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

9,029 posts in this topic

Lightning55

Lightning55

Posted
Posted (edited)
On 12/24/2023 at 3:56 PM, Lightning55 said:

There is a screencap earlier where the buyer is communicating with briva, addressing him or her as Brees, and getting a response. 

Could be a typo though, as in Brie or Bree.

On 12/24/2023 at 4:16 PM, drporkchop said:

I was the buyer.

Not Bree, not Bries. It was Brees.

I was upset at the Hulk 340 book as it looked more like a 9.0 or 9.2 than the 9.8 that i purchased from him. I checked the physical box for his name before messaging him and found his name as Brees, which i then used to message him for refund.

Unfortunately i checked my Ebay Purchase history and cannot find his full name or address anywhere. Since i live in Canada, when ebay allowed the refund, they emailed me a DHL return label to their international Global shipping hub in Glendale heights IL, which was then forwarded to his home address in NY.

 

You were one of the buyers. There was, as I mentioned, a screencap of an offer on an ASM 300.

But if you saw it on the label on the box, that not only trumps everything, it confirms it. ^^

Edited by Lightning55
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Prince Namor

Prince Namor

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On 12/25/2023 at 4:14 AM, paqart said:

 

After saying all that, he thinks CGC is "screwed." Their reputation is their product, and their product is this slab, which has clearly been compromised. Worse, they have slabs for other high value collectibles, like coins and stamps. What happened with comics does spillover reputational damage that would impact their stock value if they are a public company.

I would think that the only thing that would hurt CGC is if the MARKET completely collapsed on Graded Books.

As long as people are still making money on Graded Comics, CGC will survive.

Literally, we could find out tomorrow it was an inside job, everyone knew, it was covered up, ESG made them do it, blah, blah, blah.*

As long as people are making money on the service, it will go on.

 

 

*Not saying IN ANY WAY that any of that happened or even that I suspect it has - it's purposely hyperbolic. 

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Prince Namor

Prince Namor

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On 12/25/2023 at 3:43 AM, VintageComics said:

Actually, my favorite 'Roy' character was Michael Shannon in Midnight Special, a TERRIFIC movie, and I watched this movie a few days after I went on a date with a woman named Shannon, which etched it into my memory. It was a pretty neat co-incidence. 

If you like Superhero stories, this movie is a must see. 

EDITED out spoilers. 

It's great. Watch it. 

 

On 12/24/2023 at 1:35 AM, VintageComics said:

Apologies for the distractions from my end, but it takes more than one person to derail a thread in this way and I'm going to do my part to keep it on track. :foryou:

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Lightning55

Lightning55

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On 12/24/2023 at 4:14 PM, paqart said:

@Buzzetta: I just spoke with a good friend who is an expert on the insurance industry and who is familiar with the ways they deal with fraud. He said the most likely scenario is that eBay pays the buyer out of pocket, without making an insurance claim. They wouldn't let anyone else know what they did, and wouldn't look for more victims. They would only deal with buyers who came to them.

If the size of the fraud was large enough, they might use stop loss insurance, but the total value of this one individual's fraud is probably too low to do that. Even if it hit a million dollars, it would be easier to eat the cost.

About the only way he could see eBay doing anything else is if they wanted to make an example of the scammer. This, he said, is not impossible. If that is what they decided to do, they would throw everything into going after the scammer and CGC. The goal would be to scare everyone involved so badly that they "voluntarily" clean up their act.

If, in the unlikely event eBay did make an insurance claim, the insurance company would be in a position to go after CGC, and likely would. He said the insurance company "would absolutely go after CGC first" and ignore the scammer, because that is where they are more likely to get paid. Then, as I thought, CGC would have to go after the scammer.

In other words, my scenario only happens if eBay does something that my insurance agency friend thinks is highly unlikely: make a claim on the insurance.

This has nothing to do with the business relationship between CGC and eBay. Instead, it is based on the value of the items involved, fraud volume, and gross sales.

After saying all that, he thinks CGC is "screwed." Their reputation is their product, and their product is this slab, which has clearly been compromised. Worse, they have slabs for other high value collectibles, like coins and stamps. What happened with comics does spillover reputational damage that would impact their stock value if they are a public company.

Big companies like eBay don't usually carry insurance . They self-insure because they are large enough to absorb whatever hits come along.

They know an insurance company is going to charge premiums larger than they intend to pay out,  since they have to make a profit. So it's cheaper to just cover your own incidents. 

I was a McDonald's manager for 10 years. No insurance. Much cheaper for the corporation to pay claims as they happened than to pay premiums annually for 40,000 individual restaurants. Way cheaper.

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Stefan_W

Stefan_W

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On 12/24/2023 at 4:37 PM, Lightning55 said:

Big companies like eBay don't usually carry insurance . They self-insure because they are large enough to absorb whatever hits come along.

They know an insurance company is going to charge premiums larger than they intend to pay out,  since they have to make a profit. So it's cheaper to just cover your own incidents. 

I was a McDonald's manager for 10 years. No insurance. Much cheaper for the corporation to pay claims as they happened than to pay premiums annually for 40,000 individual restaurants. Way cheaper.

Ebay also has the added internal protection of offering up automatic refunds. If someone discovers an item, like a comic book, is not as promised they can simply initiate a return and the seller can do nothing about it. They would only be on the hook for things outside of their return window or if a buyer came at them for some reason rather than doing a return. 

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Bo1983

Bo1983

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On 12/24/2023 at 4:12 PM, Lightning55 said:

If you mean to buy raw copies, not slabs, you are correct. 

If you mean "Buy the book, not the grade.",  problem not solved.

You can look all you want at that Hulk 181 in the slab, and decide that the grade looks appropriate. But you're buying a comic with no MVS.

So maybe we still have a problem. 

Agreed

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Iconic1s

Iconic1s

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When this is all said and done (is it one person/group, legal action taken, etc) I hope that CGC can release a list of all cert numbers associated with that person’s/persons’ submissions and offer some kind of evaluation/regrading of those books.  Just looking at slabbed books online the last couple days, things don’t feel the same.  The label may say such and such but geez, there just isn’t any way to know for sure now, knowing this has been going on.

I hope they don’t just ignore this, hoping it goes away!  It just seems too big to not address properly, even if it ends up being just one bad actor.

Whatever procedures need to be changed to fix this, I personally don’t want to get to the point where all reholders are regraded… that seems pretty extreme and punishes a whole lot of good people that just want their books in nice new slabs.

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paqart

paqart

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Posted
On 12/24/2023 at 4:37 PM, Lightning55 said:

Big companies like eBay don't usually carry insurance . They self-insure because they are large enough to absorb whatever hits come along.

They know an insurance company is going to charge premiums larger than they intend to pay out,  since they have to make a profit. So it's cheaper to just cover your own incidents. 

I was a McDonald's manager for 10 years. No insurance. Much cheaper for the corporation to pay claims as they happened than to pay premiums annually for 40,000 individual restaurants. Way cheaper.

He said the only insurance they'd have, and they might have it, is "Stop Loss". Meaning, if they anticipate $100M annual losses due to fraud, eBay covers it out of pocket. Anything over that, the insurance company deals with.

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ADAMANTIUM

ADAMANTIUM

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On 12/24/2023 at 1:21 PM, Yorick said:
On 12/24/2023 at 11:33 AM, paqart said:

I'm missing something here. How does the $4,995 sale for the MJI/9.8 version happen before the $1,450 sale for the 9.2/MJI?

I'm picturing something like this:

Step 1 or 2) Buy "SLAB" (this is the 9.8 slab, with comic)
Step 1 or 2) Buy "INFERIOR" (this is the low grade comic)
Step 3) Swap INFERIOR into SLAB, making "FAKE"
Step 4) Get FAKE graded (must have latest graded date)
Step 5) Sell FAKE (must have latest sale date)

So how is the ASM INFERIOR graded and sold after the FAKE?

Thread is moving too fast to keep up, but your step 2 regarding inferior slabs (and potentially addressing what someone else was asking about a 9.2):  He is resubmitting raw books to have them ENCASED.  These are the raw books that were pulled from Universal that he just wants the label for.  He sends in both raw books and cased books.  He needs sealed inner wells and LABELS, not necessarily high grade.

So CGC is just trusting the sealed inner well with label, but maybe enough of the damaged case is there (to whatever percentage) that cgc deems it worthy for straight reholder with no closer inspection...

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drotto

drotto

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On 12/24/2023 at 6:12 PM, ADAMANTIUM said:

And cgc reholders person not being a grader, not wanting to admit culpability or offer compensation for down grade, or just for whatever reason is going ahead with the recasing

Graders likely never see reholders.  Random employee opens it, sees no obvious damage, creates a new label,  puts it in the new case, off to the sealer it goes.

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silent06

silent06

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Hello. I am the Ebay buyer that purchase the two Amazing Spider-Man 238s Newsstand from briva3 or Comic Selects  and possibly by way of ComicLink  an Incredible Hulk 340. I became aware of this scam via the negative feedback left on briva3 Ebay seller account and the podcast provided by West Coast Davengers and 9.9 Newsstand.  I also believe the New Mutants 98 book that was part of the New Mutants Mark Jewler scam that was discussed in one of the podcast is possible a regular Newsstand edition I won in an auction from briva3 prior to the New Mutants Mark Jewelers auction by him. I suspect at last minute he needed the regular NM 98 newsstand as after I successfully won the auction he canceled the purchase through Ebay.  There has been a question of briva3 real name, location and possible contact information. Based on the shipments of the ASM 238s, a conversation I had personally with him as well as messages exchanged and most recently information provided to me by Ebay for the return of the ASM 238 books to him, I have contact information for him.

In my attempt make a claim with Ebay, I also submitted a return request, as that was the only option available, through their resolution center noting that the seller had been identified as defrauding buyers and that I would like to file a fraud claim. My hope was that  using the term fraud would trigger a keyword alert in their system and that someone from Ebay would reach out to me directly. It was to my surprise on Friday that I received a response from Ebay stating that the seller, briva3, had responded and approved my return request for the ASM 238 books. This concerns me as I now don't believe Ebay is aware that this is a case of the seller defrauding buyers and subsequently attempt to take action against the seller. If that is in fact the situation, it ties into my other concern of the books from buyers requesting returns being shipped back to the seller and used later in some new manner to defraud collectors in the future. While I want to be made whole financially, if possible. I don't want the books to be returned to briva3 only to be used in some nefarious manner down the line because of lack recourse or actions that allow briva3 to slip through the cracks. From the perspective of being one of the buyer's impacted by this scam, I would much rather CGC request the books forward to them, make the concessions to the buyers and either retain the books or regrade them accurately to possibly be sold at a later date at the new correct grade. In conjunction with that effort, enact new security measures that prevent a scam like this and the defrauding of buyers, in this manner, from occurring in the future. 

I would like to thank Dave at West Coast Davengers as after receiving the approved return response from Ebay, I reached out to him and he provided me his thoughts on the issue I am facing in returning the books to briva3 as well as recommended that I post on this forum for the perspective, thoughts and awareness of its members. 

Below are the links to the auctions for the ASM 238s I won on Ebay as well as the auction I won for the NM 98 that briva3 retracted the purchase for. If you look at the feedback of the bidding history and feedback count of the buyer for the auctions, you can see they were all won by the same buyer. Also, I have provided a link to the Incredible Hulk 340 that sold on Ebay and then was sold to me via ComicLink a few months later. The certification numbers are the same but I believe the books could possibly be different.

 

 

ASM 238s
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
NM 98
 
 
 
 
IH 340
 
 
 
 
 
 
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BigLeagueCHEW

BigLeagueCHEW

Posted
Posted (edited)
On 12/24/2023 at 1:56 PM, Lightning55 said:

There is a screencap earlier where the buyer is communicating with briva, addressing him or her as Brees, and getting a response. 

Could be a typo though, as in Brie or Bree.

Yes, 2 different names. One is Bree and one is Brees. 2 different addresses as well.
@THE_BEYONDER @VintageComics

Edited by BigLeagueCHEW
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