I shook some trees the other day and got a bunch of Maple leaf helicopters in my head the other day 
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I hope you’re not suggesting we become Batman and bring vengeance upon the individual…
Doxing is not the right answer. We don’t know who this individual(s) is(are) and what they are capable of when desperate. We can assume they are immoral to the core.
Need to stop the bleeding first and foremost. The information the public needs at this moment is the seller account names and a list of every slab they ever “touched.” 3rd party sellers/auction houses need to suspend any accounts or distribution of any suspect slabs.
3rd party sellers and CGC should work together contacting authorities and provide them with any personal and factual data they may have.
Give the system a chance to work before unleashing the mob. It’s still very early in this debacle.
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Agreed doxing isn’t the right answer and I can’t endorse it. Some of these victims were scammed over 6 figures. People have gone “missing” for a lot less. There’s probably a lot happening behind the scenes that we don’t know about and we should just let the proper authorities handle the matter.
No. Doxing is ridiculously immature and stupid.
Revealing the names would help prosecute these scammers. Could be people comic shops know or people in the comic book forums/groups/CHU boards…
I believe name(s) are out there if you know where to look. I think people who have bought books from the accounts have posted names of them. But whether those people have actual proof they were scammed I don’t know. I don’t have a dog in this fight because every desirable 9.8 I have I submitted myself and any books that could fall under this umbrella I have in old CBCS slabs…(not that they offer better protection…)
Yea, you can crack a slab and discover you’ve been had, but if you don’t take a lot of photos and video of the book before, during and after the cracking process you’re likely to screw yourself as now there is reasonable doubt you swapped out a book.
It’s best to hold onto the book for now, report it to who you purchased it from (if it wasn’t from the culprit) and await for further instructions.
A lot of emotions out there, but This one is going to take some to sort out. We live in a world that demands immediate results, but sometimes if you want it bad you get it bad.
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I will Say this whole thing has inspired me to look to see if I have any Mark Jewelers inserts.
In a recent video from Bry’s Comics, someone purchased and cracked a Hulk 181 and discovered the missing value stamp. He said CGC commented that they have no liability if the book was not cracked by them. If someone sent in that slab for CGC to press and regrade then it comes back a green label, then there is possibly a claim the submitter has.
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I’m Batman
Sorry couldn’t resist.
What they need to do is invalidate any book from the list that is suspect of being fraudulent, potentially invalidate any serial number of any book this guy submitted until they can be regraded. Suspend the submitters account.
In the end buyers will get screwed but prevents future buyers from getting further screwed
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Any logical reason to buy a slab at this point? Seems like you can just lose a whole lot of money. It’s just been proven to be a scam in general. I continously see the advice, “buy the book not the slab”; should it simply be “don’t buy a slab”?
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It has always been a scam, grading should have never been the focus for value, we all know there are plenty books getting grades they should never have got. I’ve never bought a graded book blindly based on the grade alone and I have passed on higher graded books where I saw flaws and didn’t agree with the assigned grade in favour of a lower and cheaper graded copy.
It’s always a select few that push this stupid notion of a barcode having more value or a jewelry insert that adds nothing to the book. Sadly the minority is always the loudest and this sort of mindset starts to seep into others for whatever reason which is probably a good thing as it likely reduced how many books were affected by this scandal.
In my view books of this value should never be bought graded because there are too many factors involved, so yes in that regard I’m all for the don’t buy slab. As I said this likely only affects a minor few books that most people wouldn’t be buying anyway so the majority of graded books are fine but again there should be more than just blindly believing the grade assigned, reasearch and get plenty of pictures or in person sale if possible in order to minimse risk.
Also guaranteed that this does nothing because people have too much money invested and will look the other way while shouting for answers.
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I think that’s a bit extreme.
Ironically, since the grade is subjective anyway…maybe the answer isn’t more solid hard to tamper with cases, but cases which protect the book but are accessible such that someone can verify the contents.
Imagine that? Getting a book graded just because you wanted an unbiased second opinion of your collectible…
Cgc is taking high res photos now of the book upon grading…you can always refer back to those photos for whether the book has accumulated additional defects to the cover (and refer to the graders notes to some extent).
The technology is there to have a grade, keep the book in its stated condition, and still have physical access to it without damage. And a buying party can verify they agree with that grade before purchasing.
Then it becomes the 9.9s and 10.0s we have to worry about as if you sneeze in an adjacent building it could drop the grade 0.1 points, lol.
There would be a lot less trading on eBay, though…higher risk of scammers swapping out books. But no different than what we deal with in raws. Just don’t sell books on eBay if you can’t take that risk.
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Ditto. I’ve actually sent slabs back to the seller for the reason being that I don’t agree with the grade assigned upon closer inspection.
How dare I, huh? I reimbursed for shipping though when I’ve found myself in that predicament. I try to be fair/reasonable.
Here’s a good example. Clearly these are the same book, but CGC’s photos are so much better/clearer than what you see in an auction.
In a way, I feel better about buying books lower than 9.8 because I can use the defects to validate I know what I’m getting is legit.
Now, CGC just better not take “updated” photos when reholder…I wouldn’t think they’d do that as it involves more handling of the book than is needed.
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I’ve been seeing this comment a lot either from here, cgc boards or wherever. Isn’t this a little simplistic and really akin to sticking our heads in the sand of this whole scandal? We’re still in the infancy of this investigation as we really don’t know how many other people knew about this exploit, how long it’s been going for, how many books cgc reholdered etc etc.
More and more books are being uncovered everyday as we speak and that’s just from the one scammer. It’s highly unlikely that he started off this scam by choosing to do it with the holiest of grails. More likely imo is that he found this reholder loophole early as he probably sent in some legitimate books to get reholdered and realize that cgc didn’t regrade or even bother to check the contents of the book and assigned the same grade.
In the video I posted above Manu (9.9 newsstand) and Swagglehaus both mentioned that they have friends who work for cgc and they told them that “comic people” grade the books. When the books are sent to get encapsulated it’s a whole different department and those people just do the encapsulation and may know absolutely nothing about comics or the industry in general.
What is likely is that the scammer started off with much smaller books and was getting away with it for many years even a decade or more and moved up to mega grails because he got so good at it and knew how the system works. It’s been posted that one of the scammer’s earliest sale was a Batman 608 2nd print back in 2011. This wasn’t even a big book back then.
It’s also unlikely that other scammers don’t know about this exploit. To think this is only confined to these small number of books that we know about is silly to me. The market could be flooded with keys that were reholdered with a higher grade. How can we be so sure of anything at this point? This is really just the tip of the iceberg.
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With Blackstone I think the first response will be “are we losing money”. If not, just a big shrug.
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As bad as CGC’s response to Acetategate was I never really felt that it was going to affect the industry and their bottom line. Imo it was just another stupid thing CGC was doing.
This one feels a lot different and would affect a lot of people particularly those that are spending huge sums of money on holy grails. You don’t think places like Heritage Auctions, Mycomicshop consignments etc would have their heads spinning and will be monitoring the situation carefully? I don’t know why anyone would be spending big money on a cgc graded Hulk 181, ASM 300 or any other major key right now until this is sorted out. It will be interesting to see how the market will be in the next coming weeks.
For the longest time CGC was cutting corners and remained sloppy and now it’s catching up to them. Some of these investors who got scammed for 6 figures or more could be speaking to their lawyers right now and CGC could be in trouble if it’s found they were complicit in the scam or they were negligent.
At the very least I see some positive changes coming out of this. CGC will have to change the way they reholder books or have better quality control, try to atone for the people who may have been scammed by having them send in their slabs to be regraded etc.
This is a giant wake up call to CGC. The fact they haven’t made an official statement speaks volumes. Even during the Acetategate, the admin on the CGC forums cgcmike made some half hearted comments and later had to revise his statement and had to change their policy. This time they’re radio silent as a raging fire is burning around them.
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Nah it’s just standard people affair to make something out to be bigger than it really is when it’s a negative thing, people need to jump on the train. Yes what is happening is a problem but all the books being uncovered are pretty much the same and all big ticket books out of the majority of collectors hands. It will only affect a select few in this market, doesn’t invalidate what is happening but it seems fairly limited at the moment, that may change but from what I’ve seen it seems contained in a small area for now.
I’m all for values of graded books crashing but this won’t do it.
Same for me, I only dabble with newly-released books so this hasn’t affected me. I don’t even have a cgc account yet or any graded books in my collection. I will in the future so hopefully cgc gets this sorted out and we see better quality control moving forward.
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I’d like to know definitely if CGC re-Scans reholders into their database. If they’re doing that I’d be concerned. But otherwise if it’s just the original graded slab then you have the means to validate the book you’re buying if graded in the past 6 months or so since they started that behavior.