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

[paqart]

On 1/2/2024 at 3:47 PM, William-James88 said:

Either people get together and visit a law office about this or a law firm gets wind of this and seeks to add plaintifs.

But either way, the damages aren't high enough or obvious enough for this to be a worthwhile endeavor.

If CGC is willing to compensate for overgraded comics by refunding purchase price in exchange for the comic, there is no lawsuit. As for everyone else saying their comics might be worth less because of this, that is a highly speculative argument. I don't see a jury buying it. I wouldn't, and I'm biased in favor of that argument. The issue to me isn't whether there is a loss of value or salability, but whether it is permanent and can it be reliably quantified. My answer to both questions is no.

[Lightning55]

On 1/2/2024 at 4:53 PM, namisgr said:

So my question: what is the motivation to bother with reholdering in this instance?  The copy that is either below an 8.5 grade, suffering damage deserving of a green label, or both, carries an 8.5 blue label when switched into the top case.  Is it because there's is perceptible damage to the top outer case after the switcheroo, which the fraud launders by the reholdering process?  Or is there another reason to reholder that I'm leaving out?

If the reason to go ahead with the reholdering after the switcheroo is to hide perceptible damage to the outer case, then these switchouts leave a stigma that they've occurred, in the absence of any reholdering. 

All of the above, but mostly to get new scans, inhibiting the paper trail.

[comeaux]

[NewWorldOrder]

On 1/2/2024 at 3:36 PM, Bo1983 said:

Looks like that’s all they care about Capitalism baby!

As do most businesses.

[thehumantorch]

On 1/2/2024 at 8:38 AM, oakman29 said:

You are a wise man my friend, however trust in the product  HAS wained because if one slab is tainted you must be suspicious of ALL slabs . It would be a nightmare to go back , plus going bankrupted in that time. So they must push forward to instill confidence in their product.  Right now MY confidence in their product is subpar, so fix it before I give them any more of my money. Easy really.....😂

Hey Davey, nice to see you posting.

To be honest, when CGC does a decent job of encapsulation, I think their holders do a great job of presenting the books.  Many of the books in my collection I've slabbed myself so those don't worry me.  For the ones I didn't slab I always give them a good look over before buying them.  Considering how many books have been slabbed by CGC and the number of books we're likely worrying about here I suspect none of the books in my collection are a problem.  And despite this issue I suspect we're much more at risk buying raw books than graded. 

Not to excuse CGC, they need to do better and they need to be much more trustworthy than purchasing raw, otherwise there's no point to their business model.

[NewWorldOrder]

Scammer probably had his book on his watch list. 

He was probably thinking blue custom label here I come.

(To be fair a married Tattooz insert you really have to look closely for, easy to get pass the untrained eye)

Spoiler

Or the eyes that never looked in the first place....

 

 

[Bo1983]

On 1/2/2024 at 6:57 PM, Lightning55 said:

Not 18 million. Announced 10 million a year ago, and that included cards, magazines, posters, etc.

Even if 180,000 books, 99% of those are either too inexpensive to work with, or available in too few number to work into the scam.

Just another inflammatory, speculative statement. A cry for attention. 

Okay slab shill you scared 😂

[paqart]

Any Star Wars #1's in the suspicious group? It matches the profile: Expensive, right time period, has a super expensive variant. 

[wiparker824]

On 1/2/2024 at 3:12 PM, Mr. Spider-Woman said:

I scanned through the last 10+ pages or so and didn't see a link to a post at the Comic Book Collecting group on Reddit about the CGC scandal: 

140 comments so far. Not sure what that means long term but awareness of the ongoing situation definitely seems to be growing outside of this forum. I don't see anything written about the scandal at Bleeding Cool, CBR, or The Beat. There is an article at ComicBook.com:

https://comicbook.com/comics/news/cgc-comics-issues-statement-on-holder-tampering-controversy/

Yeah… keep in mind this same Reddit user posted a thread on that same sub titled “Why I stopped buying slabs (and why you should too)” and filled an essay of campaigning against slabs and CGC about 5 months ago and it got twice as many replies as what this new thread did. So, you have 1. A person who has previously hated CGC still hating CGC and 2. Getting less interaction with this post than his previous drivel. This isn’t to dismiss CGC’s failure in this debacle, just that that user on that sub isn’t a good barometer of anything. 

https://www.reddit.com/r/comicbookcollecting/s/5wp6pJ3hlM

[Sigur Ros]

On 1/2/2024 at 4:09 PM, MasterChief said:

  

CGC has used “tamper-evident holder,” “tamper-proof holder,” and “tamper evident hard plastic case” in adverts and articles to promote their product, service, and brand down through the years.

Here’s how the phraseology is used...

So much for tamper-proof.

Why would any grading company even try to make that claim?

 

[comicwiz]

On 1/2/2024 at 4:48 PM, THE_BEYONDER said:

Definitely another switcheroo.  

This cert number shows up twice on my dataset 

[9/12/2021] - $8,592

[8/7/2021] - $8,461

 

Edited January 5 by comicwiz

[comicwiz]

Information withheld.

Edited February 15 by comicwiz

[JC25427N]

On 1/2/2024 at 8:51 PM, thehumantorch said:

  Many of the books in my collection I've slabbed myself

Is your name Bree by any chance? 

[fatlab123]

I just had an eBay sale where the customer who hadn’t seen an older slab (2015) where it isn’t 100% sealed. He thought it had been tampered, which I understand . He also mentioned maybe it was mass produced from original serial number.  Now I have never had that before. My fear is that with all the information and the buyer who isn’t great at grading will question every cgc book with out a scan . I hope I’m wrong 

[Nick Furious]

On 1/2/2024 at 9:38 PM, fatlab123 said:

I just had an eBay sale where the customer who hadn’t seen an older slab (2015) where it isn’t 100% sealed. He thought it had been tampered, which I understand . He also mentioned maybe it was mass produced from original serial number.  Now I have never had that before. My fear is that with all the information and the buyer who isn’t great at grading will question every cgc book with out a scan . I hope I’m wrong 

Curious what was the dollar amount of the sale.  Was it a big enough amount to raise the caution flags for a buyer?

[fatlab123]

On 1/2/2024 at 7:57 PM, Nick Furious said:

Curious what was the dollar amount of the sale.  Was it a big enough amount to raise the caution flags for a buyer?

No it wasn’t just a $80 slab 

[Nick Furious]

On 1/2/2024 at 3:53 PM, namisgr said:

So my question: what is the motivation to bother with reholdering in this instance?  The copy that is either below an 8.5 grade, suffering damage deserving of a green label, or both, carries an 8.5 blue label when switched into the top case.  Is it because there's is perceptible damage to the top outer case after the switcheroo, which the fraud launders by the reholdering process?  Or is there another reason to reholder that I'm leaving out?

If the reason to go ahead with the reholdering after the switcheroo is to hide perceptible damage to the outer case, then these switchouts leave a stigma that they've occurred, in the absence of any reholdering. 

I've been wondering about this potentially unnecessary step as well since someone brought it up.  For something like the MJ insert, the answer is obvious.  But for switching a green label to blue or 9.4 to 9.8, it must have something to do with the condition of the case.  I figure that if the book grade was somewhat suspect to a buyer, the case needed to be pristine.  A loosely graded book inside a less-than-pristine case might be too many red flags to someone who just spent thousands of dollars.  So, the damaged cases were laundered through CGC to remove the evidence of tampering.  That's my theory.    

[Lightning55]

On 1/2/2024 at 9:04 PM, Bo1983 said:

Okay slab shill you scared 😂

Not a shill. I don't even have a dog in this fight.

Not scared - again, nothing to fear, nothing at risk.

I'm just countering the Chicken Little's of the world. And thread hijackers. 

[Lightning55]

On 1/2/2024 at 11:07 PM, Nick Furious said:

I've been wondering about this potentially unnecessary step as well since someone brought it up.  For something like the MJ insert, the answer is obvious.  But for switching a green label to blue or 9.4 to 9.8, it must have something to do with the condition of the case.  I figure that if the book grade was somewhat suspect to a buyer, the case needed to be pristine.  A loosely graded book inside a less-than-pristine case might be too many red flags to someone who just spent thousands of dollars.  So, the damaged cases were laundered through CGC to remove the evidence of tampering.  That's my theory.    

If you look up a high value slab that you are considering for purchase, and the pre‐existing photos don't match the comic that is sitting in there now, the seller is busted. That's how this scam got exposed in the first place.

To prevent that, the scammer finds an excuse for a new holder to get the photos on the lookup page to update to what is now in the slab.

[Nick Furious]

On 1/2/2024 at 10:08 PM, Lightning55 said:

Not a shill. I don't even have a dog in this fight.

Not scared - again, nothing to fear, nothing at risk.

I'm just countering the Chicken Little's of the world. And thread hijackers. 

If you ignore the trolls, they start to feel stupid eventually.  Unless they are too stupid to feel stupid.  That's always a possibility, apparently.