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

[skybolt]

On 12/22/2023 at 8:03 PM, VintageComics said:

So you're going to put your ASM #1, Hulk #181 or Action #1 into that machine and let it flip pages?

How do you get the book out of a Mylar?

How do you get the book into the machine?

How do you get it off the machine?

How do you get it to encapsulation? 

I don't think some people think anything they're saying through.

Or maybe they just can't. 

This conversation is ridiculous. 

I'd rather have my 5-year old daughter handle my expensive books than a machine.

[VintageComics]

On 12/22/2023 at 9:14 PM, skybolt said:

I'd rather have my 5-year old daughter handle my expensive books than a machine.

Seriously. It's like asking if AI can make a tricycle reach the moon. 

I mean, maybe. If Buzz Aldrin is commandeering.

[mephistopheles]

Guys can we take AI debate to another thread? 

[jcjames]

On 12/22/2023 at 7:03 PM, VintageComics said:

So you're going to put your ASM #1, Hulk #181 or Action #1 into that machine and let it flip pages?

How do you get the book out of a Mylar?

How do you get the book into the machine?

How do you get it off the machine?

How do you get it to encapsulation? 

I don't think some people think anything they're saying through.

Or maybe they just can't. 

This conversation is ridiculous. 

Let a hooman open it and turn the pages while HAL views it from at least three different angles and a myriad of light filters. 

Then the hooman puts the book back and HAL assigns the grade.

 

[jcjames]

On 12/22/2023 at 7:16 PM, mephistopheles said:

Guys can we take AI debate to another thread? 

Sorry. 

[skybolt]

On 12/22/2023 at 8:07 PM, VintageComics said:

How do you know it's an MJ insert and not someone's nudie pics that they hid in there?

It's because of blind trust (again assuming it wasn't an inside job). The person reholdering the book probably thought A.) there's no way someone could open the case and tamper with the book. B.) the original grader (s) would've noticed the nudie pics when they first graded the book, and C.) It was likely someone dropping the ball and forgetting to put the Mark Jeweler designation on the label. I would understand all of the above if we were talking about  $100 book. However, for something worth 5 figures, CGC policy has to be that if the Mark Jeweler designation was missed, then the inner well must be opened no matter what.

Edited December 23, 2023 by skybolt

[Prince Namor]

On 12/23/2023 at 9:14 AM, skybolt said:

I'd rather have my 5-year old daughter handle my expensive books than a machine.

You wouldn't have to. The machine wouldn't be doing that. An employee does the handling.

I get why certain sellers would be against it. They have a buddy or two working for CGC who can game the system for them. The idea of blocking that is frightening to them. They could no longer claim to be as expert of a grader, because now they wouldn't know ahead of time what the grade was going to be. 

In the old days, the scam was to tell someone, "Hey these books are only a 2.0!", when the dealer KNOWS they're better than that, so they could take those books to a buyer of theirs and say, "Hey these books are a 5.0!" and make a huge profit immediately.

Now... you find the right guy working the right job, you take care of him, he can take care of you.

You can see why they'd be afraid of AI, it would take the gaming right out of the system.

Edited December 23, 2023 by Prince Namor

[Book Guy]

On 12/22/2023 at 5:06 PM, pdags said:

 

Sorry if this was already posted, but could someone review this book for possible tampering:

https://www.cgccomics.com/certlookup/1295091001/

https://comics.ha.com/itm/bronze-age-1970-1979-/superhero/the-incredible-hulk-181-marvel-1974-cgc-vf-85-off-white-to-white-pages/a/121753-15392.s

https://mavin.io/item/Incredible-Hulk-%23-181-cgc-8.5-Stan-Lee%2C1-st-Wolverine-Movie-coming-180-x%3Dmen?itemId=255118082750&q=X-men %23181

Same registry number, but IMHO the book sold on HA matches the grader's notes and is not the same book in the second link.  The back of the books are completely different; see staining on top of the second book.

They seem to be different. Note the tiny white spots at the top above the V in Marvel and R in Group at the top in the Heritage listing. The tic on the left by Hulk's foot. Obviously the difference in the white area all along the left edge. Note the stains at the rear top on the Mavin copy...

[AbsoluteCarnage]

Maybe CGC should inquire as to how Comic Link stickers are made and enhance the adhesion by idk 1700% and then slap that on all edges of a slab......... just a thought

[jcjames]

On 12/22/2023 at 7:20 PM, Prince Namor said:

 

I get why certain sellers would be against it. They have a buddy or two working for CGC who can game the system for them. ...

You can see why they'd be afraid of AI, it would take the gaming right out of the system.

I'd be shocked, shocked I tell you, if there were "favorites" among submitters who always seem to get the gift grades.

I promise!

 

[JC25427N]

On 12/22/2023 at 9:12 PM, Prince Namor said:

How so? It's a SCANNING program. It's not an Android Super Robot from the Future who cuts open the mylar and counts the pages. You have an employee SCAN it. The most BIASED, easy-to-manipulate part of the process, you take OUT of the hands of a human being who could be BOUGHT, and instead have a computer do it.

Ok, what I'm talking about (and what I thought you were talking about) is a machine learning model (AI) that grades comic books (perfectly, accurately, fast, and without bias as you mentioned before). To give you just ONE of many aspects that make this harder than someone who doesn't work with this kind of stuff may think, you'd have to collect enough data to train this hypothetical model (I'm not even talking about any physical robotics of flipping pages, scanning, turning, etc that VintageComics and everyone else seems to be concerned with, lets just say all of that machinery exists). To even begin the conception of creating a model you need to collect a dataset to train the model on. To do this you would have to either collect a large corpus of graded books (as you said you want this model to be trained only on books that have been seen and graded before), crack them out of their slabs, and then collect all the necessary scans that you would need to grade it, or alternatively. get a large corpus of books, have someone at CGC grade them, and take all the necessary scans before encapsulating them (and this wouldn't just be the front cover and back cover scan that CGC provides now, if you want this model to do full grading end to end you need a scan of every page of every comic book that CGC could ever grade to assure that the book is whole and correct without incorrect married pages, missing inserts, etc). Then you probably need multiple examples of each book at different conditions.  Then you have to know that whatever form of input data is used to train the model will determine what you actually need to give the model when it's used in production for actual grading, so if you give it 50 scans per book for training, you need to collect those scans in production. Collecting this data and collecting it at the quality necessary for good performance (which according to that one person (sorry I forgot the name) who posted earlier who said they have a vast experience in CG and working with scanning technology says that even the most sensitive current scanners wouldn't be sufficient for this task, I don't personally know that, just repeating it). So collecting this data is a herculean task, making sure the data integrity and quality is sufficient is a herculean task, and even storing all of these hi-res scans (again, every page, of every book, at multiple angles, and you might need to repeat this for multiple conditions) would get insanely costly, and I don't even mean just storing the training data, you would probably want to store the scans used in production in case something goes wrong for validation, someone wants to appeal a grade, etc (and then go back and see how many submissions CGC gets).  

And this is just data collection, one of the first steps when deciding to create this model, past that there are other hurdles to jump through. Again just for the machine learning model that goes the grading, I've assumed that the scanning machinery exists (although apparently thats up for debate whether current scanning capabilities are enough, I would imagine it is but I'm not a grader or a CG expert)

 

 

[skybolt]

On 12/22/2023 at 8:20 PM, Prince Namor said:

You wouldn't have to. The machine wouldn't be doing that. An employee does the handling.

I get why certain sellers would be against it. They have a buddy or two working for CGC who can game the system for them. The idea of blocking that is frightening to them. They could no longer claim to be as expert of a grader, because now they wouldn't know ahead of time what the grade was going to be. 

In the old days, the scam was to tell someone, "Hey these books are only a 2.0!", when the dealer KNOWS they're better than that, so they could take those books to a buyer of theirs and say, "Hey these books are a 5.0!" and make a huge profit immediately.

Now... you find the right guy working the right job, you take care of him, he can take care of you.

You can see why they'd be afraid of AI, it would take the gaming right out of the system.

I'm just worried about an AI scanning a dust particle that landed on the book and thinking it's a stain.

[JC25427N]

On 12/22/2023 at 9:26 PM, skybolt said:

I'm just worried about an AI scanning a dust particle that landed on the book and thinking it's a stain.

Yeah this is one concern you would have when trying to train this AI, this is part of data integrity, insuring that the data doesn't have any noise (such as dust particles) that mislead the model, creates error, creates bias, etc. 

[Heronext]

Setting the need to set the AI discussion aside, aside, I think the best AI could do is assign a pre-grade

[Happy Noodle Boy]

On 12/22/2023 at 9:03 PM, VintageComics said:

So you're going to put your ASM #1, Hulk #181 or Action #1 into that machine and let it flip pages?

How do you get the book out of a Mylar?

How do you get the book into the machine?

How do you get it off the machine?

How do you get it to encapsulation? 

I don't think some people think anything they're saying through.

Or maybe they just can't. 

This conversation is ridiculous. 

As I said on my previous post, a human being could flip each of the pages and the computer could scan and grade them. The computer wouldn't need to be housed in a robot that handles every single step of grading and encapsulation. Human beings could do the physical work (handling the comic, encapsulating the comic) while the computer scans pages and assesses condition. This would save CGC a ton of money in the long term ( no more having to scour the country looking for people who know how to grade and are willing to do it all day long) and it would eliminate subjectivity in grading. 

[jcjames]

On 12/22/2023 at 7:26 PM, JC25427N said:

Ok, what I'm talking about (and what I thought you were talking about) is a machine learning model (AI) that grades comic books (perfectly, accurately, fast, and without bias as you mentioned before). To give you just ONE of many aspects that make this harder than someone who doesn't work with this kind of stuff may think, you'd have to collect enough data to train this hypothetical model (I'm not even talking about any physical robotics of flipping pages, scanning, turning, etc that VintageComics and everyone else seems to be concerned with, lets just say all of that machinery exists). To even begin the conception of creating a model you need to collect a dataset to train the model on. To do this you would have to either collect a large corpus of graded books (as you said you want this model to be trained only on books that have been seen and graded before), crack them out of their slabs, and then collect all the necessary scans that you would need to grade it, or alternatively. get a large corpus of books, have someone at CGC grade them, and take all the necessary scans before encapsulating them (and this wouldn't just be the front cover and back cover scan that CGC provides now, if you want this model to do full grading end to end you need a scan of every page of every comic book that CGC could ever grade to assure that the book is whole and correct without incorrect married pages, missing inserts, etc). Then you probably need multiple examples of each book at different conditions.  Then you have to know that whatever form of input data is used to train the model will determine what you actually need to give the model when it's used in production for actual grading, so if you give it 50 scans per book for training, you need to collect those scans in production. Collecting this data and collecting it at the quality necessary for good performance (which according to that one person (sorry I forgot the name) who posted earlier who said they have a vast experience in CG and working with scanning technology says that even the most sensitive current scanners wouldn't be sufficient for this task, I don't personally know that, just repeating it). So collecting this data is a herculean task, making sure the data integrity and quality is sufficient is a herculean task, and even storing all of these hi-res scans (again, every page, of every book, at multiple angles, and you might need to repeat this for multiple conditions) would get insanely costly, and I don't even mean just storing the training data, you would probably want to store the scans used in production in case something goes wrong for validation, someone wants to appeal a grade, etc (and then go back and see how many submissions CGC gets).  

And this is just data collection, one of the first steps when deciding to create this model, past that there are other hurdles to jump through. Again just for the machine learning model that goes the grading, I've assumed that the scanning machinery exists (although apparently thats up for debate whether current scanning capabilities are enough, I would imagine it is but I'm not a grader or a CG expert)

 

 

AI is currently better, faster, more accurate at scanning medical imaging (which IMO is more complex than creases and spine tics) than any single human.

It didn't happen overnight, but it is possible. 

Edited December 23, 2023 by jcjames

[Prince Namor]

On 12/23/2023 at 9:26 AM, JC25427N said:

Ok, what I'm talking about (and what I thought you were talking about) is a machine learning model (AI) that grades comic books (perfectly, accurately, fast, and without bias as you mentioned before). To give you just ONE of many aspects that make this harder than someone who doesn't work with this kind of stuff may think, you'd have to collect enough data to train this hypothetical model (I'm not even talking about any physical robotics of flipping pages, scanning, turning, etc that VintageComics and everyone else seems to be concerned with, lets just say all of that machinery exists). To even begin the conception of creating a model you need to collect a dataset to train the model on. To do this you would have to either collect a large corpus of graded books (as you said you want this model to be trained only on books that have been seen and graded before), crack them out of their slabs, and then collect all the necessary scans that you would need to grade it, or alternatively. get a large corpus of books, have someone at CGC grade them, and take all the necessary scans before encapsulating them (and this wouldn't just be the front cover and back cover scan that CGC provides now, if you want this model to do full grading end to end you need a scan of every page of every comic book that CGC could ever grade to assure that the book is whole and correct without incorrect married pages, missing inserts, etc). Then you probably need multiple examples of each book at different conditions.  Then you have to know that whatever form of input data is used to train the model will determine what you actually need to give the model when it's used in production for actual grading, so if you give it 50 scans per book for training, you need to collect those scans in production. Collecting this data and collecting it at the quality necessary for good performance (which according to that one person (sorry I forgot the name) who posted earlier who said they have a vast experience in CG and working with scanning technology says that even the most sensitive current scanners wouldn't be sufficient for this task, I don't personally know that, just repeating it). So collecting this data is a herculean task, making sure the data integrity and quality is sufficient is a herculean task, and even storing all of these hi-res scans (again, every page, of every book, at multiple angles, and you might need to repeat this for multiple conditions) would get insanely costly, and I don't even mean just storing the training data, you would probably want to store the scans used in production in case something goes wrong for validation, someone wants to appeal a grade, etc (and then go back and see how many submissions CGC gets).  

And this is just data collection, one of the first steps when deciding to create this model, past that there are other hurdles to jump through. Again just for the machine learning model that goes the grading, I've assumed that the scanning machinery exists (although apparently thats up for debate whether current scanning capabilities are enough, I would imagine it is but I'm not a grader or a CG expert)

I guarantee you there are millions of scanned images out there from collectors who've been doing that for a long time. On top of that CGC already has a database of stored images. It wouldn't be as difficult as you think to put together. A fair amount of work, yes, but necessary to protect the integrity of the business.

[Prince Namor]

On 12/23/2023 at 9:26 AM, skybolt said:

I'm just worried about an AI scanning a dust particle that landed on the book and thinking it's a stain.

I find that less of a concern than basic human fatigue. You could program a computer to be aware of dust particles.

[Steven Valdez]

On 12/23/2023 at 5:22 AM, skybolt said:

You mean like send a couple of CGC slabs to a factory in China to see if they can replicate it in bulk?

They do. They've been available on Alibaba for a few years. Most of the 'fakes' that come out of China are produced by the same companies that make the legit versions. They just keep the assembly line going off the clock. This is also true for gold clubs, shoes, handbags, etc etc.

[brute_nm]

On 12/22/2023 at 7:23 PM, AbsoluteCarnage said:

Maybe CGC should inquire as to how Comic Link stickers are made and enhance the adhesion by idk 1700% and then slap that on all edges of a slab......... just a thought

infinity + 1700% is still infinity