Ewert Exposed as Trimming Books: Redux

[Foolkiller]

Chrisco lays down the law!

 

This isn't a grey area. Acceptable and ethical behavior is nothing more than FULL DISCLOSURE.

 

Unetheical and criminal behavior is trying to pass off restored/worked on books as unrestored/virgin books. Unethical is deliberately trying to "beat the system".

 

That's the issue. There is no "grey" about it.

[Foolkiller]

Good question from jbud.

 

 

Ya Scott I have been unfortunately thinking the same thing - my question to Steve if someone want to bring this up with him in Baltimore for me. Please ask him "Are they actively trying to track down and re-examine all of the books in the now infamous VIA account submission??"

[Foolkiller]

Don Bronzebruce decides to up the ante and start disclosing every Ewert book.

 

Given "present" circumstances and assuming nothing else contrary comes to light, I think anyone that knows they own a Ewert (ejaenter) book should (out of a sense of fair-play/full disclosure) alert a prospective buyer of the original source… and/or send the books back to CGC for a closer 2nd look. Hopefully CGC will offer this special service at a significant discount if enough people wish to have their books re-examined. After-all it benefits everyone, and its important to determine if this was a "newer activity" that was busted immediately or a longer-running practice… or somewhere in-between. I'm guessing its the prior, but we need to know either way. In a "worse-case-scenario" they'll discover more and will identify a new bad guy, not to mention have a chance to learn how to defend against it. Best case scenario we find out that there are not more (or many more) and that the activity was more recent.

 

Anyway, I went through my collection and was happy to find that I only own (6) HG Bronze comics that I can directly trace back to Jason. I'm sure I must have a few more that were resold as well. Luckily, I'm a data freak. I have been keeping detailed records of more than a few of the major HG sellers and buyers for years. I even record CGC serials, PQ, QP, etc. when I could (which was often). That data may become very useful now. I intend to cross reference my own collection against all the CGC serials I have saved from Jason's auctions to search for the indirect acquisitions I may have. After that I may help some of you as well as time permits.

 

In the spirit of full disclosure, here are my Ewert Books and I pledge to inform any prospective buyer if i ever decide to sell. I will likely send all of these back to CGC except the Hulk 162…

[Foolkiller]

Flaming Telepath gets to the point: Ewert has nobody to blame but himself.

 

WE didn't cast doubts on JE's inventory. The man did it himself. He's been commissioning the work to be undertaken. It was simply caught here.

[Foolkiller]

I'm sure Jason wishes he could actually do this!

 

If I was Jason, and I was innocent, I'd be on the phone to Steve in a second with my heritage id and password. Assuming both he and us can trust Steve, much would be cleared up. Have Steve log off, change password, done. 5 minutes.

 

A 117 page thread specifically about him has caused him some serious harm that could have never been if he had made such a phone call.

[Foolkiller]

How does Jason do it?

 

Yep...unless he can clear this situation up, ALL his past auctions are suspect. It's funny that with all the "how does he do it" threads over the years and post after post of hyping his diligent long box searching and supposed "great eye", it's all been silenced with one scam slab.

 

Should serve as a warning to other dealers that the risk to hard earned reps, warranted or not, isn't worth it...

 

Hey but at least now we can answer the question of how Jason does it, he does it by defrauding the customer! And that's hard work!

[Foolkiller]

I wonder if Lou Fine still feels Jason's rep can be repaired, and an interesting story about Mark Wilson.

 

Harvey;

 

It's simply amazing how time heals all wounds and absence makes the heart grow fonder. This is proof that in time, Jason can also resurrect his reputation in this industry.

 

I still remember how bad of a reputation Mark Wilson use to have in the industry back in the late 80's and early 90's with his World's Finest Comics operation. Mark was initially a restorer in the industry before becoming a full-time dealer. Unfortuantely, with this background expertise, Mark never seem quite sastified with his books and it was relatively easy for him to perform very minor work such as aqueous cleaning and possibly even apply pressing to some of his books prior to putting them up for sale.

 

Unfortunately for collectors, even though restoration had a bad name at the time, Mark did not consider minor work such as cleaning & pressing to be restoration and did not disclose that this type of work had been performed on some of his books. The only way to get a disclosure from Mark was to directly ask him if a specific type of work had been done to a book. This was clearly a buyer's beware situation and the onus was entirely up to the potential purchaser to ask the exact right question in order to determine what he was buying. Nowadays, Mark's explanation is that the defintion of restoration has changed to now also include some of the activities that he did not consider to be restoration before.

 

Although I was very careful whenever I brought books from Mark, I still always had it in the back of my mind that there was probably something that he was not disclosing about his books. Unfortuanately, this thinking was also rampant throughout the industry. Dealers and collectors would always comment on how amazing a particular book was, but when informed that it was from World's Finest, would immediately have a change of heart and assumed that it had been restored even though they could not identify the actual restoration.

 

As a result of this stigma attached with books from World's Finest, over the years I eventually resold virtually all of them back to Mark at a nice healthy profit. The very few ones I have left are one of a kind high grade pre GA or very early GA's which Mark swore were totally "untouched" at the time (if that means anything) and which I plan on keeping for a long long time.

 

I am glad to see that Mark is back in the industry with his PGCMint website since some of the earlier criticisms may not have been applicable to most of his books. Similarly, Jason will now have to go through this period where collectors and dealers in the know will simply assume that all of Jason's books are now questionable and suspect. Fortunately, for Jason, however, a lot of collectors are still not aware of this situation as clearly evident by the high prices he is still able to acheive in his auctions.

[Foolkiller]

More words of caution from Lou Fine

 

Only surprise to me with this whole Jason fiasco is why people seem to be so upset now when all the signs have clearly been out there for a long long time. Whenever it comes to dealers like Jason, collectors should remember some of the old sayings such as:

 

1) If it's too good to be true, then it probably is;

 

2) Where there's smoke, there's usually a fire; or

 

3) If you play with fire, you are bound to get burn eventually.

[Foolkiller]

More hits from the Godfather.

 

To clarify this point… I find it MOST damning that Ewert has not attempted one or both of the following (not that proving this point in his favor would even remotely clear him in the least) but it would at least prove he was NOT the direct winner of the book…

 

1. Although Heritage cannot/ will not reveal who the WINNER of an auction is, one would think, with current circumstances being what they are, they would certainly be willing to confirm if someone (great customer) WAS NOT the winner of a certain auction if asked by said party that was being accused to release at least that much

 

2. As someone else mentioned, why not login to the VIA and/or personal Ewert (if there is one) Heritage account and show Borok his online invoice?

[Foolkiller]

Tim, I'd say Jason is starting to care riiiight about now.

 

Brian, you're building this up to be bigger than it probably is to Ewert. As far as I can tell, he's laughing all the way to the bank and will downplay what has been said on these boards as the ravings of the lunatic fringe.

 

Until this impacts his sales, thus denying him the all-mighty dollar that he has chosen to prize above all other things such as integrity and long-term health of this hobby, HE WILL NOT CARE.

[Foolkiller]

This is a funny post from jkrk

 

I am not now, nor have I ever been, a member of the Trimming club..

 

I am not now, nor have I ever been, a pressing sympathizer.

 

I am not now, nor have I ever been, a defender of corrupt dealer's

 

I am not now, nor have I ever been, a supporter of Ewert, Brulato, and Dupchek,

 

I therefore respectfully suggest that any attempts to blame me for the evils of concealed restorations or ruining this thread, are at best misguided and should be avoided.

 

In return, I promise to not blame CGC for the evils of missing trimming although I do reserve the right to single out those who have made public statements in favor of them.

 

 

 

Thanks in advance for your kind consideration.

[Foolkiller]

The end is nigh for Ewert! Come forth villian as your arrogance will yet be your undoing!

 

Here's another book that seems to've lost some paper along the way. Anyone else think these two are the same book? Note the scuff by Dr. Strange's right knee at the bottom spine. Then look at the top edges of both. What do ya'll think?.

 

Ebay

 

Heritage old label scan.

[Foolkiller]

The evidence mounts on the Strange Tales book, the latest Ewert offering.

 

I laid the newer scan over the older scan.......IF....and I say IF....they are the same book......the newer book had a little taken off the top edge. That's all I'm willing to say for now. But save your scan, cause something tells me this auction might disappear.

Before posting it over here I took a very hard look at both in Photoshop. It certainly looks to be the same book...with poor Torch loosing a few finger tips.

[Foolkiller]

Problems yo, problems. As detailed by BassGMan.

 

I'm starting to think that this thread is the biggest strike against CGC's credibility that I have ever seen. Just points out that the best grading company is not really capable of certifying not only a grade, but the presence (or lack of) restoration. I realize that they make a disclaimer on the back of their label that states no guarantee, but I believe the community (more or less) has still taken their grades and resto check as a guarantee regardless of the "out" presented on the back of the label. Of course the much smaller competition has even less street cred, but this news is not at all good for CGC.

 

I realize that CGC is not perfect, as they are only human, but the market has given the HG CGC slabs values based off of an assumed "perfect" evaluation. As they are now perceived as much less than perfect, I believe HG slabs, and CGC submissions will start to decline in value and numbers, respectively, at least in the non-Modern categories. We'll see.

[Foolkiller]

Hammer might have a point...

 

If we put aside Hammer's previous history and just read his commenst on this issue he does raise some very good points. Guys like Halperin with a shady past seem to slip under the radar yet the CGC group of companies continues to show a lack of intergrity and concern for conflicts of interest. Funny because I was looking at some avengers issues and comparing each one and the highest grade of the same 3 books I was looking at shows slightly less of a characters foot and defintely a much sharper edge. Maybe I'm paranoid but I'm getting the sinking feeling that this has been going for years.

 

Curious how Ewart's removes his scans on all his EBay auctions almost immediately after the listing has ended. This is getting ridiculous.

[Foolkiller]

Interesting part of the Ewert submission on the Strange Tales 128

 

05/02/2005 0070892001 Avengers 12 Grade .0 WHITE [/color] Curator

05/02/2005 0070892002 Avengers 27 Grade .0 WHITE [/color] Curator

07/05/2005 0070892003 Tales of Suspense 55 9.6 OFF-WHITE

05/02/2005 0070892004 ASM 23 Apparent MA 8.5 OFF-WHITE

Restoration includes: color touch glue on spine of cover tear seals cover cleaned cover reinforced.

05/02/2005 0070892005 Tales of Suspense 94 Category Universal Grade .0 WHITE

05/02/2005 0070892006 Thor 131 9.2 OFF-WHITE

05/02/2005 0070892007 Thor 135 9.4 OFF-WHITE

05/02/2005 0070892008 Thor 193 9.4 OFF-WHITE/WHITE

05/02/2005 0070892009 Avengers 60 9.4 OFF-WHITE/WHITE

05/02/2005 0070892010 Tales to Astonish 75 Grade .0 OW/WHITE [/color] Western Penn

05/02/2005 0070892011 Sub-Mariner 8 9.6 OFF-WHITE TO WHITE

05/02/2005 0070892012 Cap 109 9.8 WHITE

05/02/2005 0070892013 Cap 110 9.8 OFF-WHITE/WHITE

05/02/2005 0070892014 Incredible Hulk Annual 4 9.2 WHITE

05/02/2005 007892015 Strange Tales 128 9.2 OFF-WHITE

05/02/2005 0070892016 Tales to Astonish 99 9.8 OFF-WHITE to WHITE

05/02/2005 0070892017 FF 14 9.0 WHITE

05/02/2005 0070892018 Strange Tales 168 9.4 OFF-WHITE

05/02/2005 0070892019 ASM 120 9.6 WHITE

05/02/2005 0070892020 ASM 136 9.0 WHITE

[Foolkiller]

Steve Borock's initial statement when the second book was discovered.

 

This is exactly what I am going to do, even though it will, as you stated, be quite a large (and costly) undertaking.

 

I have also called Jason and told him to get the book back to me as ASAP. I am sure it must be the same book from the heritage auction. Even though he is on vacation, I told him to do it now and to also get/buy back any books he might have sold that he claims he got from "questionable" sellers. I told him to do this after he got back from vaction before, but now I could care less if he is on vacation or not. I also told Jason, that I did not want to hear about where or how he got the book or anything else, it just does not matter to me at this point.

 

If ANYONE has bought a book off Jason (or know anyone who has) and would like me to double check it for trimming and check it against Heritage scans, I will be happy to do so for free. Just pm me and let me know it is coming in.

 

And also, like I stated before, if Jason (or anyone else) is pulling a Dupcek, I will out him as soon as I get more info. I am sick to my stomach about this and will not stand for it. Jason, if guilty, will not "walk away laughing" from this!

 

I will let everyone know what is happening as things progress.

[Foolkiller]

Did we get it?

 

Steve, you have my respect for doing this. If this hobby/industry is going to get through this current crisis, we need leadership and affirmative action.

[Foolkiller]

I love this.

 

Jason Ewert… Bringing You the TRIMMED!

 

[Foolkiller]

Doug Schmell speaks out!

 

On a serious note, let's not let one person ruin a great hobby for everyone. There are greedy people in all facets of life who do not care about the consequences of their actions. This is just another example of pure, unadultered greed and it should make everyone upset but at the same time, it should not indict this entire hobby.

 

I know a lot of collectors are upset and rightfully so, but I still think CGC has made this hobby so much better than the old days when you would get a trimmed/color-touched/restored book from a dealer about 50% of the time. Now that they have recognized who the problem person is, they will make sure he will not be in a position to do any of this [embarrassing lack of self control] again. I have confidence in Steve Borock and the CGC people to take this extremely seriously and do a complete investigation, including looking at submission forms and discarded labels, etc.