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

[EastEnd1]

On 1/3/2024 at 2:22 PM, LordRahl said:

I'm slightly confused too but I think what happened is original book was bought from Sparkle. It was then switched with an 8.0ish book and sold as 9.2 by zaneglor. The person who bought it from zaneglor CPR'd the book and sold it on Heritage. Coincidentally it got a 9.2 after being CPR'd, even though it was a lower grade book than the original 9.2. 

That's what I originally thought but the thing I don't understand though is that the book has the same serial number after the CPR??  Wouldn't it get a new one?

[sledgehammer]

On 1/3/2024 at 1:22 PM, LordRahl said:

Coincidentally it got a 9.2 after being CPR'd, even though it was a lower grade book than the original 9.2. 

Why are you sure CGC graded it?

[LordRahl]

On 1/3/2024 at 11:26 AM, sledgehammer said:

Why are you sure CGC graded it?

Maybe I'm missing something? It's clearly the same book but has also clearly been pressed. How would this happen without CGC grading it again?

[LordRahl]

On 1/3/2024 at 11:26 AM, EastEnd1 said:

That's what I originally thought but the thing I don't understand though is that the book has the same serial number after the CPR??  Wouldn't it get a new one?

Hmmm... not sure about this. It should if it was re-graded. It's clearly pressed based on the difference between the zaneglor and Heritage pics.

[Silver Surfer]

The plot thickens.

[sledgehammer]

On 1/3/2024 at 1:31 PM, LordRahl said:

On 1/3/2024 at 1:26 PM, sledgehammer said:

Why are you sure CGC graded it?

Maybe I'm missing something? It's clearly the same book but has also clearly been pressed. How would this happen without CGC grading it again?

Don't want to say too much yet.

[EastEnd1]

On 1/3/2024 at 2:32 PM, LordRahl said:

Hmmm... not sure about this. It should if it was re-graded. It's clearly pressed based on the difference between the zaneglor and Heritage pics.

Yep, totally agree. 

Hope I'm wrong but I'm left with either the scammer was able to get into both the outer and inner wells and reseal them both without an obvious difference (apparently Heritage didn't notice anything) or an insider was involved.  Or, I guess was simply "a clerical error" by CGC, if we want to be optimistic. 

[comicwiz]

On 1/3/2024 at 2:22 PM, LordRahl said:

I'm slightly confused too but I think what happened is original book was bought from Sparkle. It was then switched with an 8.0ish book and sold as 9.2 by zaneglor. The person who bought it from zaneglor CPR'd the book and sold it on Heritage. Coincidentally it got a 9.2 after being CPR'd, even though it was a lower grade book than the original 9.2. 

This was my assessment.

With the added, someone took the unpressed uncleaned 9.4, hook, line and sinker!

Edited January 3 by comicwiz

[BrashL]

On 1/3/2024 at 1:34 PM, sledgehammer said:

Don't want to say too much yet.

[jas1vans]

On 12/25/2023 at 9:15 PM, BlowUpTheMoon said:

This was in the QC thread. I am pretty sure it was the same one scanned in though. Reading this thread made me think of all the ?? in the QC thread and this was one of the more recent. "Hey you missed the Canadian Price" seemed as easy to say as "Hey you missed the MJ."

[comicwiz]

On 1/3/2024 at 2:32 PM, LordRahl said:

Hmmm... not sure about this. It should if it was re-graded. It's clearly pressed based on the difference between the zaneglor and Heritage pics.

Lots of confusion here for certain, but a few things that run through my mind. How does the 9.2 listed by the alleged seller even get that grade (if it passed through CGC's hands). And if you look closely at the 9.2 after it reappeared at Heritage, it actually seems worse, and still got a 9.2. And no change in certification number. 

You can't script this as a "how to troll CGC" any more definitively than what we are seeing unfolding here with the way these switches occurred. 

Edited February 15 by comicwiz

[sledgehammer]

On 1/3/2024 at 1:46 PM, comicwiz said:

On 1/3/2024 at 1:22 PM, LordRahl said:

I'm slightly confused too but I think what happened is original book was bought from Sparkle. It was then switched with an 8.0ish book and sold as 9.2 by zaneglor. The person who bought it from zaneglor CPR'd the book and sold it on Heritage. Coincidentally it got a 9.2 after being CPR'd, even though it was a lower grade book than the original 9.2. 

This was my assessment.

What if zaneglor used a scan from before it was cleaned and pressed? He puts the book back in the slab, and gets it reholdered.

Maybe he reholdered it, and then played around with it?

[sledgehammer]

On 1/3/2024 at 1:48 PM, BrashL said:

Yea, OK.

[comicwiz]

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

What if zaneglor used a scan from before it was cleaned and pressed? He puts the book back in the slab, and gets it reholdered.

Maybe he reholdered it, and then played around with it?

I'm staying on a strict diet of Occam's razor's. Someone took the bait on the unpressed/uncleaned, 9.4. Took a look at that back cover, and said, giddy-up. Then took a bath when it sold for half. 

[sledgehammer]

It's worth the look at that scan oh the heritage site.

Yowza.

[comicwiz]

On 1/3/2024 at 2:57 PM, sledgehammer said:

It's worth the look at that scan oh the heritage site.

Yowza.

8.0 on a good day. If anyone is even debating if this is the same book, look at those two dots beside the K, under the comics stamp, and the colour break on the shadowing of the K above the MCG banner. It's a fair point to raise that HA's scans are always much clearer, if I could have used scans like this with all my searches, I would have found more right now, of this I'm certain.

Props to GPA, as that cert was hard to read on the sparklecity scan, and I was able to confirm it was through the GPA site. If this research does anything beyond illuminating the activities of this unfolding scandal, it should serve as confirmation on why we need tools like GPA, as well as others, to be able to go back in time and do the kind of uncovering of information that's needed. 

Without the tools and heavy lifting, this would be the status quo. 

This now moves the timeline as far back as 2021, but possibly as far back as 2019 if the alleged seller was the buyer of that sparklecity listing.

Edited February 15 by comicwiz

[pdags]

On 1/3/2024 at 2:26 PM, EastEnd1 said:

That's what I originally thought but the thing I don't understand though is that the book has the same serial number after the CPR??

Maybe they had CGC do the Pressing?  I don't know if that would keep the serial number or not.  Anybody know?

Edited January 3 by pdags

[Timmay]

Doesn't look pressed to me.  This bend on the edge of the front cover is visible in the heritage scans and the zaneglor scans and would have been removed if pressed.

[LordRahl]

On 1/3/2024 at 11:51 AM, comicwiz said:

Lots of confusion here for certain, but a few things that run through my mind. How does the 9.2 zaneglor list even get that grade (if it passed through CGC's hands). And if you look closely at the 9.2 after it reappeared at Heritage, it actually seems worse, and still got a 9.2. And no change in certification number. 

You can't script this as a "how to troll CGC" any more definitively than what we are seeing unfolding here with the way these switches occurred. 

You're not being serious are you? You think the book in the Heritage scan looks worse than the book with all the corner and edge folds in the zaneglor scan?

[comicwiz]

On 1/3/2024 at 3:15 PM, LordRahl said:

You're not being serious are you? You think the book in the Heritage scan looks worse than the book with all the corner and edge folds in the zaneglor scan?

Yes. And not by a little.