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

[Steven Valdez]

On 12/22/2023 at 5:59 PM, LDarkseid1 said:

By your standard, every grading company should be out of business. If this can happen to CGC, it could have happened to the other grading companies and there isn’t anything to say it hasn’t. To want this to be the end of CGC or any grading company because one person or however many defrauded them is the bummer imop. A lot of people have their livelihoods in CGC. So to want CGC to fail is to want them to fail, friends you may have in this community who have potentially tens or hundreds of thousands in comics or more, now possibly worth a fraction of those amounts if that were to happen. People commit fraud all the time, doesn’t mean a company should close or anyone “should” want them to as you implied. How often do we hear visa or a credit card company experienced a data breach releasing hundreds of thousands of people’s personal info. Isn’t it their job, if not one of the tenants of their company to securely protect our private information? Do we call for visa or all credit card companies to go under because of scammers hacking the company? No. So CGC clearly has some due diligence to do and clean house if need be. There obviously needs to be repercussions for this, and the onus of that should be on the person or persons who perpetrated the scheme, not CGC. The end result for CGC should be a come to Jesus moment where they drastically improve their product and brand. It would also obviously be ideal if the people who purchased books from this huckster were made whole, however possible. I think that should come in the form of a lawsuit against the fraudster. He’s obviously done well for himself.

The question is, how many people are doing this? And how long has it been going on? If it's possible to scam a system, it will be scammed.

[LDarkseid1]

On 12/21/2023 at 11:24 PM, Steven Valdez said:

The question is, how many people are doing this? And how long has it been going on? If it's possible to scam a system, it will be scammed.

 

On 12/21/2023 at 11:24 PM, Steven Valdez said:

The question is, how many people are doing this? And how long has it been going on? If it's possible to scam a system, it will be scammed.

Good questions, everyone definitely waiting with bated breath to discover haha.

[Steven Valdez]

On 12/22/2023 at 6:27 PM, LDarkseid1 said:

 

Good questions, everyone definitely waiting with bated breath to discover haha.

I have a nice little pile of CGC'd Silver Age Marvel.... fingers crossed they're all unhacked

Edited December 22, 2023 by Steven Valdez

[LDarkseid1]

On 12/21/2023 at 11:34 PM, Steven Valdez said:

I have a nice little pile of CGC'd Silver Age Marvel.... finger crossed they're all unhacked

I’m sure you’re fine 😂

[paqart]

On 12/22/2023 at 1:59 AM, LDarkseid1 said:

By your standard, every grading company should be out of business. If this can happen to CGC, it could have happened to the other grading companies and there isn’t anything to say it hasn’t. To want this to be the end of CGC or any grading company because one person or however many defrauded them is the bummer imop. A lot of people have their livelihoods in CGC. So to want CGC to fail is to want them to fail, friends you may have in this community who have potentially tens or hundreds of thousands in comics or more, now possibly worth a fraction of those amounts if that were to happen. People commit fraud all the time, doesn’t mean a company should close or anyone “should” want them to as you implied. How often do we hear visa or a credit card company experienced a data breach releasing hundreds of thousands of people’s personal info. Isn’t it their job, if not one of the tenants of their company to securely protect our private information? Do we call for visa or all credit card companies to go under because of scammers hacking the company? No. So CGC clearly has some due diligence to do and clean house if need be. There obviously needs to be repercussions for this, and the onus of that should be on the person or persons who perpetrated the scheme, not CGC. The end result for CGC should be a come to Jesus moment where they drastically improve their product and brand. It would also obviously be ideal if the people who purchased books from this huckster were made whole, however possible. I think that should come in the form of a lawsuit against the fraudster. He’s obviously done well for himself.

I agree up to a point. The breakdown happened at CGC. They certified fakes as authentic. CGC should make the victims whole without a lawsuit, and then CGC should prosecute the scammer for whatever they can recover.

[LDarkseid1]

On 12/21/2023 at 11:44 PM, paqart said:

I agree up to a point. The breakdown happened at CGC. They certified fakes as authentic. CGC should make the victims whole without a lawsuit, and then CGC should prosecute the scammer for whatever they can recover.

No that certainly also makes sense as a potential scenario. I just think whichever way sees the scammer prosecuted both civilly and criminally, and CGC makes an effort to change the loophole this person found. I mean however those things happen seem like a solid end result.

[Steven Valdez]

So.... hologram stickers on every edge of the case. Problem somewhat mitigated.

[Timed]

Need to catch up on the last few pages, but saw that it's been confirmed that direct edition books have been swapped into newsstands.

This isn't about sneakily acting like a newsstand is actually a MJ, or hiding a qualified book into a blue slab... it's now straight up taking direct edition 9.8 certs and reholdering newsstands into them. 

I want to believe there is no way a CGC employee is complicit, but... 

 

[boreds]

I don't know if this has been mentioned, but Briva3 also has sold sports cards (and other cards) through PSA. If you look up his name, you'll see it's linked to many card sales as well.

Like this one for example. Assuming this is the same person(s), I wonder if this scam goes well beyond merely comics, and CGC.

https://www.psacard.com/auctionprices/basketball-cards/1989-fleer-sticker/michael-jordan/auction/-6545564498109031672

 

Quote

Date	October, 2022
Grade	8
Cert	58169513
Seller	briva3

Price	$102.50
Auction House	eBay
Auction Type	Auction
Lot Number	284982666804

 

[RonS2112]

On 12/21/2023 at 8:14 PM, Happy Noodle Boy said:

That's a highly debatable point. I don't think the hobby would suffer at all if all the grading companies went under. The speculators would leave. Prices would crash. So what? The people who actually like comics beyond their monetary value as collectibles to be bought and flipped will all still be here, buying and reading, and looking at more that just the front and back covers.

….which if you think about it, is how people — up through and including CGC — are finding comics graded at 9.0 missing Marvel Value Stamps.

[LDarkseid1]

     On 12/21/2023 at 5:14 PM,  Happy Noodle Boy said: 

That's a highly debatable point. I don't think the hobby would suffer at all if all the grading companies went under. The speculators would leave. Prices would crash. So what? The people who actually like comics beyond their monetary value as collectibles to be bought and flipped will all still be here, buying and reading, and looking at more that just the front and back covers.

 

On 12/22/2023 at 12:35 AM, RonS2112 said:

….which if you think about it, is how people — up through and including CGC — are finding comics graded at 9.0 missing Marvel Value Stamps.

I’m not saying Happy Noodle’s opinion makes me want to 🤢, but yeah it makes me want to 🤮. Talk about just wanting to see the world burn. Heath ledger’s joker would be soo proud of this guy. And wow, that level of judgement and elitism that people who buy comics for monetary value don’t also enjoy them in other ways. As if those people don’t own raw books as well, or read vintage comics. That’s the kind of vitriol this community should steer away from.

Edited December 22, 2023 by LDarkseid1

[RonS2112]

On 12/22/2023 at 1:17 AM, Iconic1s said:

 

If he was resubbing the same 9.8 over and over to get a new 9.8 cert # to pull his scam then the census is also garbage for all of these issues, and will probably never be accurate.

 

You can’t blame this scam for the census being .  Cracking, pressing and resubbing is a way of life for some speculators and that practice ruined the census a long time ago.

[agamoto]

On 12/21/2023 at 11:34 PM, Steven Valdez said:

I have a nice little pile of CGC'd Silver Age Marvel.... fingers crossed they're all unhacked

If it were me, and I bought them in a slab, I'd forever have a difficult time getting the sliver of "Maybe some of these are missing their pin-up or ad pages" out of the back of my mind. 

[agamoto]

On 12/21/2023 at 11:24 PM, Steven Valdez said:

The question is, how many people are doing this? And how long has it been going on? If it's possible to scam a system, it will be scammed.

Trust CGC will do everything they can to isolate this to one person, but since it's a scam that's worked remarkably well on some very high dollar books, over and over again, we may never know how many tried and succeeded doing the same thing. It could be one person doing it, it could be 20, it could be 200 people. We only even know about this because someone was sharp enough to spot the obvious problems on a swapped-out book when one of the miscreants got too greedy. 

If nothing else comes of this, at least now I have a pretty arguable reason why I've seen so many 9.8's that sure as hell looked like 9.2s 

[Steven Valdez]

On 12/22/2023 at 9:48 PM, agamoto said:

If it were me, and I bought them in a slab, I'd forever have a difficult time getting the sliver of "Maybe some of these are missing their pin-up or ad pages" out of the back of my mind. 

Yes, I will always have that nagging doubt

Edited December 22, 2023 by Steven Valdez

[Steven Valdez]

On 12/22/2023 at 9:54 PM, agamoto said:

Trust CGC will do everything they can to isolate this to one person, but since it's a scam that's worked remarkably well on some very high dollar books, over and over again, we may never know how many tried and succeeded doing the same thing. It could be one person doing it, it could be 20, it could be 200 people. We only even know about this because someone was sharp enough to spot the obvious problems on a swapped-out book when one of the miscreants got too greedy. 

If nothing else comes of this, at least now I have a pretty arguable reason why I've seen so many 9.8's that sure as hell looked like 9.2s 

Yeah, and plenty of 3.0s that look like 0.5s.

[GDN]

I don't know if this was brought up but after watching Automatic Comic's video about the Hulk 181 with pg 10 missing, it is clear that in that example it wasn't a reholder scam like the others.  When Ryan shows the other 7 books in his CGC submission for the blue label 181 the grading date matches the other 7 books in that submission.  If this was a reholder the grading date on the reholder would have been an older date just like we saw in the ASM252, NM98 and Hulk181MVS examples.  So this guy is also marrying books.

[Microchip]

On 12/22/2023 at 9:54 PM, agamoto said:

If nothing else comes of this, at least now I have a pretty arguable reason why I've seen so many 9.8's that sure as hell looked like 9.2s 

 

How many years have we been saying this!?  Now we have some kind of explanation outside of blaming CGC directly.   They're indirectly to blame as well

 

They only other thing that gets repeated here, year after year, altogether now... "buy the book, not the grade".. and certainly don't buy unicorn super the high grade MJ insert edition newsstand editions of super keys  

 

[Happy Noodle Boy]

On 12/22/2023 at 12:16 AM, Changer said:

CGC was bought for its brand, this is massive damage if raw is now perceived safer than graded. I imagine this is a huge issue to the new owner , and who at cgc is approving all these mechanical defect and not noticing a pattern. 

worthpoint and gocollect is going to get some business ,

Raw was always safer than graded. With raw books you get to actually see what you're buying; with graded books you're taking someone else's word for it. Sure, whoever graded your CGC book probably checked to make sure the Marvel Value Stamp was there...probably. But you never know unless you can look for yourself.

[comicwiz]

On 12/21/2023 at 11:40 PM, Every Day A Story said:

Even more shenigans, just how deep does this rabbit hole go?

...the question is...

...where is CGC?

The community doesn't really need more drama, but I posted on this YouTuber's previous video after I made the green to blue IH 181 find. Gave him a direct link to the forums, and in this new video, he found it? As I'm listening to the video, he's going through and iterating what's been discussed here, and making the analysis his own. 

Wow!