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

[comicjel]

On 2/17/2024 at 11:04 AM, ramithard said:

Let's say you have a Spider-man # 300 that was on the list at 9.8....you send it in....

CGC cracks it and and sees its a 9.2 0r 9.4.....CGC does their own clean and press and bumps it to a 9.6/9.8 ...doesn't matter...

They label it a 9.8....leave same same cert. number, re-seal, .... and mail back and say not affected....

I suspect you are being facetious - they won't pull stuff like that.

I do wonder how any of their reholdered books are being cleared though - if I were CGC, knowing how the scam worked, I would just assume all reholdered books by these guys were tainted somehow, even though it is not apparent how.  If they later discover that they were getting inside help, those "cleared" books will all need to be recalled!

If I knew a crook broke into 10 homes, but only 7 seemed to have things missing, I would not conclude that he did not steal from the other 3 homes, I would surmise that they have just not figured out what he stole from the other 3 yet.  

 

Edited February 17 by comicjel

[Tnexus]

I wonder if it's clear and obvious that it's not a swap based on their internal photos they don't crack it. If it's questionable they crack it and replace the certification for their own records.

[comicjel]

On 2/17/2024 at 2:37 PM, Tnexus said:

I wonder if it's clear and obvious that it's not a swap based on their internal photos they don't crack it. If it's questionable they crack it and replace the certification for their own records.

I think it might be the opposite... if they determine that the book has been swapped, they likely keep it "as is" for evidence, but if they determine that it has not been swapped, they are giving it a new cert, keeping the same grade, and returning it back to the owner.

I just do not trust that the scammers were getting any of their books reholdered for no reason (or just to get a custom label).

Edited February 17 by comicjel

[Gaard]

CGC, "Yeah, we know this scammer doesn't have a legitimate bone in his body, but if we don't say that some of these books pass muster it'll cost us way too much money...among other things."

 

Why would this known scammer settle for less profit on ANY honest sale, when he could make way, way, way more profit selling it his way?

[Sweet Lou 14]

On 2/17/2024 at 3:54 PM, Gaard said:

CGC, "Yeah, we know this scammer doesn't have a legitimate bone in his body, but if we don't say that some of these books pass muster it'll cost us way too much money...among other things."

 

Why would this known scammer settle for less profit on ANY honest sale, when he could make way, way, way more profit selling it his way?

The only answer I can give you is that (as far as I can tell) the scam mostly involves books that are very plentiful in grade.  The most expensive books on the list also happen to be very rare in grade -- it's not so easy to find an extra high-grade copy of a Silver Age key lying around to do his little tricks with.  Nor is it as easy to get away with it, since even high-grade copies of older books tend to have clear distinguishing marks.

[HighGrade]

On 2/17/2024 at 2:42 PM, comicjel said:

 

I just do not trust that the scammers were getting any of their books reholdered for no reason (or just to get a custom label).

My guess is to why many are good, scammer is probably sending in say 8, 10 whatever books with 2 or 3 that are off grade or swap sealed his way, maybe even a few small cracks at the bottom to hide any imperfections, so these 2 or so books just get mixed in with the good books to be reholdered.

Think about it, you might start to look closer, or think something is up if someone sends in "all" books with tiny issues, or sends in "all" books with bad grades/swap or don't match up, it becomes more obvious with 10 in a row.

So the simple answer is, you throw in good books, good holders in with your bad books or janky holders. Even a real eagle eye might go over a few bad apples when rushing, I mean if you reholder books all day, your going to start to get lazy, but if 8 bad apples show up in a row, you might notice it, say hey WTF is this?

Buying small collections it's a common practice of scammers to toss in books with missing pages, coupons out, or back cover damage especially. I try to look at "everything" but of course it's not easy, scammers hope a collector or dealer just doesn't look at everything. Of course this is rare, most sellers are honest, but I'm just pointing out that the old slip in a few rotten eggs is a practice used by scammers. It's happened to me, you just trust a seller, later look and one of the better books, and it's missing a page..AARRGGH, I got a batman 47 with a page missing because I wasn't looking at every single page in every book, I was rushing.

So yeah, I think that is exactly why there are good ones, scammer is not being legit or kind, but just trying to hide what he's doing in with legit books/holders. 

 

[ADAMANTIUM]

On 2/17/2024 at 4:22 PM, Sweet Lou 14 said:

The only answer I can give you is that (as far as I can tell) the scam mostly involves books that are very plentiful in grade.  The most expensive books on the list also happen to be very rare in grade -- it's not so easy to find an extra high-grade copy of a Silver Age key lying around to do his little tricks with.  Nor is it as easy to get away with it, since even high-grade copies of older books tend to have clear distinguishing marks.

Lol idk how rare per se, but we do know they're rarer than as the census says right now, I'm wondering if "it's been updated as they've been crossed off the list."

Looking at asm 300 in particular which was still under 2k in 9.8, despite 10k + graded or something. Only now to be even slimmer margins and by how much we don't know and aren't being informed.

Edited February 17 by ADAMANTIUM

[ADAMANTIUM]

On 2/17/2024 at 4:50 PM, ADAMANTIUM said:

Lol idk how rare per se, but we do know they're rarer than as the census says right now, I'm wondering if "it's been updated as they've been crossed off the list."

Looking at asm 300 in particular which was still under 2k in 9.8, despite 10k + graded or something. Only now to be even slimmer margins and by how much we don't know and aren't being informed.

Pardon me under 2k out of 35k+ in 9.8

[ADAMANTIUM]

You have about a 5% chance of 9.8 or something with asm 300, however

If you feel you have a 9.8? Or are sure about that 5%?

Then you have almkst a 1% chance of getting 9.9

10/1900=.0052

1900/35000=.054

.0052/.054=.009

Something like that 

 

Edited February 17 by ADAMANTIUM

[comicjel]

On 2/17/2024 at 5:49 PM, HighGrade said:

My guess is to why many are good, scammer is probably sending in say 8, 10 whatever books with 2 or 3 that are off grade or swap sealed his way, maybe even a few small cracks at the bottom to hide any imperfections, so these 2 or so books just get mixed in with the good books to be reholdered.

Think about it, you might start to look closer, or think something is up if someone sends in "all" books with tiny issues, or sends in "all" books with bad grades/swap or don't match up, it becomes more obvious with 10 in a row.

So the simple answer is, you throw in good books, good holders in with your bad books or janky holders. Even a real eagle eye might go over a few bad apples when rushing, I mean if you reholder books all day, your going to start to get lazy, but if 8 bad apples show up in a row, you might notice it, say hey WTF is this?

Buying small collections it's a common practice of scammers to toss in books with missing pages, coupons out, or back cover damage especially. I try to look at "everything" but of course it's not easy, scammers hope a collector or dealer just doesn't look at everything. Of course this is rare, most sellers are honest, but I'm just pointing out that the old slip in a few rotten eggs is a practice used by scammers. It's happened to me, you just trust a seller, later look and one of the better books, and it's missing a page..AARRGGH, I got a batman 47 with a page missing because I wasn't looking at every single page in every book, I was rushing.

So yeah, I think that is exactly why there are good ones, scammer is not being legit or kind, but just trying to hide what he's doing in with legit books/holders. 

 

You may be right, but he was not that careful with other aspects of the scam - like switching from non-MJI to MJI and non-newstand to newstand; and especially not thinking that the buyer of a one-of-a-kind type book (ASM 252 MJI 9.8) would not draw at least prospective buyers to look at the last sale of the book.

And Comicwiz found that the Avengers 57 SS 9.6 appeared to have changes to the actual book between being graded and reholdered, which implies book was removed from inner well and then reholdered somehow.

So I still feel all those 350 reholdered books are suspicious.

[comicjel]

On 2/17/2024 at 5:22 PM, Sweet Lou 14 said:

The only answer I can give you is that (as far as I can tell) the scam mostly involves books that are very plentiful in grade.  The most expensive books on the list also happen to be very rare in grade -- it's not so easy to find an extra high-grade copy of a Silver Age key lying around to do his little tricks with.  Nor is it as easy to get away with it, since even high-grade copies of older books tend to have clear distinguishing marks.

I agree, it appears to be a crime of both opportunity and margins... the lower grade substitute books needed to be readily available and much cheaper than the higher grade counterparts to keep the scam rolling along.

Also, as was emphasized a lot at the beginning of this thread, he was picking specific books that were commonly being sold in high volumes everywhere, which allowed him to hide his fraud sales amongst the volume of legit sales. 

However, there is still a lot we have not figured out about this scam, and there are possibly books that were swapped, but not reholdered, so maybe he was reholdering certain types of books, while just swapping other types.

 

Edited February 18 by comicjel

[comicwiz]

On 2/16/2024 at 11:51 PM, brute_nm said:

In the absence of any info from CGC, I decided to put together my own summary of where we're at.

CGC has asked customers to send books back for verification.  So have all 350 been checked?  Let's see.  From my count, only 76 out of the 350 (22%) have been checked; 274 (78%) have NOT been checked.  Of those checked:

• 63 had their grades REMOVED, which I assume means they were deemed fraudulent
• 13 maintained their grade, which I assume means they were VERIFIED as legit

Here is a table of the books that had their grades REMOVED:

Here is a table of the books that were VERIFIED and maintained their grade:

A couple oddities... the following cert numbers have a strike-thru on the Hot 350, but they do not have a new grade date, nor have their grades been removed.

• 0233579004
• 0800641009
• 1152116001
• 4036499006

@CGC Mike, are these 4 books legit or not?  If not, why do they have a strike-thru and why is their grade still present?  Why don't they have new grade "verification" dates?

Now, let's go further.  Starting with the initial Hot 350 list, I used the cert numbers to "fill holes."  When there were multiple cert numbers from the same larger submission, I added all the rest of the books from that submission.  In my opinion, any book submitted by this account should be flagged as potentially fradulent, regardless of if it was sent for reholder or not.  Filling holes gets us 216 additional books + the original 350 = 566 total.

Here is a breakdown of these 216 additional books... 22 more ASM 194's, 16 more ASM 238's, 12 more ASM 252's, 36 more ASM 300's.

@CGC Mike, please increase the list to include ALL books submitted by Zanello/CBS account, even non-reholders.  At MINIMUM, the list should be 566 (as shown above), but more likely should be ~2000 (as stated in the legal filing).  @comicwiz has proof of fraudulent books that are NOT on the 350 list, and the legal filing states that Zanello sometimes skipped the reholder process all together.  We MUST verify every book this guy touched.

Great poists! I've been asking for some manner of tracking strikethrough books as tampered or cleared for nearing a month. I know @CGC Mike mentioned he had asked the team, but I never got a response yet.

The point you raise about the 2000+ figure which is the submission history, I feel is one of the more interesting data points to glean from the lawsuit. When you look at the stated damages in the lawsuit ($4M), this is in my opinion too high a figure if it's just the 350 list.

Awhile ago, I ran the sales history on 225 books after differentials of 117 on that list having no sales history, and the strike throughs that occured at that point. I wanted to establish a baseline. The figure I can up with was just shy of $1.1M. We have to consider that a good amount of these books sold in a peak market (2020/21), so I'd very interested to know how they arrived at that $4M figure, IF it's exclusively from the 350, which has since narrowed more since running those numbers over a month ago.

I'm extremely busy at the moment, I've got 10 out of town tournaments between now and August for my son, but I'd REALLY like to go over some of the 350 list knowing which have been cleared and which have been assessed as tampered to compare it with my own list, just on the "listed" books, because I'm certain there will be some interesting discoveries to be made there. 

Edited February 18 by comicwiz

[sledgehammer]

On 2/17/2024 at 10:11 AM, brute_nm said:

Let me rephrase the question so @CGC Mike can more clearly ask the team: what is the difference between strike-thru, new grade date with blank grade, and new grade date with old grade

I thought strike-thru meant the book has been rechecked but this is not the case.  Here is a list of all the books that have new grade dates (in 2024).  The yellow highlighted books were regraded in 2024 but do NOT have a strike-thru on CGC's list.  There is no consistency with books that have strike-thru and REMOVED grades.  There is no consistency with books that have strike-thru and VERIFIED grades.

 

 

The guy who sent the JIM  85 yellow back to them, said that the book "was not impacted by this" ( on January 22nd).

Why does CGC think that an explanation of what you're asking for is so tough to put together?

Why wouldn't there be a way to check if he is correct?  WTFFF???

https://www.cgccomics.com/certlookup/0117152009/

Edited February 18 by sledgehammer

[sledgehammer]

On 2/17/2024 at 9:18 AM, brute_nm said:

Thanks for the info. In the absence of information, I had to make assumptions.

For the 76 that have been checked, they all have new grade dates in Jan/Feb of this year. Some have grades vacated and some still have grades. My assumption was if the grade was vacated, the book was confirmed fraudulent, which is why the old cert number and grade were invalidated.

I think your assumptions make sense. Here. the grade is still there, the grade date changed to a month ago, and NO SCANS were added to the notes.

there's no way of knowing this is now "verified", or in the process of still being looked at.

Just a ridiculous lack of respect for customers.

ASM  121 yellow

https://www.cgccomics.com/certlookup/1288075001/

[brute_nm]

On 2/18/2024 at 11:23 AM, sledgehammer said:

I think your assumptions make sense. Here. the grade is still there, the grade date changed to a month ago, and NO SCANS were added to the notes.

there's no way of knowing this is now "verified", or in the process of still being looked at.

Just a ridiculous lack of respect for customers.

ASM  121 yellow

https://www.cgccomics.com/certlookup/1288075001/

Agreed.  Here are all the books that have new grade "verification" dates (2024).  I have highlighted the ones with NO scan.

You would think that while CGC had these potentially fraudulent books in-hand, they would at least take some new pics as a new 'baseline' reference point going forward.  That way, if anyone questions the book's legitimacy in the future, CGC could at least say "here is what it looked like when we rechecked it in 2024."  If a book was originally graded 10 years ago and has no scans, let's at least start fresh with new scans from today forward.

The non-highlighted ones DO have scans but it's unclear how old the scans are.  This could be another opportunity for improvement for @CGC Mike to discuss: include dates on the scans so we can decipher if the scan is from the original grading date or reholder date or some other time.  This should be adopted for ALL scans moving forward, not just these Hot 350 books.

[lou_fine]

On 2/12/2024 at 12:45 PM, HighGrade said:

So it was FACT cleaned like CRAZY a few times, pressed, Pressed..PRESSED until it couldn't be pressed no more, and the only thing that is sad is the original owner did not take part in this huge payday.

Given a half a million of extra money, we ALL would press and clean the freaking life out of this book if we were going to sell it.

It's actually more like a whole million plus of extra money since it sold for only $126,500 as a CGC 8.5 copy and then $161K as a CGC 9.0 before hitting the jackpot at $1.26M as the CGC 9.4 Windy City copy of Mavel Comics 1.  

Then again, it was a completely different time, especially in terms of restoration acceptance as the CGC 8.5 auction took place way back in early 2003 while the CGC 9.4 Windy City auction took place much more recently in November of 2019.  Back then there was nothing worse to killing the value of a book than to have it residing in a PLOD holder.  No doubt the original seller was afraid of cleaning and pressing the book to bump the grade in fear of the book not even hitting 6-figures since the standard accepted definition of restoration as per the Overstreet Guide right through to his 2005 edition was as follows:  

"RESTORATION - Any attempt, whether professional or amateur, to enhance the apearance of an aging or damaged comic book.  These procedures may include any or all of the following rechniques:  recoloring, adding missing paper, stain, ink, dirt or tape removal, whitening, pressing out wrinkles, staple replacement, trimming, re-glossing, etc."  

Clearly, the original seller was NOT a member of the so-called cabal or insiders in the know who knew that although CGC was claiming they were following accepted industry standards at the time for their undisclosed grading standards, they were actually in fact allowing clean and pressed books to be encased in blue Universal unrestored slabs.  I guess CGC probably considered this to be proprietary knowledge and something that the general collecting public just didn't need to know until they were eventually outed on these very boards here.    

An interesting sidenote on these sales at least from a valuation point of view though indicates the relative tepid demand and stength at the time for Marvel Comics 1 back then.  That first CGC 8.5 sale at only $126,500 in 2003 for the 2nd highest graded copy came in at a price point of less than 70% of condition guide value and the CGC 9.0 sale at only $161K for a tied for highest graded copy in 2005 came in at only 63% of condition guide.  This also probably explains how Parrino ended up losing hundreds of thousands of dollars on his resale back to Geppi for his then tied for highest graded Pay copy of Marvel Comics 1.    

Edited February 19 by lou_fine

[sledgehammer]

On 2/18/2024 at 1:20 PM, brute_nm said:

Agreed.  Here are all the books that have new grade "verification" dates (2024).  I have highlighted the ones with NO scan.

You would think that while CGC had these potentially fraudulent books in-hand, they would at least take some new pics as a new 'baseline' reference point going forward.  That way, if anyone questions the book's legitimacy in the future, CGC could at least say "here is what it looked like when we rechecked it in 2024."  If a book was originally graded 10 years ago and has no scans, let's at least start fresh with new scans from today forward.

Exactly.

The yellow ASM #1, is already in a new holder and cert #, and is being auctioned already on comiclink, right now.

There is nothing in the notes for that cert, that indicate anything about its history

https://www.cgccomics.com/certlookup/4372423001/

 

Here is the old cert:

https://www.cgccomics.com/certlookup/1341998001/

 

So as an example, there is no way of knowing if the ASM 238, not on the list, but part of a submission with other books on the list, and now missing a grade because it's being reviewed, will be found to have been tampered with.

 

 

 

 

[comeaux]

On 2/14/2024 at 7:12 PM, CGC Mike said:

we will take aggressive action to combat counterfeiters and other fraudsters, including through lawsuits, security enhancements and awareness campaigns. 

 

What awareness campaigns has CGC initiated?

Other than a single post on these CGC forums, what else has CGC done to alert your customers of fraudulent activity such as your own CGC employees stealing customer books, printing fake labels, swappping books, etc. Then you have other scammers cracking slabs and swapping books that CGC held in their hand, reholdered and sent back to the scammer. 
 

if CGC is actually concerned about making YOUR customers AWARE, wouldn’t it be a good idea to post this entire scam on the CGC Facebook and X account? It doesn’t appear that CGC is “aggressively” trying to spread awareness to protect YOUR/CGC customers which seems will likely expose CGC to additional liability. 

[godzilla43]

That is one ugly 9.8.

[sledgehammer]

On 2/19/2024 at 5:15 AM, godzilla43 said:

That is one ugly 9.8.

Big 23 book submission in June of 2022. Hiring point of the Terrazzos ?

Look    at these    notes......   https://www.cgccomics.com/certlookup/4046486023/     

What is interesting to me, is that two of the books in the submission were Secret Wars 8, 9.8s, not on the list.

There are multiple certs in that submission, of lower grade copies of ASM 238, ASM 252 and IH 340.  8.5-9.0. Not very high grade copies.

But why would scamboy(s) want lower grade slabs, if that submission was even his?

 

Edited February 19 by sledgehammer
wars wars