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

[wombat]

On 1/5/2024 at 2:56 PM, THE_BEYONDER said:

Were he swapping books without reholdering them, I would think someone would have noticed the discrepancy between the book they received and the scan of the book on the CGC database.

Were there always scans available?

And for all we know maybe some people did notice. And returned the books back to the seller. 

[wiparker824]

On 1/5/2024 at 12:56 PM, THE_BEYONDER said:

Were he swapping books without reholdering them, I would think someone would have noticed the discrepancy between the book they received and the scan of the book on the CGC database.

Keep in mind CGC imaging every book is fairly recent and this scammer selling books goes well before that.

[shadroch]

On 1/5/2024 at 12:53 PM, THE_BEYONDER said:

That would be quite the list.

This is quite the scandal.  Leave no stone unturned.

[pdags]

On 1/5/2024 at 2:56 PM, THE_BEYONDER said:

I would think someone would have noticed the discrepancy between the book they received and the scan of the book on the CGC database.

A lot people might not even know they started publishing images with the notes until this thread.  Also, it is fairly new.  Not a lot of opportunity to get caught until just recently.

[LordRahl]

On 1/5/2024 at 11:53 AM, shadroch said:

I've no idea how many are out there, but I'd bet a quarter it is far more than 350.  I'm sitting out the Prime auction and refocusing my purchasing for the near future.

I bet it's more as well. You will have to define "far more" before I can tell if we're in the same ballpark. And what pray tell is a Prime auction?

[pdags]

On 1/5/2024 at 3:02 PM, LordRahl said:

And what pray tell is a Prime auction?

Haha, I was thinking the same thing.  I assumed he meant bigger auctions with the books Briva3 is known to have swapped.

[EastEnd1]

On 1/5/2024 at 2:42 PM, LordRahl said:

You are correct in that I doubt CGC will make a statement on that. In my experience, and I've cracked a lot of books, it's somewhat dependent on the individual holder itself. Especially with the 1st gen holders. Some are extremely easy to open and leave no evidence of it (or very little if you are really looking) and others not so much. While I basically just completely destroy the current gen of slab when I break into them, I suspect the same will be true if using the methods described on youtube. Some will show little to no evidence and others will be obvious. 

Yeah, just tough to say when we still know so little.  I can tell you that if I was in charge at Heritage or Comiclink or MCS, I'd be pulling every slab I had in my possession consigned by the scammer and giving them a VERY GOOD looksie.  I have to assume CGC has shared the name of the scammer with them.  The question then becomes, if they do find some evidence of tampering of a book not currently on the list, what do they do?  What do they say?  The repercussions business-wise could be significant if that gets out.  My expectation is that a lot of conversation is going on right now behind the scenes between CGC and the large platforms about this possibility.  Hopefully the conclusion will be that most, if not all, of the holders remained tamper-evident.  

[comicwiz]

On 1/5/2024 at 2:45 PM, LordRahl said:

Easy. A lot of these books are prime candidates for CPR. We all know CPR happens a lot. If there were thousands, more would have come to light by now. I mean take IH 181, that book is thousands of dollars for a .2 bump. I bet that is a top 3 CPR book.

I don't know what this has to do with an alleged reholder or swap scheme. This person seemingly found another way to be awarded by a grade bump that didn't require CPR.

However, if I might - if you indicated to shad that you agreed the alleged person behind this probably didn't do it one book at a time. I took this to mean you thought he sent books in batches. How do you reconcile that there are books dating as far back as 5 years ago that link to one of the named aliases? 

I have seen a sign on the list that they may have overestimated. That's one book though, I hope I don't start seeing strikethroughs on books I've marked as tampered, because that assessment on a small sample may change the entire complexion of the accuracy of the 'impacted" list.

There are however other aspects of this which concern me. The date/age occurrence of cert numbers associated to this tampering scandal is one. The other is if we go by the theory the person was sending in batches, even if we go by when the last Hulk 181 reappeared with a different book in 2021, 1 year of doing this is already worrying. 3 years is a long time.

And there's certainly older. That first book on the "impacted" list was sold by zaneglor in 2016.

Edited January 5 by comicwiz

[shadroch]

On 1/5/2024 at 1:02 PM, LordRahl said:

I bet it's more as well. You will have to define "far more" before I can tell if we're in the same ballpark. And what pray tell is a Prime auction?

I have no idea how big this is. If one of the names I've seen thrown about is involved, it could be bad.  I know only what I've read and much of it is unverified. I am hitting the pause button on purchasing any slabbed books.  MCS runs four Prime auctions a year.  It's where I buy most of my bigger books and I had planned on continuing.

[360flip]

Digging more into the CGC list where there are multiple books in a given submission

Grade Date 07/19/2023
flagged by CGC
4286977    001 custom label
4286977    002 custom label
4286977    004 custom label

not flagged by CGC
4286977    003 normal blue label
4286977    005 normal blue label hulk 181 grade 8.5
4286977    006 normal green label hulk 181 grade 8.5

Guessing the flagged books (1, 2, and 4 of the submission) were sent back after 07/19/2023 for the custom label with lower grade books swapped into slab.

3, 5, and 6 of the submission appear to be raw book submissions

Editing... the next step I suppose is for him to swap the green 181 into the 4286977    005 slab and submit for custom label.

 

Edited January 5 by 360flip

[THE_BEYONDER]

On 1/5/2024 at 3:14 PM, 360flip said:

Digging more into the CGC list where there are multiple books in a given submission

Grade Date 07/19/2023
flagged by CGC
4286977    001 custom label
4286977    002 custom label
4286977    004 custom label

not flagged by CGC
4286977    003 normal blue label
4286977    005 normal blue label hulk 181 grade 8.5
4286977    006 normal green label hulk 181 grade 8.5

Guessing the flagged books (1, 2, and 4 of the submission) were sent back after 07/19/2023 for the custom label with lower grade books swapped into slab.

3, 5, and 6 of the submission appear to be raw book submissions

Why submit the green label 181?

[360flip]

On 1/5/2024 at 12:20 PM, THE_BEYONDER said:

Why submit the green label 181?

just edited my OG post

[namisgr]

On 1/5/2024 at 3:20 PM, THE_BEYONDER said:

Why submit the green label 181?

It'll be switcherooed into a case sporting a blue label.

[LordRahl]

On 1/5/2024 at 12:11 PM, comicwiz said:

I don't know what this has to do with an alleged reholder or swap scheme. This person seemingly found another way to be awarded by a grade bump that didn't require CPR.

However, if I might - if you indicated to shad that you agreed the alleged person behind this probably didn't do it one book at a time. I took this to mean you thought he sent books in batches. How do you reconcile that there are books dating as far back as 5 years ago that link to one of the named aliases? 

I have seen a sign on the list that they may have overestimated. That's one book though, I hope I don't start seeing strikethroughs on books I've marked as tampered, because that assessment on a small sample may change the entire complexion of the accuracy of the 'impacted" list.

There are however other aspects of this which concern me. The date/age occurrence of cert numbers associated to this tampering scandal is one. The other is if we go by the theory the person was sending in batches, even if we go by when the last Hulk 181 reappeared with a different book in 2021, 1 year of doing this is already worrying. 3 years is a long time.

And there's certainly older. That first book on the "impacted" list was sold by zaneglor in 2016.

I thought the CRP part of my post was relatively self-evident but I'll spell it out. IH 181, there are 19 on the list out of 350. That's 5.4% of the list. For those of you that believe this numbers in the thousands of fraudulent books... let's say what...5K? If the percentage holds, that would be 270 IH 181's that would be fraudulent. If there are 270 Qualified IH 181's out there sitting in Blue slabs, and this book is frequently CPR'd, you don't think someone would have stumbled on one of them by now when they cracked it and sent it in? That goes for every book on the list that isn't a 9.8, so far more than 270 total books. 

As for batches, yeah I think ASM 300's and 194's, he is sending in batched. There are simply too many for this to be a 1 at a time kind of thing. For the books that don't have that many examples, could very well be 1 at a time. 

[THE_BEYONDER]

On 1/5/2024 at 3:21 PM, 360flip said:

just edited my OG post

So the scammer submitted the green label book simply to get it put into an inner well?

[justafan]

On 12/20/2023 at 10:25 AM, topcat54 said:

So the guy selling these books is known on ebay as briva3 but when you select one of the books the seller comes up Comic Selects who ships from Forest Hills, New York, United States . Is there a reason this happens or is this the name of his store on the bay?

Has this individual already been ID'd and being dealt with by CGC?  I think he did this to a book I sold to someone in back in early Sept 2023.  Not sure if it's the same guy but might help add to the chain of custody. I just found out last night that a cert# that I used to own is now on the list of fraudulent slabs.  I do see an email for Reportfraud@collectiblesGroup.com so I'll try sending the info I have there. 

[THE_BEYONDER]

On 1/5/2024 at 3:22 PM, namisgr said:

It'll be switcherooed into a case sporting a blue label.

Got it.  Forgot that he needed the book to have an inner well.

[LordRahl]

On 1/5/2024 at 12:14 PM, shadroch said:

I have no idea how big this is. If one of the names I've seen thrown about is involved, it could be bad.  I know only what I've read and much of it is unverified. I am hitting the pause button on purchasing any slabbed books.  MCS runs four Prime auctions a year.  It's where I buy most of my bigger books and I had planned on continuing.

What name is that?

 

And I guess I need to check out MCS, wasn't aware they had auctions at all.

[360flip]

One more example.

Grade Date
08/18/2023
flagged by CGC, all custom labels likely swapped to lower grade book after 08/18/2023
4310701    001
4310701    002
4310701    003
4310701    005
4310701    007
4310701    008

# 4 and 6 books of 4310701 submission are still regular blue label.

 

 

[shadroch]

On 1/5/2024 at 1:25 PM, LordRahl said:

What name is that?

 

And I guess I need to check out MCS, wasn't aware they had auctions at all.

It's unverified and gossip. When the people doing the investigations are confident, I'm sure this will be one of the places the perps are exposed. 

MCS has weekly auctions, where you can find some great bargains at times, and quarterly auctions with better material.  They have a Prime auction running right now. 

Edited January 5 by shadroch