When does overgrading a book turn into a criminal offense? 0

[shadroch]

I've been thinking about this, in light of the various scandals hitting CGC. 

If I take a VG book, mark it as a VF book and it sells, has a crime been committed?

If CGC overgrades a book and a dealer sells it, has he committed a crime?

If he removes a CGC 8.5 from its slab and sells it for a 9.4, has he committed a crime?

Is tricking CGC into awarding a book a grade it doesn't deserve a crime?

 

I'd say no to the first three and I'm not sure about the fourth. I wouldn't be confident a jury of non-collectors would see any of those acts as criminal.

 

[davidpg]

Nah.  It's all opinion.

Except for the 8.5 to a 9.4 example.  I'd say that was fraud and a crime...the rest, nope.

[OtherEric]

On 3/7/2024 at 10:36 AM, davidpg said:

Nah.  It's all opinion.

Except for the 8.5 to a 9.4 example.  I'd say that was fraud and a crime...the rest, nope.

It depends.  If he sells the book unslabbed, claiming that he grades it as 9.4 despite what CGC had it at, that would be legal because grading is subjective to some degree.  If he claims in some fashion that CGC graded it 9.4, then yeah, it's fraud.

[davidpg]

On 3/7/2024 at 2:20 PM, OtherEric said:

It depends.  If he sells the book unslabbed, claiming that he grades it as 9.4 despite what CGC had it at, that would be legal because grading is subjective to some degree.  If he claims in some fashion that CGC graded it 9.4, then yeah, it's fraud.

Ah!  I misread the third one, it being two slabs.  No, if someone breaks out a graded 8.5 and sells it as a raw 9.4 then it's absolutely not an actual crime.  

So none of the examples are a crime.

[LowGradeBronze]

I have bought VG books listed as VF but purposely only bid & paid VG prices for them because the photos clearly showed them to be lower grade. Maybe I'm being cynical here but in the UK it seems it's perfectly OK to list low grade books and describe them as high grade, using the tired old trope that 'grading is subjective' so one man's VG really is another man's (the seller's) VF.

Fourth item you mention, tricking CGC to award higher grade than book warrants, is fraud, but you try proving it. The others are creative marketing.

Edited March 7 by LowGradeBronze

[Qalyar]

So, I'll start by saying that lots of things are technically crimes. But for this sort of misrepresentation to clear the bar for actual criminal prosecution? Amazingly unlikely.

Even for it to give rise to a tort claim is a pretty tough row to hoe under most circumstances. The tort at issue would be fraudulent misrepresentation, which requires the plaintiff to demonstrate six factors:

1. A representation was made
2. The representation was false
3. The defendant knew the representation was false when they made it; or they made it with reckless disregard for its truth
4. The representation was made with the intention that the plaintiff would rely on it
5. The plaintiff did, in fact, rely on the representation
6. The plaintiff suffered harm as a result of relying on the representation

So what's the challenge here? Somewhere between the second and third prongs, most of these claims are doomed to fail. Grading, as we all know, is not a wholly objective process, whether it's CGC doing it or you or me. Sure, there are grading scales and rubrics. The point of a recognized grading authority isn't even necessarily that they're flawless, it's that, over the aggregate, their opinions are more respected than mine; they're more likely to be right, in other words. But even ignoring obvious mistakes, we can -- and do -- argue about whether that's a bad corner or a bindery tear, whether that's a medium crease or a small one, how aggressively to penalize staining, and a thousand other aspects of evaluating comic book condition. So if you, or I, or even CGC, overgrades a book, the almost certain defense to that statement is "honest error". Can you prove that the comic in question couldn't possibly get the grade I described it as? Not even from Mile High?  Good luck with that. And even if you somehow demonstrated that to be true, can you prove that I was intentionally lying, rather than just being a sloppier grader than you'd like? I really doubt it. 

Now, if there are objectively false claims involved, that's different, but it's a lot less likely. If I take an 8.5 slab, crack it out, and sell the book as a "9.4" raw, you will never, ever win that fraudulent misrepresentation claim, because, hey, it was just my opinion that CGC undergraded that book. And CGC does undergrade books sometimes, so good luck proving that my representation was both objectively and knowingly false. On the other hand, if I falsely tell you that it was cracked out of a 9.4 slab instead of an 8.5 one, well, then (assuming you can prove the book's provenance) I suppose you can demonstrate that I did in fact knowingly misrepresent a material fact. You might have a claim there for the difference in value between a 9.4 raw book and an 8.5 raw book. Hope that's worth more than the filing fees. Of course, that scenario doesn't happen; no one does that.