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

[Gonzimodo]

I've always assumed the fugly 9.6s and 9.8s I've seen over the last couple of years were just the result of lazy or loose grading by CGC, but now I wonder how many are the result of a scam like this.

It's also been pointed out that this guy can double-dip by resubmitting the original 9.8 book for grading and then reselling it, but why stop there?  If you think about it, submitting the book again just gives him another 9.8 registry number to swap out the book and resubmit for a custom label or "clerical error" with a missing MJ or CPV designation or whatever to manufacture another fake.  Lather, rinse, repeat.  Theoretically, all it takes is one solid 9.8 copy to generate as many 9.8 registry entries as he needs, at least until too much handling results in it no longer receiving a 9.8 grade.

Obviously, I can't verify that this is happening, but it seems possible. 

[Iconic1s]

On 12/22/2023 at 7:04 AM, GDN said:

So this guy is also marrying books.

… and getting them past the world’s most trusted third party comic book grading company 

[mephistopheles]

On 12/22/2023 at 11:19 AM, Steven Valdez said:

Another YouTube video has just popped up on this subject:

 

Sticky Goose obviously has no clue what he is talking about. He just enjoys taking potshots at other influencers.

[Mikey C]

On 12/17/2023 at 10:26 AM, THE_BEYONDER said:

If swapping books is the sellers MO, should there be a previous copy of this book with the same serial number?  
Is there a way to track sales by serial number?

 

@valiantman

He could have purchased the original copy in-person, convention, Facebook, Instagram….there would be zero trail on GPA if that was the case. 

[Mikey C]

On 12/22/2023 at 10:35 AM, mephistopheles said:

Sticky Goose obviously has no clue what he is talking about. He just enjoys taking potshots at other influencers.

 Saying there’s no proof that the 252s are different in front of his wall of CGC slabs. What a joke. 

[Iconic1s]

On 12/22/2023 at 9:35 AM, mephistopheles said:

Sticky Goose obviously has no clue what he is talking about. He just enjoys taking potshots at other influencers.

This guy sounds like CGC is paying him 

[MyNameIsLegion]

AI could verify a resub against the original submission, detect pressing  and cleaning or any improvements while still retaining matching unique identifying characteristics. It could also dial in the grades as compared to all historical grades for a particular book and create a range tolerance- even if a human is determining the final grade.

The AI could say "I'm sorry Dave, that grade is above or below the threshold for all 647 historical grades for that issue with these imperfections. Please enter a different grade. Dave are you feeling alright? 87% of the books you graded today are .2 grades below the historical average. You seem to do this on most Monday's during the regular football season. are you getting enough sleep and drinking enough water? Perhaps you should get some rest. I'll finish entering the grades for you."

[Happy Noodle Boy]

On 12/22/2023 at 10:03 AM, comicginger1789 said:

This is true. They are a part of the community and I can appreciate their ability to maybe educate new collectors or provide some useful info but majority of it I find here and better places. Plus they have skin in the game and come across as scripted. The only Youtuber I follow religiously is the comic doctor, a lovely guy who has been pressing books for over a decade and just chats with his clients and other collectors whilst showing off their books he gets back. It's an honest feeling atmosphere that I don't see or fee from guys like Swaggle, Automatic, MintHunter, VeryGary, etc, etc

I used to watch Automatic Comics and Swagglehaus, but I got tired of their flipper-focused content; they treat comics like stocks. The one comic-focused youtuber I follow is Jason Mink, whose channel is called Old Guys Who Like Old Comics. He's an old guy (well, in his fifties anyway, like myself) who likes old comics. That's it. He pulls out eclectic stacks of old comics from his collection and shows them off. And these aren't "keys" (I hate that word so much.) They're just comics. Archies, Marvels, DCs, First, Eclipse, Pacific, Atlas, whatever; they're just silver and bronze age books that he likes (with the occasional golden age book thrown in.) He does not care one whit about condition. He has plenty of coverless books. He doesn't care if a book is a reprint. He owns no slabs. He just likes reading comics. I'm constantly discovering cool old comics I've never heard of through his channel. He's into action figures (especially Mego) too, but the channel is primarily comics-focused. It's neat. 

[THE_BEYONDER]

On 12/22/2023 at 10:34 AM, Iconic1s said:

On 12/22/2023 at 8:04 AM, GDN said:

So this guy is also marrying books.

… and getting them past the world’s most trusted third party comic book grading company 

Has this been shown to be true?

[skybolt]

On 12/22/2023 at 9:34 AM, Gonzimodo said:

I've always assumed the fugly 9.6s and 9.8s I've seen over the last couple of years were just the result of lazy or loose grading by CGC, but now I wonder how many are the result of a scam like this.

It's also been pointed out that this guy can double-dip by resubmitting the original 9.8 book for grading and then reselling it, but why stop there?  If you think about it, submitting the book again just gives him another 9.8 registry number to swap out the book and resubmit for a custom label or "clerical error" with a missing MJ or CPV designation or whatever to manufacture another fake.  Lather, rinse, repeat.  Theoretically, all it takes is one solid 9.8 copy to generate as many 9.8 registry entries as he needs, at least until too much handling results in it no longer receiving a 9.8 grade.

Obviously, I can't verify that this is happening, but it seems possible. 

You bring up a good point. So trying to unpack what you stated above, does this mean that this guy was actually able to open the whole case and then reweld it? What I mean is that like you said above, he buys 1 9.8 copy of let's say UXM #266 direct edition. He then buys 5 9.4 UXM 266 CGC newsstands. He would then take the whole book apart, insert the 9.4 inner well and replace the label. However, before he does any of this, he sends the same 9.8 direct edition to CGC 5 times (without the label included) to receive 5 separate 9.8 labels. Once these 5 labels and the 9.4 newsstands are inserted into the cracked open cases, he welds all 5 CGC cases. He then send all 5 at different times to CGC for reholdering to get the newsstand 9.8 designation. He then sends the 1 9.8 direct edition to CGC to be graded. 

[JC25427N]

On 12/22/2023 at 10:42 AM, MyNameIsLegion said:

AI could verify a resub against the original submission, detect pressing  and cleaning or any improvements while still retaining matching unique identifying characteristics. It could also dial in the grades as compared to all historical grades for a particular book and create a range tolerance- even if a human is determining the final grade.

The AI could say "I'm sorry Dave, that grade is above or below the threshold for all 647 historical grades for that issue with these imperfections. Please enter a different grade. Dave are you feeling alright? 87% of the books you graded today are .2 grades below the historical average. You seem to do this on most Monday's during the regular football season. are you getting enough sleep and drinking enough water? Perhaps you should get some rest. I'll finish entering the grades for you."

If pressing is truly done in a way thats undetectable, AI isn't going to make a magic bullet for detecting it. A good rule of thumb is that if a human can't do a task for a single example, you can't make a machine learning model that can either. The model would have to be trained on a dataset of hi-res scans that are labelled (in the dataset, not the actual slab label) as pressed or not pressed, and if the only way we can tell that a book is pressed is if it is explicitly disclosed to us and there's nothing about the actual scans that we can use to gleam that, then there's nothing the model can learn to categorize pressed vs not pressed, at best you're going to make a coin flip machine. 

What you could do (and maybe this is what you meant in the first place, forgive me if I misinterpreted) is given a before and after scan of the same book, you can tell whether pressing was done, and train an AI to do the same.  

Edited December 22, 2023 by JC25427N

[mephistopheles]

On 12/22/2023 at 11:47 AM, THE_BEYONDER said:

Has this been shown to be true?

I don't think so, but I wish the extent of his actions was limited to marrying books. Personally, I don't even have a big problem with married books as long as it's done competently. What percentage of ASM 238 actually have the original tattooz?

[sledgehammer]

On 12/22/2023 at 9:38 AM, Mikey C said:

 Saying there’s no proof that the 252s are different in front of his wall of CGC slabs. What a joke. 

He's a dope.

[sledgehammer]

On 12/22/2023 at 9:47 AM, THE_BEYONDER said:

On 12/22/2023 at 9:34 AM, Iconic1s said:

On 12/22/2023 at 7:04 AM, GDN said:

So this guy is also marrying books.

… and getting them past the world’s most trusted third party comic book grading company 

Has this been shown to be true?

I don't think he means marrying in the sense of "pages" and "covers" and such.

Just resubmitting in the sense we've been talking about.

 

[comicwiz]

On 12/22/2023 at 9:55 AM, Sigur Ros said:

These guys Swaggle, Automatic, Regie, etc. see a story then hurry to try to be the first to post a video.  All of them with big, baity text and photo if them with their head in their hands.   Then their vids get posted in forums and boom, tons more clicks.

Cred and monetization are all that matters.

I used to sub to all of them. Stopped a couple years ago.  The more I found on YT, the more I saw that presentation matters... and all of them are just so boring.

 

Maybe it's time to also stop posting their content here then.

Edited December 22, 2023 by comicwiz

[Iconic1s]

On 12/22/2023 at 9:47 AM, THE_BEYONDER said:

Has this been shown to be true?

Not so much… 

[VintageComics]

On 12/21/2023 at 6:59 PM, RonS2112 said:

If there's a takeaway to this whole mess, this is it.  We are reaching the tail end (I think) of an incredibly irresponsible and lazy time regarding how this hobby has been conducted by folks looking to make a quick, easy dollar.  And the safeguards -- in particular CGC -- have not been safeguards at all, as it turns out.

 

While I agree that everyone needs a wakeup call once in a while that wasn't what I meant by wakeup call and I disagree that CGC isn't a safeguard. That's ridiculous talk. 

Safeguards remove MOST of the risk. They never remove ALL of the risk. Not even NASA can remove all the risk. 

Who here thinks that just because a street light turns green you still shouldn't look both ways before crossing the street?

People have become dumbed down and the idiocracy is real. People need to sharpen their pencils a little and think before they walk.

That street light changing removes 99% of the risk. It's on you to work with the remaining 1% risk. 

[MyNameIsLegion]

On 12/22/2023 at 9:53 AM, JC25427N said:

If pressing is truly done in a way thats undetectable, AI isn't going to make a magic bullet for detecting it. A good rule of thumb is that if a human can't do a task for a single example, you can't make a machine learning model that can either. The model would have to be trained on a dataset of hi-res scans that are labelled (in the dataset, not the actual slab label) as pressed or not pressed, and if the only way we can tell that a book is pressed is if it is explicitly disclosed to us and there's nothing about the actual scans that we can use to gleam that, then there's nothing the model can learn to categorize pressed vs not pressed, at best you're going to make a coin flip machine. 

I was positing that a book previously graded would have enough identifying characteristics that if resubbed after pressing and cleaning it could essentially identify the book and infer the differences were the result of "improvements" not that it could detect pressing outright. (though I don't rule it out, if there were some other signature it could read, perhaps in the infrared spectrum) 

[comicwiz]

On 12/22/2023 at 10:47 AM, THE_BEYONDER said:

Has this been shown to be true?

Nope. And that's another thing the YouTuber doing the heavy lifting of analysis and info from here is perpetuating as "his" theory/discovery.

Edited December 22, 2023 by comicwiz

[Steven Valdez]

I note with interest that whenever there's some major drama/scandal in the comics community, CGC is at the centre of it.