HotKey

My business partner and I are going to crack this open Wednesday during our meeting so we can see the inside of the front cover and I will post pics here after for everyone. Will that be definitive? Does color touch to that possible level have to show some bleed through somewhere?

I misspoke saying "ink", just remove that word and the rest makes sense, black ink over white text when regular copies have white text over black ink.

Heres a regular copy for comparison, best pic I could find online right now

So how do you explain the black ink being above the white text ink, when it's below the white text ink on every other known copy? Also, the dots weren't used on every section, so what other type of printing was used that resulted in a solid color without dots that was consistent across the entire cover?

Microscope pic of several different areas, showing printing dots in some methods and solid ink in others. Also of note is the corner with the color breaks, if someone was going to color touch this, wouldn't they do that obvious spot?

Black light pics: I marked on the superman with a sharpie for comparison.

Regular pics:

Hello, as some of you know I specialize in foreign comics and recently came across this beauty. This is the ASM 300 from Spain, and as you can see CGC graded it a 4.5 C-2 with color touch on cover in the notes. There are a few noteworthy areas on this but the main 2 are the top where the black ink is on top of the white text, instead of behind it, and the text to the left of the bar code on the bottom, where the black ink is also covering the white text. My initial opinion was that they printed the layers on this in the wrong order, and everything I have examined has confirmed that belief. CGC disagreed, but it is also worth noting that this is a previously unknown production error, so it's understandable just seeing it and thinking someone drew on it, as the owner I got it from thought as well. I have looked at it under a black light and under a microscope, and between my business partner and I we have right around 10 hours combined of careful examination of this comic through different methods, mostly with the microscope. We are both fully convinced of this being printed in the incorrect order. I'll add pics in a few different replies to break them up into different sections so its easier to discuss each part. Another really cool thing we found were the 2 O's/0's that we found with the microscope. They appear to only be there intentionally and we have no idea for the explanation of them, although we have a couple theories. We had another comic 12 issues later from the same series and was not able to find any on that cover. The one in the black area is much more visible, but there's one in the red area as well to the left of the tear in the middle. They are both in the upper right area of the cover, with the black one being a bit more towards the center. So if anyone can think of any potential explanation for this outcome that isn't a production error, let me know, or if you agree this is definitely a production error feel free to weigh in as well. Also if you have any info about the tiny Os/0s please help with this puzzler! I've posted about this a few times over the last couple months and I haven't seen anyone else post that they have one too, but I would imagine there are at least a few others out there, just by the odds, but maybe they were thrown away when someone bought them. I think this should be a blue label noted as a production error though, I'm just not sure the best way to make sure CGC sees everything, so I figured this was a good spot as well. Pics to follow in replies, let me know what you think a production error of the most collected foreign comic cover there is would be worth!

I would hope any and all independent investigation firms looking into this take a long hard look at all the quality control posts and missing books posts from the last few years as well.

I posted a topic yesterday on IG asking if Matt Nelson should keep his job after this scandal, it got a lot of responses that were about 50/50 for and against. I don't personally know Matt, but if I did it wouldn't change my opinion of this situation, which is that this is a bad failure on management to make sure that proper chain of custody and security measures were/are in place. First there is a lack of proper security measures to prevent the reholder scandal that just happened, and now there is a lack of proper chain of custody and basic security protocols in place to prevent any one employee from having too much access to multiple departments where there would be opportunities for bad actions to take place. Whatever the reasons are that these didn't exist, the fact that they didn't exist is a clear failure of management. Whoever is in charge of the internal security of the facility also should be replaced imo for a lack of understanding and recognizing the risks from having that employee overlap exist in different areas in the first place. Some situations can be cleaned up without the need for change, some situations require changes, I think this one requires changes.

You would have to prove that CGC had prior knowledge of this and knowingly decided to conceal it from the public to have any shot at a class action.

FFS this thread has been going on since LAST YEAR!

"CGC sucks!" "No it don't" "Yes it does!" thats the jist

Has anyone with a large personal collection of the at risk comics contacted their insurance company to see how they are going to approach insuring values on potentially fraudulent cases?

From the website verification page: "This tool can help you verify that your CGC holder is genuine and has not been tampered with."

😁 or..

This checks all the boxes it needed to imo, 4 main issues that had to be addressed and they did. 1. Compensation for those who bought fraudulent slabs 2. A released list of all affected slabs 3. Criminal prosecution 4. Improved security features on slabs - but it would be good to show us what you did to make sure the youtube videos cant be replicated anymore. The list of all affected slabs is going to be big and let's hope it's comprehensive.

20% of 37,000 is 7,400 people. Imagine being able to save even 1 of them from making an uninformed purchase. There's probably a good saying to come up with about it, about having power and responsibility.

I found some more interesting items in the foreign comic world. For potential price variants, I had these from Comic Forum in Spain. They are half circle price increase stickers for their comics, I've only seen them on GI Joe so far but the potential is obviously there for other issues since that is their standard pricing format and they use the same font, sizing and layout. It's odd the prices went up and not down. Also just to keep everything clear and prevent any carryover here from other spots, it's pretty clear there are just going to be disagreements on how to classify some parts of foreign comics. I see it just like Hulk 180/181 and such. I respect anyone's opinion in the community who does the same, but this is not the place to tell anyone that their opinions are wrong or incorrect, we are just not going to always agree on some stuff and that's fine, but let's not act like one opinion is worth more than anyone else's. All are welcome in the foreign comic community and all opinions are equal in value. On another note, I found a 1951 comic actually produced in Ireland, very odd and very cool. That's just one more reason I love the world of foreign comics, finding stuff like that! I hope everyone has a safe and happy Thanksgiving!

This is from downthetubes.net "First published in 1924, Triumph, published by Amalgamated Press, was a hugely successful adventure paper of the period, the title now owned by Rebellion Publishing. 21 issues featured reprints of Superman, the character first making his debut in Britain only a year after the publication of Action Comics #1, June 1938. Reprints of early Superman stories were, largely, adapted into the picture and text format presentation that was very much the norm of the day in British children’s and teenage titles of the time, and ran in Issues 772 – 792 (with a house advertisement featuring Superman in Issue 771), the Kryptonian hero returning in Issues 807 – 814."

*dusts off the thread* Great info in here, I came across a few of these in a consignment batch and they are a pain to research because of the title, but thankfully I found this thread after some digging! Unfortunately none of these have the comic inside, but they do have one of the Superman covers from 1939, looks like it is the 2nd Superman cover in the UK, so still a great piece of history!

Congrats! If you're looking for a never ending challenge, try all the foreign editions of Spidey 😁

It could be a lot forking worse.

Good catch here, this is from the finra.org website and should help answer some questions this may raise: "Read and Understand Key Disclosure and Education Information Since crowdfunding investments are likely to be early-stage ventures and may be highly risky, the JOBS Act and Regulation Crowdfunding include provisions designed to inform investors about these investments and their potential risks. Companies that conduct offerings under Regulation Crowdfunding are required to disclose, among other things: A description of the business of the company and its anticipated plan of business, including its name, legal status, physical address and website address. A discussion of the material factors that make an investment in the company speculative or risky. A discussion of the company’s financial condition. The names and positions of the directors and officers; the name of each person who is a beneficial owner of 20 percent or more of the company’s outstanding voting equity securities; and additional information such as the business experience of the directors and officers over the past three years. The price of the securities or the method for determining the price. This information is to be filed in a document called Form C and uploaded to the SEC’s Edgar system for access by investors and crowdfunding intermediaries. "

This really is the main problem it seems. Instead of growing the company naturally, HR decided to go well beyond what normal growth would be, which would in most cases be adding one or two employees first at the main location, training them and after they started work, re-evaluating for more expansion. HR deciding to go "all in" and go from a single owner LLC to a multiple location business with 10 or so employees and tens of thousands of dollars in new custom equipment in 1 step during a peak market that most seasoned collectors recognized as artificial and expected the current correction, was taking an enormous risk. I've started and helped start several small businesses and even when they were doing good initially, a step of that size and magnitude was never even considered as a viable option. You never go more than double your current size in 1 step unless you have a new investor or other forms of outside financing that don't put customers funds at risk. Using all the funds that should have been safely held for each customer account and only drawn down as work was performed was very irresponsible and while it may not be a legal violation of fiduciary duty, it was definitely a moral violation of it, and directly led to the current situation. Had HR sat down with any informed business professional and gotten their opinion on such an expansion before doing it, they very likely would have been informed of this potential worst case scenario and advised against it, especially when it required using customer funds.