lou_fine]

Pro pressing exploded as a result of how CGC grades books and disregards pressed books as resto. However, I am reminded of the fact that CGC wanted to get into the pressing business when they started but then backed out of it due to pressure. They wanted to get into the pressing biz...so maybe their standards are designed that way for a reason.

 

Your assumption is likely correct given that their coin business has been structured exactly this way with a restoration arm separate from the grading arm before CGC ever started. They likely didn't realize that comic collectors wouldn't be as accepting of non-additive, undetectable restoration as coinees are. I can't say I understand it myself, why coinees are fine with non-additive restoration but half of the comicees get completely uptight about it.

 

The assumption is not correct.

 

When we were setting up standards for CGC grading and resto check, pressing never entered into it. We knew pressing was being done, but did not care.

 

There were no plans at the beginning to have the Certified Collectibles Group start a pressing service, that idea came much later. The idea for a pressing service came from us seeing too many people damaging books while pressing them. Many people thought they knew how to press, once the "genie was out of the bottle", but they did not. The CCG thought, and rightly so, that it would be best for books to be pressed by people who knew what they were doing. This is not to say that the CCG did not also see this as a possible revenue stream. The CCG is not and never will be a "not-for-profit".

 

Steve;

 

Thanks for chiming in on this topic as it's always good to get the inside scoop from one of the key people that was actually there at the time and actively in the mix. (thumbs u

 

Being the comic collector at heart that you are similar to pretty well all of us here on the boards, I am sure that you believe what you are saying. The people who run CCG, however, were and have always been business people at heart and their bottom-line as you have already alluded to would be "profit".

 

As a result, I believe Mark and FF's scenario was always in the game plan of the owners and the boys in the ivory tower at CCG right from the start. After all, this was the exact same business model which they had already used on the coin side of their business with much proven success. Pressing was the ideal vehicle to use to bring in repeat business from the same graded item and also to drive additional streams of revenue further down the line. They were able to conveniently latch onto the excuse of possible damage to books from pressing to convince the comic geeks on the operational side of their business to easily buy onto the need to develop their own pressing service. If they hadn't found this excuse which they already knew about from the coin side of their business, I am sure they would have found another one to keep their long-term business model in play.

 

BTW: I found your first couple of sentences to be quite interesting. Almost makes me wonder if the fact that you knew about pressing, didn't care about it, and would not even consider it in the CGC grading standards made you the perfect candidate (along with your other skills and reputation in the industry of course) to front the operational CGC side of the business for them.

 

 

[Flaming_Telepath]

We seem to be going around in circles in this thread. I'm pretty sure this has already been covered so unless someone can prove differently I am quite sure that pressing has been actively used to increase the grades of books before CGC's formation.

 

We already know that many kids pressed their books using encyclopedias, etc. Why did kids press their books with encyclopedias? To make them look worse? Of course not. They did it because they knew the books would look better. It only stands to reason that someone would eventually develop a way to make the practice more effective than just placing a book under a stack of encyclopedias.

Roy, I don't know if you're just being disingenuous or genuinely trying to mislead, so I'll give you the benefit of the doubt on the basis that the term "pressing" is being used too broadly.

 

Yes, people did press books in the old days, including the standard put them under an encyclopedia for a month trick. However, the vast majority of the time this was done to remove spine roll and flatten warped books. And successful pressing of that sort would indeed increase the grade of a book significantly in the old days and thereby increase the price significantly. So yes, if we use the term "pressing" to encompass that kind of pressing, then all of that happened before CGC.

 

However, I think it's clear that's NOT the kind of pressing we're talking about. We're talking about the type of pressing that has become more and more prevalent in the CGC era, which is being used to remove minor defects, not major spine rolls, warpage and ripples. These kinds of defects cannot be removed by putting a book under an encylopedia for a month, otherwise no one would need Matt and Kenny and others to press their books. These are not ratty old books from 1938 being rescued from 6 decades of improper storage. No, they're perfectly nice SA and BA books that already lie perfectly flat, which are being pressed to remove very minor flaws. This may have been done in the old days too, but definitely in nowhere near the volume that it's done now, for the simple reason that there was no financial incentive to engage in this kind of pressing.

 

THIS is the kind of pressing being advertised as a stand-alone service by numerous practicioners now, whereas it was never advertised as a stand-alone service in the old days. Before anyone points out that Matt and Kenny do press out spine rolls and flatten warped books, yes they do, but my guess is that it is a small minority of the pressing that they do these days.

 

To address your point about CGC not "hammering" books for NCBs, that may very well be true. But they do knock down a book by 0.2 to 0.4 for such defects. Perhaps that's not "hammering" in the general sense of the word, but among the ultra-HG collectors for whom 0.2 and 0.4 are huge increments, it IS hammering. And for those who engage in pressing for financial return, getting that 0.2 to 0.4 uptick in an already HG book to negate CGC's "non-hammering" is the closest thing we have to modern alchemy.

 

+1

 

Tim;

 

I couldn't have have said it better myself as this was exactly what I was thinking when I read Roy's response. (thumbs u

 

The way Roy is spinning his version of history, it sounds as though everybody was pressing their books in the Wild West days prior to CGC, and nothing could be further from the truth. Stand-alone pressing was the rare exception to the rule, whereas Roy's post makes it sound like it was "the thing" in the hobby to do by everybody in the years before CGC opened their doors.

 

As Tim has already stated, there were definitely a lot of ads in those days for restoration with all of the different services being offered. Don't remember any mention of a stand-alone pressing service being offered, unlike the full-page ads we see nowadays offering their services for pressing.

 

Actually, by the time I finished reading his post, Roy almost had me believing that Matt Nelson must have the biggest collection of encyclopedias in the world. He would almost certainly need it in order to have apparently pressed so many books.

 

+ another 1

 

Stand alone pressing was extremely rare, pre-CGC and despite what the revisionists might like to have us believe, it was CGC's stance that gave rise to the phenomenon we know today.

 

If stand along pressing was so popular without CGC's convenient take on the subject, why was there utter shock and disbelief on these very boards when it became clear what was happening? Why were pedigree books having the designation deliberately stripped away to hide the fact that they'd been manipulated? Why was it only the late 00s when the professional pressers multiplied ten-fold and started plying their trade openly and brazenly?

[lou_fine]

I, and many of my friends, never thought of pressing as restoration. It was a non issue when setting up CGC. No plans to not call it resto because, when done correctly, it could not be detected. We had sooooo many other things to worry about and set up than to think about pressing.

 

Plain and simple: We did not care.

 

Steve;

 

This sounds all good and fantastic for you and your friends who were clearly in the know.

 

But since you were starting a company that was going to be at the forefront of determining grading standards and restoration verification for the comic industry as a whole, it never even crossed your mind that it would have been a good idea to publicly announced that CGC would not consider pressing as restoration. Especially when the industry standard and the bible at the time clearly included pressing as part of restoration. You never thought that keeping this key insider knowledge to just you and your "friends in the know" was creating an unlevel playing field almost bordering on fraud.

 

Would it not have been better to have announced this critical change upfront instead of being forced to admit to it years later, only after clear evidence was presented on the boards here through before and after images of the same comic books with significant jumps in grade. Or was CCG afraid that this idea would have been shot down to the point that CGC would never have gotten off the ground in the first place if they had try to float this idea. They were probably right as evident from the failed attempts to launch both your PCS pressing service and the firestorm that resulted from your attempt to eliminate the PLOD and go with a formal restoration rating system instead.

 

It's extremely hard to convince collectors to make changes in this hobby of ours and you guys probably manage to get pressing through in the only way possible. By sneaking it in through the back doors and showing people how much money they were going to be forgoing if they didn't play by the rules which were already unknowingly in place right from the start of the game.

[lou_fine]

I, and many of my friends, never thought of pressing as restoration. It was a non issue when setting up CGC. No plans to not call it resto because, when done correctly, it could not be detected. We had sooooo many other things to worry about and set up than to think about pressing.

 

Plain and simple: We did not care.

 

Any reflections as to why comic collectors get so uptight about pressing while the coin guys seem comparatively fine with similar processes such as those performed by NCS? I've been pondering this for years but still don't have much of a solid guess. I used to think it's mostly because of the money involved, but similar money is involved with coins yet they don't react like we do. I'm left to just wonder whether they're more even-minded and balanced, or less emotional and reactionary, than comic collectors.

 

My personal take on the matter is that it really has more to do with the total lack of disclosure and transparency, and less with the pressing activity itself. The way the whole pressing fiasco was handled by CGC right from the start gave the clear and distinct impression that this activity was wrong, improper, underhanded, and had to be kept hidden from the public. Collectors would not be so uptight about this whole pressing thing if it had been handled in a more above board, upfront, and proactive manner.

 

In addition, their subsequent attempts to pass it off as "nothing" really did not pass the mustard. No matter how much they tried to convince people that nobody cared about pressing and that everybody would pay the exact same price for a book, whether it was pressed or unpressed only made matters worse. These nonsensical arguments clearly insulted the intelligence of the average collector and only strenghten the fortitude of the so-called "anti-pressers" as it was so clearly obvious that people did cared about pressing and buyers would indeed pay less for a pressed book.

 

Lack of disclosure or transparency coupled with ongoing statements clearly meant to mislead the collecting community or to simply laugh it off is the fuel that keeps the light burning and continues to fan the fires on this whole pressing issue.

[fantastic_four]

Hey, FF, I'm not exactly sure the coinees (and at least one certification company) are fine with "non-additive" procedures.

 

According to the article below and the filed lawsuit (see link) it appears as though it may be the exact opposite.

 

Umm...what? How does that article suggest coin collectors don't like what NCS does?

[fantastic_four]

So in another words, what I get out of your admission, and by stating "we", you conspired with CGC and its parent company CCG to defraud a collectables industry, its dealers and collectors, by intentionally ignoring a recognized form of restoration (pressing), as defined by the Overstreet Comic Book Price Guide, the industry standard, by falsely and fraudulently certifying comic books as "unrestored" that would have otherwise been deemed restored by the industry public.

 

 

No, those are not "other words" to describe what he said.

[lou_fine]

Are these comics identified on the label as being from Doug Schmell's vault? That would be useful in the future for collectors such as myself who may want to avoid these comics in the aftermarket because of their history/provenance.

 

You are kidding? Right?

 

Why not........after all, do they not have named collections for other recognized collectors such as Nicholas Cage, Don & Maggie, the Mannarinos, Don Rosa, etc. Especially when they are hyping it on their own website as the World's #1 Marvel Comics Collection.

 

By clearly identifying these books as coming from this premiere collection should do nothing but to help the marketability of these books in the future.

[Mike's Rack]

This thread is fascinating. So, if I understand the facts, CGC's position at the beginning was they did not tell anyone that they did not consider pressing restoration because no one asked. They were confronted on the boards with evidence of books getting higher grades presumably after being pressed and then, they came forth and stated that they had never considered pressing to be restoration and it was a free for all after that.

 

My question is, has CGC since disclosed everything they consider restoration? When the pressing thing hit the fan, did people say "Wait, if pressing is not restoration, then what else is not restoration?" Cleaned staples? Washed pages? Shave and haircut?

 

I'm not anti CGC, I like what they do. I think their service is good for the hobby and was critical to the growth over the last 10 years. However for those that were here, I'm curious how CGC survived this with any credibility among the serious collectors. I know old school collectors are a tough bunch to bring on board. Was it the profit motive? Had the genie already escaped the bottle? It seems to me that this could have gone either way and if it had gone bad, it could have devastated the hobby.

[fantastic_four]

Almost makes me wonder if the fact that you knew about pressing, didn't care about it, and would not even consider it in the CGC grading standards made you the perfect candidate (along with your other skills and reputation in the industry of course) to front the operational CGC side of the business for them.

 

This would assume the CCG guys knew about pressing and its potential--there's no evidence of that. Circa 1999, undisclosed restoration was allowed to run freely and pressing was one of the very last things on any high-end collector's mind. We're able to focus on it now mostly because certification put the professional restore-but-don't-disclose dealers out of business (we could name some famous names, but let's not), i.e. CGC cooked the bigger restoration fish they had to fry.

 

This pressing fixation is so pointless! Like Anfield Fox said a few days ago after having been off of the boards for 4-5 years--I can't believe you guys are STILL complaining about this so many years later. Even if CGC defined it as restoration, you still can't detect it...so what's the difference? People would still be doing it anyway. Conspiracy theorists will say next, of course, that CGC COULD find a way to detect it if they really wanted to...fine. Go prove that. I've tried to a limited extent. I haven't run my own experiments--if you're going to detect it, my best guess is that microscopic pattern analysis of paper fibers could establish it--but I have asked the Library of Congress via their web site if there is a known way to detect it. The archivist who answered my question (I posted this in the restoration forum years ago) said there's no known way.

 

Given the difference in the hobby before certification, you truly don't find it credible that Steve just didn't believe pressing was restoration or that it was a comparative non-issue? It seems easy to believe given the dearth of restoration detection knowledge in the hobby available outside of the most experienced dealers at the largest cons circa 1999.

[dr_manhattan]

This is def one of the best threads I've read

[fantastic_four]

The way the whole pressing fiasco was handled by CGC right from the start gave the clear and distinct impression that this activity was wrong, improper, underhanded, and had to be kept hidden from the public.

 

What handling are you referring to, specifically?

[lou_fine]

My question is, has CGC since disclosed everything they consider restoration? When the pressing thing hit the fan, did people say "Wait, if pressing is not restoration, then what else is not restoration?" Cleaned staples? Washed pages? Shave and haircut?

 

Clearly you have not been on the boards for a long time.

 

The answer to your question is that more and more activities that were deemed to no longer be restoration were slowly identified over time.

 

I remember the classic one where the Church copy of Boy Comics #17 was able to jump from a CGC grade of 4.0 up to 7.5 before finally coming to rest in a worthless 9.0 slab, all the while residing in CGC blue slabs. After all the angst and consternation on the boards here, Borock finally came on and made his classic announcement that "disassembly and reassembly of a comic book in and of itself is not considered to be restoration".

 

This was only a few years ago which was well after the initial pressing fisaco which hit the fires around 2004 or 2005. To tell you the honest truth, I wouldn't be at all surprise if other currently thought of restored activities are identified as non-restoration in the future.

 

 

I know old school collectors are a tough bunch to bring on board.

Well, no argument from me here.

[comicwiz]

The way the whole pressing fiasco was handled by CGC right from the start gave the clear and distinct impression that this activity was wrong, improper, underhanded, and had to be kept hidden from the public.

 

What handling are you referring to, specifically?

 

I guess you have to closely examine the methods CGC used to come to market.

 

Mainly, piggy-backing off dealers with established clientele and in some of the bigger cities to kick-start its submission model.

 

From the little I have seen at the local dealer level, certain methods were being "softly" advanced/suggested from the very beginning.

 

I recall once pushing the question "who is performing the work", and the reply I received was that the person would prefer to remain anonymous.

 

Not too long after, I began hearing about CGC's PCS through a number of sources, and not too long after that, it blew up on these boards.

 

There were also a number of situations which I won't go into which left the impression that CGC was trying to keep it from becoming a "genie out of the bottle" situation, as Steve said.

 

In fairness, I have almost always attached a slightly negative viewpoint on the "handling" of the situation, but over the years, I have also come around on this view (being a business owner myself) and coming to realize that there are reasons why businesses would want to keep certain information close to the vest.

 

Over the years, I've become more guarded about revealing certain "trade" practices, designs, or processes specific to my business because there are numerous people out there ready to capitalize on this information, either in an opportunistic or purely abusive way.

 

I've remarked in the past about how I had the largest software company poke around for over a month, getting a team of consultants cherry picking through and requesting information from my company and some of the largest vendors in my industry, only to find out months later they were launching a competing product.