ASM #252 CGC 9.8 Record Sale - something fishy going on? - Holder Tampering Incident confirmed by CGC 50 50

[darkstar]

On 12/21/2023 at 6:25 AM, MyNameIsLegion said:

actually, CGC has unknowingly legitimized his alleged criminal enterprise. Again. where is the fraud? who is the injured party, and who is directly responsible for the injury? I'm not trying to be obtuse here, I know the guy is scumbag, but he's possible a smart and successful one. If he cracked slabs and swapped out books and sold those directly to a person on any forum, THEN he has committed fraud that's pretty black and white. It's just difficult to prove it.

Automatic Comics already proved this in his video that was posted yesterday. The guy bought a qualified 8.5 Hulk 181, swapped it with a blue label 9.0, had it re-holdered, and sold the qualified 8.5 as a 9.0 blue label. 

[darkstar]

On 12/21/2023 at 6:24 AM, Sigur Ros said:

We're saying in the eyes of eBay it is perfectly legit.

The guy is selling sealed, untampered, guaranteed CGC slabs.

It's not their job to determine if everything sold on their site has a shady history to it.

What I wrote and the post to which I responded has little or nothing to do with eBay. 

[MyNameIsLegion]

On 12/21/2023 at 6:40 AM, darkstar said:

Automatic Comics already proved this in his video that was posted yesterday. The guy bought a qualified 8.5 Hulk 181, swapped it with a blue label 9.0, had it re-holdered, and sold the qualified 8.5 as a 9.0 blue label. 

uh huh. SO the book he sold was 100% as it was delivered to him from CGC. IF he had not had it re-holdered and sold the swapped book inside the original holder to anyone, that's is 100% fraudulent.  It's not his fault CGC didn't catch on to the subterfuge.

[MyNameIsLegion]

On 12/21/2023 at 6:44 AM, darkstar said:

What I wrote and the post to which I responded has little or nothing to do with eBay. 

but that is all that matters. He didn't sell it to CGC. On the contrary, he paid them some fee to perform a service. Again, where's the fraud? He may have violated some terms of use if there is any such fine print by manipulating the slab and CGC not recognizing this, but it's not criminal. 

[darkstar]

On 12/21/2023 at 6:44 AM, MyNameIsLegion said:

uh huh. SO the book he sold was 100% as it was delivered to him from CGC. IF he had not had it re-holdered and sold the swapped book inside the original holder to anyone, that's is 100% fraudulent.  It's not his fault CGC didn't catch on to the subterfuge.

That's not how any of this works. 

This is like saying if you successfully pass counterfeit currency through a bank that it is now legitimate and legal tender.

Knowingly misrepresenting what you are selling for financial gain is fraud, it doesn't matter if you were able to fool a third party authority or not.

You understand people have gone to prison for selling trimmed sports cards that passed authentication by the grading companies, yes?

[MyNameIsLegion]

On 12/21/2023 at 6:50 AM, darkstar said:

That's not how any of this works. 

This is like saying if you successfully pass counterfeit currency through a bank that it is now legitimate and legal tender.

Knowingly misrepresenting what you are selling for financial gain is fraud, it doesn't matter if you were able to fool a third party authority or not.

You understand people have gone to prison for selling trimmed sports cards that passed authentication by the grading companies, yes?

if that is the case, I'd like to read about exactly that played out, The devil is in the details. Your counterfeit analogy however is not at all an accurate comparison. the act of creating counterfeit currency itself, regardless of whether you pass it off or not is a federal crime. 

[RonS2112]

On 12/21/2023 at 7:44 AM, MyNameIsLegion said:

uh huh. SO the book he sold was 100% as it was delivered to him from CGC. IF he had not had it re-holdered and sold the swapped book inside the original holder to anyone, that's is 100% fraudulent.  It's not his fault CGC didn't catch on to the subterfuge.

You are TECHNICALLY correct of course.  But it doesn't take a lot of imagination to understand that similar scams can be cooked up which exploit the ability to substitute books within CGC holders.  Either way, if it undermines the integrity of CGC's product (which in my mind, it certainly does), then CGC has a problem to address.

[Sigur Ros]

On 12/21/2023 at 7:44 AM, darkstar said:

What I wrote and the post to which I responded has little or nothing to do with eBay. 

My bad.

The post about ebay having no reason to investigate, in response to people saying eBay should investigate, with ebay mentioned in the first paragraph, that you responded to, threw me off I guess.  👍

[MyNameIsLegion]

On 12/21/2023 at 6:58 AM, RonS2112 said:

You are TECHNICALLY correct of course.  But it doesn't take a lot of imagination to understand that similar scams can be cooked up which exploit the ability to substitute books within CGC holders.  Either way, if it undermines the integrity of CGC's product (which in my mind, it certainly does), then CGC has a problem to address.

that is 100% correct. CGC probably will do something, it will probably not be very transparent, and it will be just good enough, but calculated to not cost them any more than necessary, and most here will not be satisfied.  But this particular scammer will not face any criminal penalty, and not especially likely any civil penalty. He might lose his CGC account and have to get his brother in law to front him now. 

Edited December 21, 2023 by MyNameIsLegion

[Sigur Ros]

On 12/21/2023 at 7:50 AM, darkstar said:

This is like saying if you successfully pass counterfeit currency through a bank that it is now legitimate and legal tender.

No.

CGC isn't a pass-through company (except in these cases 😉).  They create the product.

You should have said "US Mint" instead of "bank". 🤷

Then you'd have understood the point.

[darkstar]

On 12/21/2023 at 6:55 AM, MyNameIsLegion said:

if that is the case, I'd like to read about exactly that played out, The devil is in the details. Your counterfeit analogy however is not at all an accurate comparison. the act of creating counterfeit currency itself, regardless of whether you pass it off or not is a federal crime. 

Read exactly how what played out? The guy bought a 9.0 blue label Hulk 181. He bought a 8.5 green label Hulk 181 with a missing mvs. He cracked the slabs and replaced the 9.0 blue copy with the 8.5 green label copy and sent the green label copy inside the blue label slab to CGC for a re-holder and/or label update. He KNOWS the book he got back from CGC isn't actually a 9.0 blue label copy of the book, regardless of what CGC has on the label. He then KNOWINGLY sold the book as a blue label 9.0, despite knowing it is actually the qualified copy with the missing mvs. You do this once or if you aren't in the business of selling comics sure you could say it was an honest mistake or that it's too inside baseball (a marvel value stamp, what the hell is that?), you can get away with it. But if you are in the business of selling comics and have established a pattern of doing this then there is no playing dumb. 

And yes, the currency analogy is perfectly appropriate because you seem to think that an authority ruling something as authentic legitimizes the counterfeit. It doesn't work that way.  

[darkstar]

On 12/21/2023 at 7:02 AM, Sigur Ros said:

My bad.

The post about ebay having no reason to investigate, in response to people saying eBay should investigate, with ebay mentioned in the first paragraph, that you responded to, threw me off I guess.  👍

You'll figure it out eventually.

Do you require a condescending thumbs up emoji as well?

[sledgehammer]

On 12/21/2023 at 6:38 AM, Diane Sauer said:

It is a mundane task and like all such tasks humans do they eventually get lazy playing little attention to the details even if examining the slab was part of the official process. It's just human nature. 

This is more than that.

[MyNameIsLegion]

On 12/21/2023 at 7:08 AM, darkstar said:

Read exactly how what played out? The guy bought a 9.0 blue label Hulk 181. He bought a 8.5 green label Hulk 181 with a missing mvs. He cracked the slabs and replaced the 9.0 blue copy with the 8.5 green label copy and sent the green label copy inside the blue label slab to CGC for a re-holder and/or label update. He KNOWS the book he got back from CGC isn't actually a 9.0 blue label copy of the book, regardless of what CGC has on the label. He then KNOWINGLY sold the book as a blue label 9.0, despite knowing it is actually the qualified copy with the missing mvs. You do this once or if you aren't in the business of selling comics sure you could say it was an honest mistake or that it's too inside baseball (a marvel value stamp, what the hell is that?), you can get away with it. But if you are in the business of selling comics and have established a pattern of doing this then there is no playing dumb. 

And yes, the currency analogy is perfectly appropriate because you seem to think that an authority ruling something as authentic legitimizes the counterfeit. It doesn't work that way.  

I meant the sports card case. And you are missing the subtlety of what is happening here by a country mile. 

[RonS2112]

On 12/21/2023 at 8:08 AM, darkstar said:

Read exactly how what played out? The guy bought a 9.0 blue label Hulk 181. He bought a 8.5 green label Hulk 181 with a missing mvs. He cracked the slabs and replaced the 9.0 blue copy with the 8.5 green label copy and sent the green label copy inside the blue label slab to CGC for a re-holder and/or label update. He KNOWS the book he got back from CGC isn't actually a 9.0 blue label copy of the book, regardless of what CGC has on the label. He then KNOWINGLY sold the book as a blue label 9.0, despite knowing it is actually the qualified copy with the missing mvs. You do this once or if you aren't in the business of selling comics sure you could say it was an honest mistake or that it's too inside baseball (a marvel value stamp, what the hell is that?), you can get away with it. But if you are in the business of selling comics and have established a pattern of doing this then there is no playing dumb. 

And yes, the currency analogy is perfectly appropriate because you seem to think that an authority ruling something as authentic legitimizes the counterfeit. It doesn't work that way.  

You aren't wrong in any of this, but the above seems to gloss over a simple point: the weak link and underlying enabler in all of this is that the CGC process allows this to happen.  

You are right that the seller in all liklihood has malicious intent in carrying out this scam.  BUT -- if it came down to a legal case, I would think he could easily claim that: a) he was simply submitting a book with a flaw, and it isn't HIS fault that CGC gave it a blue 9.0 label instead of a green 8.5 label and b) it isn't HIS fault that people will pay a premium for a book with that blue 9.0 label.

I mean, taken to a (admittely ridiculous) extreme, people are looking for grade bump-ups all the time by cracking, re-pressing and resubmitting, and at least part of that is hoping for a more lenient grader than the book might have had the first time around.  And often, it works.  How far removed is this scam from that practice?

[sledgehammer]

The distinction is that Ebay could not have done anything differently to prevent this.

[darkstar]

On 12/21/2023 at 7:16 AM, RonS2112 said:

You aren't wrong in any of this, but the above seems to gloss over a simple point: the weak link and underlying enabler in all of this is that the CGC process allows this to happen.  

You are right that the seller in all liklihood has malicious intent in carrying out this scam.  BUT -- if it came down to a legal case, I would think he could easily claim that: a) he was simply submitting a book with a flaw, and it isn't HIS fault that CGC gave it a blue 9.0 label instead of a green 8.5 label and b) it isn't HIS fault that people will pay a premium for a book with that blue 9.0 label.

I mean, taken to a (admittely ridiculous) extreme, people are looking for grade bump-ups all the time by cracking, re-pressing and resubmitting, and at least part of that is hoping for a more lenient grader than the book might have had the first time around.  And often, it works.  How far removed is this scam from that practice?

1) Because he swapped books

2) Because he did it more than once

[Artboy99]

CGC's flaw here is that they do not regrade the book when you submit for reholder. So what the scammer is doing is cracking the books out of the outer plastic, swapping the labels somehow and leaving the inner wells intact. Taking the labels out of the inner well sleeve was very easy, I have not cracked a book out in a while is it still easy to remove the label?

He submits the lower quality book back to CGC likely inside the damaged outer case.

To me the fix is either:

1. CGC must regrade all submissions even if it is simply because the outer case has been scuffed, scratched, damaged in anyway.

2. completely seal the label portion into the inner well (if they are not currently doing that)

Regrade required for any older model slabs that come back where the label tampering is possible.

Edited December 21, 2023 by Artboy99

[Mutant Manatee]

On 12/21/2023 at 7:19 AM, Artboy99 said:

 

To me the fix is: CGC must regrade all submissions even if it is simply because the outer case has been scuffed, scratched, damaged in anyway.

 

 

Unfortuately, that would mean they would charge you a full grading fee instead of just a nominal reholdering fee.  But I agree with you, it needs to be done, at least until they find a way to permanently stamp an identifier on the inner well.

Edited December 21, 2023 by Mutant Manatee

[ThothAmon]

On 12/21/2023 at 7:55 AM, MyNameIsLegion said:

 

 

On 12/21/2023 at 8:10 AM, MyNameIsLegion said:

I meant the sports card case. And you are missing the subtlety of what is happening here by a country mile. 

As someone who has evaluated and presented many cases to NYS and some Federal grand juries my take is, if the apparent allegations are true, there is no subtlety in his criminal intent or the fact that both federal and state felonies have likely been committed. CGC’s imprimatur is irrelevant. Will an arrest ever happen?