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

[mjoeyoung]

Is is possible that CGC doesn't have an example of a scam resealed book?  I'm assuming that the old cases from the reholders are trashed.  If there are no current scam books in the pipeline, would they even know how the books were tampered with?

There is also the possibility that the books were placed into "black market" cases and sonically welded, attempting to duplicate the CGC process.  How would you go about detecting that?

The idea that someone posting a video showing how to open the cases is in any way "dangerous," is a "putting your head in the sand" kind of response.  I think there will be justifiable doubt that CGC cases are "visibly" temper evident until we see evidence of these submitted cases.

To me, finding out that it was an "inside man" or lax procedures involving poorly resealed cases would be a much better outcome than, "we don't know" or "the cases were virtually indistinguishable from our own."

[ThatNerdyCanuck]

Found on Instagram. 

[THE_BEYONDER]

On 1/5/2024 at 12:40 PM, mjoeyoung said:

Is is possible that CGC doesn't have an example of a scam resealed book?  I'm assuming that the old cases from the reholders are trashed.  If there are no current scam books in the pipeline, would they even know how the books were tampered with?

There is also the possibility that the books were placed into "black market" cases and sonically welded, attempting to duplicate the CGC process.  How would you go about detecting that?

The idea that someone posting a video showing how to open the cases is in any way "dangerous," is a "putting your head in the sand" kind of response.  I think there will be justifiable doubt that CGC cases are "visibly" temper evident until we see evidence of these submitted cases.

To me, finding out that it was an "inside man" or lax procedures involving poorly resealed cases would be a much better outcome than, "we don't know" or "the cases were virtually indistinguishable from our own."

Hopefully there were still some reholders in the pipeline.  It would be nice to know if the scammer was able to reseal existing CGC cases or if they did actually get the equipment & supplies to make their own.

[EastEnd1]

On 1/5/2024 at 1:00 PM, THE_BEYONDER said:

Hopefully there were still some reholders in the pipeline.  It would be nice to know if the scammer was able to reseal existing CGC cases or if they did actually get the equipment & supplies to make their own.

Maybe CGC photographs the books that come in for reholdering just like regular submissions? 

[THE_BEYONDER]

On 1/5/2024 at 12:59 PM, ThatNerdyCanuck said:

Found on Instagram. 

We’ve been focusing on his eBay sales in this thread, but it now seems like CL is another venue the scammer frequents.

[wiparker824]

On 1/5/2024 at 11:08 AM, THE_BEYONDER said:

We’ve been focusing on his eBay sales in this thread, but it now seems like CL is another venue the scammer frequents.

CL chimed in on the thread that they identified a number of books both bought and sold by the individual. 

[THE_BEYONDER]

On 1/5/2024 at 1:13 PM, wiparker824 said:

CL chimed in on the thread that they identified a number of books both bought and sold by the individual. 

I saw Josh’s replies in this thread.  I’m curious how many books on the list were sold through CL.

[Silver Surfer]

On 1/5/2024 at 5:26 AM, comicwiz said:

Not sure what's happening with the formatting on this thread, but I'm reposting this to avoid the next page links it's generating.

The list below provides a breakdown of the Hulk 181 sales, which intermingle the research I did, along with the examples appearing on CGC's impacted list. This is 17 of the 19 shown on the impacted list. The examples listed in red are repeated attempts to sell the same book. If you combine both the single incident with repeat attempts (totals at the bottom in green and red), it's $175,634. This is only 17 books out of the approximate 350 comics on CGC's list of "impacted" books.

Do you think the red sales were unsuccessful attempts at shilling up the prices?

[BigLeagueCHEW]

On 1/5/2024 at 10:08 AM, THE_BEYONDER said:

We’ve been focusing on his eBay sales in this thread, but it now seems like CL is another venue the scammer frequents.

Instagram as well, using grailzcomix as one of them. Not sure if any confirmed sales were done by them. They did post the CGC statement on their IG to help out.

[THE_BEYONDER]

On 1/5/2024 at 1:19 PM, BigLeagueCHEW said:

Instagram as well, using grailzcomix as one of them. Not sure if any confirmed sales were done by them. They did post the CGC statement on their IG to help out.

Instagram, CL, EBay….

Any other venues been confirmed?

[paqart]

On 1/4/2024 at 11:50 PM, maz25 said:

Have you not followed the "reported stories" on the FBI on a federal level over the last 6-7 years?  Maybe local gets involved. no way federal does anything.  This gets buried.

I disagree. True, they are currently wasting resources doing what appear to be illegal things, but a case like this would help nullify the bad image they've developed of late, and it would be a fairly easy win for them.

[tmac100]

On 1/5/2024 at 9:32 AM, wiparker824 said:

This is why I think these SS books being on this list are the most problematic for CGC. If they are fraudulent I don’t see a way this doesn’t involve an insider at CGC to help, at least in a way to be profitable enough to make it worth it. But even having these books on the list causes a problem for CGC, you’re basically saying you can’t verify they were witnessed sigs now, so if someone bought one of these and sends it back to CGC they can’t possibly retain the yellow label, which is different than those sending back blue labels on this book that could come back exactly as they were sent, same grade and label with a new cert. The yellow labels are automatically going to the pile of compensation. And if let’s say this person sold this AF15 off privately for example whoever has it isn’t going to just easily be able to replace it even if you compensate with FMV. There are only 3 in SS at 6.5, 5 in SS graded higher. You may be waiting years to see another one in yellow label that high of grade come to market.

Let's say a lot of the books that are not fraudulent (like this one that may not be fraudulent) are ones he kept for his personal collection, which I think is likely.  What does he do with those books now?  Hard to sell because they are on the illegitimate list, but he can't really send them back to CGC as part of their offer of compensation/review of potentially impacted books.  I guess he could find a clueless buyer, but tough to do with books of that caliber.  Maybe just crack and sell raw or reholder at another grading company.

[comicwiz]

On 1/5/2024 at 1:19 PM, Silver Surfer said:

Do you think the red sales were unsuccessful attempts at shilling up the prices?

Those are actually recorded as past sales. If I'm wearing an appraisers hat, it would raise too many questions for me, and I'd treat it as an outlier.

Edited January 5 by comicwiz

[shadroch]

If I was scamming a company, I don't think I'd keep any of the slabs as personal trophies. 

[THE_BEYONDER]

On 1/5/2024 at 1:41 PM, shadroch said:

If I was scamming a company, I don't think I'd keep any of the slabs as personal trophies. 

They were more using CGC to scam others than actually scamming CGC itself.  

[mycomicshop]

Given the volume of posts in this thread this feels like shouting into a hurricane, but here's an update regarding the intersection of these books with MCS.

We loaded the 350 slab IDs into a database table and cross-checked against current inventory and previous inventory and sales.

Total of 6 books, and none of them were currently in inventory.

1 and 2:
Two ASM 194 Newsstand 9.8s (4121886002 and 4199541002) that were consigned with us earlier in 2023 than returned to the consignor at his request in Sep 2023 prior to any sale. We do not suspect the consignor is involved in this. We contacted the consignor, who was already aware of the issue. He says he bought those two from briva3 on eBay, and also has a third on the CGC list that he acquired from ComicLink. He's sending all 3 back to CGC.

3: Ultimate Spider-Man (2009 2nd Series) 160F CGC 9.8 SS 1061933001
Sold May 27 2012 to a buyer on eBay. Our order archive doesn't preserve buyer name/address from that period so don't know who bought it.
We know the consignor and the consignor is not part of the scam. Don't know why this book is on the list. Maybe the scammer bought it some time after 2012 and reholdered it, either for benign or nefarious purposes, and it's on the list because it was touched by his account? No idea.

4: Nyx 3 CGC 9.8 1265712015
Sold June 19 2015 to a buyer on eBay.
We know the consignor and the consignor is not part of the scam.

5: Hulk 181 CGC 9.0 1055471002
Sold May 11 2021 to a buyer on MCS
We bought it April 2021 from somebody who at the time told us he bought it for $12K Mar 12 2021 (lines up with sale tracked by GPA, my guess is he bought it on eBay).
The buyer is definitely not involved in the scam. We've reported the issue to the person that bought it from us. If there is a problem with the book, I'm assuming it went qualified to blue label and the change was made prior to that Mar 12 2021 sale.

6: ASM 252 Newsstand CGC 9.8 4040878007
Sold Jun 23 2023 to a buyer on eBay, user name elysium142 that I see has already been cited as being associated with the scammer. Kew Gardens address. The book was legit when we sold it, purchased by the scammer presumably to use in his fraud.

Additionally, we've set up an alert in our software so that if any books on CGC's list come to us in the future, at the point we scan the barcode it'll alert us about the book so we won't record it.

[THE_BEYONDER]

On 1/5/2024 at 1:46 PM, mycomicshop said:

Given the volume of posts in this thread this feels like shouting into a hurricane, but here's an update regarding the intersection of these books with MCS.

We loaded the 350 slab IDs into a database table and cross-checked against current inventory and previous inventory and sales.

Total of 6 books, and none of them were currently in inventory.

1 and 2:
Two ASM 194 Newsstand 9.8s (4121886002 and 4199541002) that were consigned with us earlier in 2023 than returned to the consignor at his request in Sep 2023 prior to any sale. We do not suspect the consignor is involved in this. We contacted the consignor, who was already aware of the issue. He says he bought those two from briva3 on eBay, and also has a third on the CGC list that he acquired from ComicLink. He's sending all 3 back to CGC.

3: Ultimate Spider-Man (2009 2nd Series) 160F CGC 9.8 SS 1061933001
Sold May 27 2012 to a buyer on eBay. Our order archive doesn't preserve buyer name/address from that period so don't know who bought it.
We know the consignor and the consignor is not part of the scam. Don't know why this book is on the list. Maybe the scammer bought it some time after 2012 and reholdered it, either for benign or nefarious purposes, and it's on the list because it was touched by his account? No idea.

4: Nyx 3 CGC 9.8 1265712015
Sold June 19 2015 to a buyer on eBay.
We know the consignor and the consignor is not part of the scam.

5: Hulk 181 CGC 9.0 1055471002
Sold May 11 2021 to a buyer on MCS
We bought it April 2021 from somebody who at the time told us he bought it for $12K Mar 12 2021 (lines up with sale tracked by GPA, my guess is he bought it on eBay).
The buyer is definitely not involved in the scam. We've reported the issue to the person that bought it from us. If there is a problem with the book, I'm assuming it went qualified to blue label and the change was made prior to that Mar 12 2021 sale.

6: ASM 252 Newsstand CGC 9.8 4040878007
Sold Jun 23 2023 to a buyer on eBay, user name elysium142 that I see has already been cited as being associated with the scammer. Kew Gardens address. The book was legit when we sold it, purchased by the scammer presumably to use in his fraud.

Additionally, we've set up an alert in our software so that if any books on CGC's list come to us in the future, at the point we scan the barcode it'll alert us about the book so we won't record it.

Thanks for sharing 

[ADAMANTIUM]

On 1/5/2024 at 12:46 PM, mycomicshop said:

6: ASM 252 Newsstand CGC 9.8 4040878007
Sold Jun 23 2023 to a buyer on eBay, user name elysium142 that I see has already been cited as being associated with the scammer. Kew Gardens address. The book was legit when we sold it, purchased by the scammer presumably to use in his fraud.

Additionally, we've set up an alert in our software so that if any books on CGC's list come to us in the future, at the point we scan the barcode it'll alert us about the book so we won't record it.

awesome info! Good to know  

I don't suppose you have the scans from way back then? to now compare to any new ones?

[THE_BEYONDER]

On 1/5/2024 at 1:50 PM, ADAMANTIUM said:

awesome info! Good to know  

I don't suppose you have the scans from way back then? to now compare to any new ones?

 

[wiparker824]

On 1/5/2024 at 11:32 AM, tmac100 said:

Let's say a lot of the books that are not fraudulent (like this one that may not be fraudulent) are ones he kept for his personal collection, which I think is likely.  What does he do with those books now?  Hard to sell because they are on the illegitimate list, but he can't really send them back to CGC as part of their offer of compensation/review of potentially impacted books.  I guess he could find a clueless buyer, but tough to do with books of that caliber.  Maybe just crack and sell raw or reholder at another grading company.

I’d rather not give too many ideas to the scammer but I can tell you I’d no longer have any book on this list in my possession if I were him and I’ll leave it at that.