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ROB HUGHES AKA WATERWALKER, NEW HEAD GRADER???

Started by drdonaldblake,

48 posts in this topic

500Club

500Club

Posted
Posted

I believe he's sarcastically suggesting that both CGC, PSA or "Global Grading" or whatever, Heritage, and Parrino are all in bed together since Hughes used to work for Manning and now works for Parrino. Hughes being a tie between PSA and the deepest pocket in comics does make you wonder.

 

Yeah, I caught that part. Common sense says that Hughes will give up his other auction/retail duties. If he doesn't, people will have serious concerns about the conflict-of-interest and GGS' business will suffer. Because the grading services' success is built on customer confidence and trust, I'm sure that Hughes will distance himself from his previous employers.

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blowout

blowout

Posted
Posted

Because the grading services' success is built on customer confidence and trust, I'm sure that Hughes will distance himself from his previous employers.

 

Thats what I was aluding to in my previous post. Most of the credible graders in the business have worked for more that one 'competing' party at one time of another. Hopefully though not at the SAME time.

BTW, welcome back to the boards doc, its been a while.

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BlackShotzy-migration

BlackShotzy-migration

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Posted

FF, leave it to you to impart negative spins on interpreting "hidden" meaning in the selected benign posts of those that post here that you "target". If you "believe that I was sarcastically suggesting" anything, that's the product of how your one track, one trick mind works.

 

I asked a question, nothing more, nothing less.

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Dr_Neff

Dr_Neff

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0083

 

 

Can someone in the grading field considering starting a company please use discretion when deciding initials! All the CGCGGCCGG3PGC3POGooGoo Gaa Gaa is driving me crazy. Like McDonald's and McDowell's in "Coming to America".

7-11 across the street from a Circle K, adjacent to an AM/PM. Come on!

 

What the real question is, what remains to be seen, is not who is quailified enough, or who can convince the rest of the world to believe in them, but rather who can afford to be at the top of their field and resign themselves to take a drastic cut in pay to take time to start a grading company.

 

stooges.gif

 

Now that and all the talk about everyone being in bed together has made me feel really sleepy...

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500Club

500Club

Posted
Posted

PSA as an organization can bankroll this effort. And it looks like R Hughes is willing to be the man to take the pay cut.

 

And, for the record, the Big Mc had no sesame seeds on the bun. grin.gif

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fantastic_four

fantastic_four

Posted
Posted
FF, leave it to you to impart negative spins on interpreting "hidden" meaning in the selected benign posts of those that post here that you "target". If you "believe that I was sarcastically suggesting" anything, that's the product of how your one track, one trick mind works.

 

I asked a question, nothing more, nothing less.

 

Yea...I'm sure you thought Bob meant Borock was leaving CGC and Hughes was taking his place. My mind isn't one-track; you've given me a verbose, explicit reason to believe you think they're all in bed together. Flash back to this conspiracy theory e-mail you sent me almost three years ago (this is the one I asked a few dealers about where one of them knew it came from you without me even telling him):

 

 

From: "cityopus" (cityopus@email.msn.com)

To: "Jamie" (ruddj@home.com)

Sent: Wednesday, November 15, 2000 10:39 PM

Subject: Re: Grading

 

 

Excellent points. New Kadia is on the right track, but from seeing the material they're applying new grading applications to, Let's see if they can meet the demands and challenge of sales on FF1s, Spiderman 1's, X-men1's etc. when it appears that the most valuable silver age book they have for sale is a Spiderman 50 in VG. They're dealing mostly with 1980s and 90s books. Sort of like a 9 year old who's never driven anything bigger than a 10 speed telling you, "yeah, handling an 18 wheeler at 100 mph on that Mountain pass should be easy, you just step on the Gas pedal". It looks a helluva' lot easier until you're behind the wheel. Before PCE started submitting their books to CGC, they had a lot of bad PR as most warned me "Be careful, Rob uses his OWN grading system that really doesn't apply to anything". I've bought from Rob, and find him to be a great individual to deal with as well as a gentleman, and didn't find this to be true. Others, however, do. I agree with you on the card slabbing vs. comics. Comics definitely, as three dimensional, multi-leafed objects, do NOT lend themselves as well to slabbing as basically 2-dimensional coins, cards, and currencey. With slabbing, 95% of the comic will never see the light of day again.

 

I don't know if you're aware of it, but approx. 15 years ago someone already came up with the idea of comic grading/encapsulation. Ernst Gerber. He started 'slabbing' books with grading certificates as a way of jutifying his overgrades in his auctions. To give them respectability. For that reason it never caught on. Until Jay Parrino showed up. Jay prices his books like that because he really doesn't care if they sell or not. What he has on his site is 10% of what he has. For a look at some other Jay Parrino books, just go to any Manning auction and 90% of the books in them are JP's books. CGC slabs, if you'll notice from Jay's site, are directly copied from collectible currencey slabs. Jay's long suit is currencey. He grosses an estimated 75 million per year in currencey sales alone! Of the 1.3 million dollars in auction sales that Manning's auction before the last one took in, 1.1 million of it was from Jay. Chicken feed for him, but enough to make a huge impact in comics. You know how whenever you log into a website of a dealer and you take interest in that Flash 1 CGC 5.5 or Marvel 2 CGC 8.0 that they list, and then you call them and they say, "Sorry, Just sold it", and you're thinking, "[!@#%^&^]" or whatever? They're telling the truth. They might have had a book in stock for 10 years and couldn't move it, but as soon as they sent it to CGC, Jay BOUGHT it. All these mega-dollar sales you keep hearing of that dealers are making; you';re thinking to yourself.."wow, this hobby is on fire, EVERYTHING's SELLING from GOLD to SLVER". Yes it is...to JAY mostly. What's happened lately on Ebay since Manning isn't actively bidding on every CGC 9.0 and up? Are they moving like they were 3-6 months ago? No they are NOT! What's Waterwalker doing on Ebay selling a 9.0 AF15 for 25,000 when the Manning auction just supposedly got $40,000 for a 9.0 AF15? Waterwalker IS MANNING'S AUCTIONEER, BUYER, AND SELLER. That's ROBERT HUGHES! Why didn't Manning want it at 25,000 if his sell is 40,000 for the same grade??!!??

 

About a year ago, Jay visited CGC with the Hughes' (Manning's auction buyers and sellers). Jay asked CGC, "how much to control and take over the comic market". They scratched their heads and posited, "We guess at least a few million, maybe as high as 5 million". Jay laughed and said, "I thought you were going to say 20 to 50 million, Let's do it". Take a look at Jay's site again. Everybody's books that have finally sold after long stints in their stock is there! Most haven't even been deleted from the original source's web pages as of yet! Take a look: Marvel Mystery 2 CGC 8.0, and Flash 1 CGC 5.0 from Metropolis (they had them online for over 2 years), PCE's Flash 1CGC 5.5, Tec 33, Ed Jaster's ugly Captain America 1 CGC 6.5 with the horrible erasure of pen in the name (why isn't this book graded restored with HEAVY erasures?), and on and on. The recent 'boon' in the industry is NOT because 50,000 new buyers with $1,000 each came into the marketplace to spend like drunken sailors, but because one person came in with 50 million to spend like a drunken sailor if these dealers would send they're stale books to CGC and have them slabbed. Jay IS a smart man. he figured, the hidden money here is NOT in comic collectors (compared to the people he knows and hangs with in his circles, comic people are very financially challenged by comparison), as I'm sure Jay is financially not in the same league as a George Steinbrenner or Oprah Winfrey, who themselves is financially challenged compared to Bill Gates. Jay figured, the only way to sell these books for MEGA bucks, Action 1's for a million dollars, etc. to his CURRENCEY clients as investment fodder, was to certify them as was all his currencey and coins (a necessity for credibility). Apparently , he's correct in the respect that he just sold one of his clients an AF15 for $160,000+ in CGC 9.6. Do you think you or I could submit a vacuum fresh copy to CGC and get a 9.6 of AF15? Not in this lifetime. We're not members of the secret Handshake society. You should HEAR some of the stories behind the scenes of the underpinnings of this hobby. Mark Wilson and I used to talk daily. He knew all the dope on everything, and the man couldn't lie if he wanted to.

 

Richard

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sborock

sborock

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Posted

FF-

That was one of the funniest things I have read in ages, almost fell off my chair laughing!

 

Love the part: "Jay asked CGC, "how much to control and take over the comic market". They scratched their heads and posited, "We guess at least a few million, maybe as high as 5 million". Jay laughed and said, "I thought you were going to say 20 to 50 million, Let's do it"."

 

If you have more of these gems "Richard" has sent you, please post them, they are even funnier than the Blazing ones R&R's! Sorry Bob tongue.gif

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clobberintime

clobberintime

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Hmm -well not all of it is all that funny. A good bit of it is dead on right. I have s[poken to Mr. JP himself before about all of this. And he definitely has a desire to have the big money coin guys in this market. And he definitely pumped all the cgc prices at the start of your company as I was one of the bidders in the first Manning auctions where JP bought about 95% of the stuff. JP told me he really wanted this years' OS prices to skyrocket so the real money guys in currency would "notice" comics since their prices are too paltry for notice beside coins. Anyone who knows all the players at the top end of this stuff should be a bit skeptical - if they have any brains that is. It is just a little too inbred or nepotistic - but hey Heritage does all kinds of stuff with their auctions that is fishy but legal. Why don't you ever comment on some of the very funny stories about your company not noticing pedigrees on resubs like the fabulous Cage collection you created? Or howe about some hilarious stories of how books start out restored and become unrestored?

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fantastic_four

fantastic_four

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I agree, there's some parts of that which are quite plausible.

 

Dupcak claims that JP listed 90% of the books in the early Manning auctions, and you claim that JP bought 90% of the books in the early Manning auctions. So the question is...did JP sell his books to himself for big prices to hype the CGC market into legitimacy? Hard to say, but possible. It's sure easy to see why he'd have a huge motive to do something like that, and it's easy to see how his success with certified coins would give him the experience to know what giving certification a financial boost with hyped prices could do for his expensive inventory. When he first wrote me that email, I did check Parrino's site, and sure enough, there were a ton of books which had been there before one of the Manning auctions started which were supposedly sold in that auction. To who they sold, I dunno.

 

Dupcak claims he got most of this info from Mark Wilson...but given his tendency to spin the truth in whatever way will benefit him the most...it's hard to simply accept it at face value on faith. Some of it does sound possible, but it's probably impossible to prove. I don't really mind it all that much anyway...as long as we're happy with the books we're buying, it's ultimately our choice to spend the money we spend.

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sborock

sborock

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"Why don't you ever comment on some of the very funny stories about your company not noticing pedigrees on resubs like the fabulous Cage collection you created? Or howe about some hilarious stories of how books start out restored and become unrestored?"

 

I have commented on all of these things before, check the older posts, ask some of the other forum members, or read some of the older CBG articles.

 

If you graded as many comics in a week as we grade in a day, you would not recognize most books that come back to you months later. You also would not know if a book is from a collection, like a "Cage" book, if the submitter does not put it on the submission form. You would also not know if a comic is a Pedigree when submitted or re-submitted that is not very distinct, if it does not have a code like on a Church copy or a Riley stamp like on a Frisco copy. It is up to the submitter to put this information on the CGC submission form.

 

CGC "finds" books that the submitter does not know are pedigree's all the time. Last month we called someone and told him two of his books were Frisco's, he was very happy.

 

I have also stated, that comic books get pressed and have restoration removed all the time, this has been going on before CGC ever opened it's doors. It is a fact of the hobby, wether people like it or not.

 

Jay NEVER had that conversation with CGC that "Richard" claims happened and your figures about Jay buying 95% of the Manning auction are COMPLETELY WRONG. I was also there and spoke with many people after the auction, in person and over the phone, I know where many of the books went.There were many "heavy hitters" buying CGC certified books that day.

 

I and other CGC graders walk the convention floors, answer emails, give interviews to the industry press, and take time to answer questions like this one on this forum because CGC is above board. We do not hide behind emails that skew the truth and, at times, outright lie like "Richard" does. 893naughty-thumb.gif

 

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Aman619

Aman619

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whats interesting to speculate would be what if ham/etc really ISNT dupcak....but that Henry Moses IS!! Or maybe he's one of the various other guys who were so crooked that they became persona non grata in the business like the Sparkle City guy who ripped off Geppi.

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