Real or Fake - Action #1 Recreation by Joe Shuster 0

[grapeape]

7 hours ago, Nexus said:

Danny Dupcak...geez. Haven't heard that name in a decade.

Anyone remember Jason Ewert? That was the last straw for me with slabs and I went all-in on art.

Oh yeah. Grand Master Press and Trim.

 Awful stuff yes. I think what bothered me more was how many people came to his defense. I argued with some collectors when we first started hearing about this.

There was a thread where (maybe his friends?) were indignant. 
•What proof do you have

•Even so what is the crime?

Awful. Greed winning out over reason and good ethics. In comics. In our art world. I cringe every time there is a defense of bad behavior. This stuff is worth too much money. 
 

Those poor cursed souls that bought heavily from J E are screwed. Some I suspect may have passed on their misfortune to others. 
 

There are a few comics I would like to buy before I die. I gave up comics collecting 25 years ago. But I’ve thought of a short list I’d like to pursue. Here’s the rub:
 

Even with slabbing which I believe saved comic collecting from implosion, I worry about some of the “restoration” tricks that got past graders awhile back. What if I buy one of those books? Will I ever know? Will I find out ten years from now and there’s no recourse?

Yeah DD and JE if only it was just  you two. Again I don’t like to rip anybody on here. With that said if you support bad behavior, or try to manipulate the boards to support propping up questionable art or fraudulent practices you will get called out.
 

 

[grapeape]

On 1/21/2020 at 2:53 AM, vodou said:

Yeah.

https://www.artsy.net/article/artsy-editorial-salvador-dali-accidentally-sabotaged-market-prints

This is why I respect Vodou. Please read this cautionary tale carefully. It speaks to what we are debating here. Salvador Dali was a nut job. His eccentric personality aside, his pursuit of money (nothing wrong with that) contributed to what a I believe was an “accidental chaos.” The writer tries to romanticize Dalis negligence as perhaps deliberate mischief. Either way you have the classic ingredients for fraud.
 

1) Artist doesn’t protect his work, he doesn’t protect his signature

2) Hungry middle men cut corners ( dishonestly many flat out contributed to fraud)

3) An art starved collectors field throws money at these prints, overlooking red flags, trusting others without educating themselves 

Now try cleaning this mess up. Dalí is gone R I P. Those invested must insist on protecting questionable art. They will defend the indefensible.

Read Vodou’s link about Dalí and think of some of the illogical reasoning presented not only here but in other threads. 

  Honestly I hope our  look at “Shuster originals” is a wake up call. 
 

Nice job Vodou

Edited January 22, 2020 by grapeape

[vodou]

52 minutes ago, grapeape said:

With that said if you support bad behavior, or try to manipulate the boards to support propping up questionable art or fraudulent practices you will get called out.

Yes we can call out but the mods tend to respond with flags, points given, posts deleted, unexpected "vacations" from board handed out.

It's a trip man, but...

The Only Thing Necessary for the Triumph of Evil is that Good Men Do Nothing.

-Edmund Burke

Edited January 22, 2020 by vodou
typo

[Mephisto]

On 1/22/2020 at 10:41 AM, grapeape said:

Oh yeah. Grand Master Press and Trim.

 Awful stuff yes. I think what bothered me more was how many people came to his defense. I argued with some collectors when we first started hearing about this.

There was a thread where (maybe his friends?) were indignant. 
•What proof do you have

•Even so what is the crime?

Awful. Greed winning out over reason and good ethics. In comics. In our art world. I cringe every time there is a defense of bad behavior. This stuff is worth too much money. 
 

Those poor cursed souls that bought heavily from J E are screwed. Some I suspect may have passed on their misfortune to others. 
 

There are a few comics I would like to buy before I die. I gave up comics collecting 25 years ago. But I’ve thought of a short list I’d like to pursue. Here’s the rub:
 

Even with slabbing which I believe saved comic collecting from implosion, I worry about some of the “restoration” tricks that got past graders awhile back. What if I buy one of those books? Will I ever know? Will I find out ten years from now and there’s no recourse?

Yeah DD and JE if only it was just  you two. Again I don’t like to rip anybody on here. With that said if you support bad behavior, or try to manipulate the boards to support propping up questionable art or fraudulent practices you will get called out.
 

 

Yeah even before the Ewert thing hit I got out of slabs when Dupcak of all people pointed out that a Batman 11 CGC Universal that I thought was just a resubmit (with something like pressing) was actually trimmed. Sure enough he was right. He was also not the one who did it. I had been buying a lot of Golden Age Joker cover CGC books (along with Two-Faces first appearance) and switched over to art after that...unfortunately the handle full of books I had are likely worth well into 6 figures today and I can't imagine I even spent anything close to 20K back then. They have far surpassed even a lot of art in that same period.

Lately Gene and I have discussed the rampant trimming going on in the sports cards community and those cards landing in regular PSA holders with no mention of any alterations. It's bad really really bad. I don't who in their right mind would even touch anything in that market. There is even an ex NFL player who has been tied into what is going in the sports card world. There are numerous posts on the Blowout Forums dedicated to cards that went from PSA holder back into a PSA holder usually with higher grades but obvious edge trimming in the before and after pictures. There was even a 52 Mantle that was pictures raw. Then trimmed in a PSA holder and then regraded (same grade) but different cert number. I know that one was auctioned at least once on Heritage. There have also been issues with some of these cards making their way into other companies holders as well.  I had thought about picking up some graded Mantles but after reading all this...no thank you. 

Sometimes I am tempted to get back into graded comics but I'd rather just use my money towards art and framing and put it up on the walls and enjoy it every day instead of having something sitting in a plastic holder inside a box or drawer and only take out every now and then. I am seeing a lot of people display graded comics these days but I'd be more concerned with fading doing that unless you go all out framing and at that point I'd rather display OA.

[grapeape]

36 minutes ago, Mephisto said:

Yeah even before the Ewert thing hit I got out of slabs when Dupcak of all people pointed out that a Batman 11 CGC Universal that I thought was just a resubmit (with something like pressing) was actually trimmed. Sure enough he was right. He was also not the one who did it. I had been buying a lot of Golden Age Joker cover CGC books (along with Two-Faces first appearance) and switched over to art after that...unfortunately the handle full of books I had are likely worth well into 6 figures today and I can't imagine I even spent anything close to 20K back then. They have far surpassed even a lot of art in that same period.

Lately Gene and I have discussed the rampant trimming going on in the sports cards community and those cards landing in regular PSA holders with no mention of any alterations. It's bad really really bad. I don't who in their right mind would even touch anything in that market. There is even an ex NFL player who has been tied into what is going in the sports card world. There are numerous posts on the Blowout Forums dedicated to cards that went from PSA holder back into a PSA holder usually with higher grades but obvious edge trimming in the before and after pictures. There was even a 52 Mantle that was pictures raw. Then trimmed in a PSA holder and then regraded (same grade) but different cert number. I know that one was auctioned at least once on Heritage. There have also been issues with some of these cards making their way into other companies holders as well.  I had thought about picking up some graded Mantles but after reading all this...no thank you. 

Sometimes I am tempted to get back into graded comics but I'd rather just use my money towards art and framing and put it up on the walls and enjoy it every day instead of having something sitting in a plastic holder inside a box or drawer and only take out every now and then. I am seeing a lot of people display graded comics these days but I'd be more concerned with fading doing that unless you go all out framing and at that point I'd rather display OA.

I’m sorry for that happening to you. Cards, comics and art. Targets for greedy monsters to prey on collectors. 
Slabbing definitely cleaned up comics overall. Still your Batman 11 CGC—-that sends chills down the spine.

Like you I am tempted to dip in on a few comics. I sold a Werewolf By Night 7.0 at Comic Link this past summer for $1289. I literally bought it for a quarter when I was six. I had no idea it was worth anything like that. I got excited to try and find some comics like that.

The big ones in the silver age though have soared into the stratosphere. Action 1 and Detective 27 probably was never gonna happen for me either haha so goodbye Golden Age.
 

It’s nice to have a collection that has value financially. But the money corrupts and the temptation to get cute and clever inspires the wicked to get busy.

 

[vodou]

37 minutes ago, grapeape said:

Slabbing definitely cleaned up comics overall.

I totally disagree.

Slabbing, in all hobbies, quietly shifted the responsibility (and thus the liability) from the seller (or auctioneer) to the grading firm. All sellers now have non-return policies on slabbed items (all hobbies here). But only the submitter and (maybe shifty?) graders (anonymous...naturally) know the "truth" of what was what before and after. And the grading firms, by being one-step removed from any actual buying/selling transaction are insulated quite a bit from their own liability, and of course can always lean on "opinion" and their top-secret black box grading standards. This is exactly the way other industries (unnamed, don't want to get this thing dumped for edging into forbidden territory ) have separated the "risk" from the buyer and seller while hiding most of the actual liability behind so-called corporate Chinese Walls that aren't really so impenetrable after all, all rife with undue influence due to lobbying money, etc. It's a bad thing, always, the insert middlemen where responsibility and liability are shifted as well. It's even worse when the act of doing so comes at a cost that inflates the entire market too. Talk about paying more for less (from the consumer/end-user pov)!

[grapeape]

4 minutes ago, vodou said:

I totally disagree.

Slabbing, in all hobbies, quietly shifted the responsibility (and thus the liability) from the seller (or auctioneer) to the grading firm. All sellers now have non-return policies on slabbed items (all hobbies here). But only the submitter and (maybe shifty?) graders (anonymous...naturally) know the "truth" of what was what before and after. And the grading firms, by being one-step removed from any actual buying/selling transaction are insulated quite a bit from their own liability, and of course can always lean on "opinion" and their top-secret black box grading standards. This is exactly the way other industries (unnamed, don't want to get this thing dumped for edging into forbidden territory ) have separated the "risk" from the buyer and seller while hiding most of the actual liability behind so-called corporate Chinese Walls that aren't really so impenetrable after all, all rife with undue influence due to lobbying money, etc. It's a bad thing, always, the insert middlemen where responsibility and liability are shifted as well. It's even worse when the act of doing so comes at a cost that inflates the entire market too. Talk about paying more for less (from the consumer/end-user pov)!

Everything you say is true. I don’t know what the answer is. I know we were dealing with “Experts” and a large segment of the collecting public that simply could not grade at all. 
No ability to detect restoration.
Or sold restored books without disclosure 

Or claimed that higher grade restored books were worth infinitely more then lower grade unrestored....

So when I say cleaned up, (pardon me) a better word was “saved” the comic collecting hobby.

Awful to say that I know.

Now as you point out our trust is only as good as the third party we hand our books off to.

As a comic man raw is all I ever wanted. I predicted CGC would ruin comics as collectors wanted to inspect, inside and out their comics. To smell the pages. 
 

In 2020 raw books are only as good as when they are turned to slabbed books. I cringe with all of the soul slavery, let someone else grade for me traps that slabbing poses. It is today’s reality.

To me clean up means raw books vs. slabbed books met up for a gun fight. Raw books showed up with knives. They never had a chance. Tons more restored books were detected there’s no doubt about that.

But crooks be crooks. No one is infallible. There was too long a period in collecting where the Dupcaks and other slugs manipulated and defrauded the market. 

Are their creeps out there in the comic world today? Art? Baseball Cards?

Yes

Yes

Yes

 

 

 

[vodou]

18 minutes ago, grapeape said:

But crooks be crooks. No one is infallible. There was too long a period in collecting where the Dupcaks and other slugs manipulated and defrauded the market. 

Are their creeps out there in the comic world today? Art? Baseball Cards?

There is unfortunately scandal associated with every grading firm in every hobby. Search engines can bring the stuff up easy enough. Even if you don't buy into that stuff, the conflict of interest is inherent and obvious.

At least when the POS trying to pull one over was the guy in front of you, you could have a trusted pal advise you to step back or if you did a deal where a problem surfaced, push the bad right back on that guy directly. And reputations tarnished were not easily recovered. That made everyone but the most egregious crooks very careful, knowing the value of reputation for staying in the long game. It was a slower world but a better one. Not so with third-party grading.

I'd suggest the forced arbitration clauses these firms likely all have should be reviewed by anybody putting more than $100 into anything graded.

[Bronty]

Not only that but anonymous selling through auction houses.   You have no idea who the seller even is sometimes. 
 

Anyways, we are talking about Jason Ewert like his activity is past tense.    I’m not so sure that’s the case.   

 

[comicartcom]

14 hours ago, grapeape said:

Slabbing definitely cleaned up comics overall. S

slabbing hasn't cleaned up anything. All it has done is to distill a comic book to it's basest form: a monetary object.

It shows it's fraud when a comic book from a pedigree collection that was graded 8.0, gets cleaned and boosted to an 8.5, gets pressed and boosted up to a 9.0 and then gets cleaned and pressed again to get graded at 9.4, and everyone knows it's still the same comic book

also, pressing in my opinion, is a complete fraud. it-is-restoration and it is not revealed on any labels. It was my understanding that CGC was supposed to be a bulwark against such tomfoolery

 

Edited January 25, 2020 by comicartcom

[Rick2you2]

3 hours ago, comicartcom said:

slabbing hasn't cleaned up anything. All it has done is to distill a comic book to it's basest form: a monetary object.

It shows it's fraud when a comic book from a pedigree collection that was graded 8.0, gets cleaned and boosted to an 8.5, gets pressed and boosted up to a 9.0 and then gets cleaned and pressed again to get graded at 9.4, and everyone knows it's still the same comic book

also, pressing in my opinion, is a complete fraud. it-is-restoration and it is not revealed on any labels. It was my understanding that CGC was supposed to be a bulwark against such tomfoolery

 

Why is pressing a fraud? I have some old books, badly stored, which, when located, were a bit curved in the middle (from being stored standing up, before there were boards). I simply placed them under a heavy box of old flatware, and turned them every few weeks. They are a lot better now. 

[grapeape]

3 hours ago, comicartcom said:

slabbing hasn't cleaned up anything. All it has done is to distill a comic book to it's basest form: a monetary object.

It shows it's fraud when a comic book from a pedigree collection that was graded 8.0, gets cleaned and boosted to an 8.5, gets pressed and boosted up to a 9.0 and then gets cleaned and pressed again to get graded at 9.4, and everyone knows it's still the same comic book

also, pressing in my opinion, is a complete fraud. it-is-restoration and it is not revealed on any labels. It was my understanding that CGC was supposed to be a bulwark against such tomfoolery

 

Pressing is restoration. I was shocked the first time I was told this is now an acceptable practice. 
“Everyone knows it’s the same comic.” 
I don’t know what to say there. Crooks are going to be crooks. Unethical practices not surprising because they existed before slabbing. Now comics are infinitely more valuable then they ever were. So of course the evil doers are trying to do what they do.

I have 1% of my comic collection left. Still toy with the idea of adding Amazing Fantasy 15 and a few others back into my life. The boards are the acid test though. I appreciate the strong feelings about shenanigans from you guys.

Specific examples are much appreciated. It helps all of us much more than blanket statements.

• cleaning

•pressing

• undetected trimming

What else you guys got? If I do buy a few more books I gotta navigate this minefield. 🤮

[The Voord]

I sold the vast majority of my comic-book collection during the latter half of the 1980s to concentrate on OA.  Nowadays I'm happy to own reprint collections of the titles that remain enduring favourites.  Stuff I can re-read, knowing there's not a great deal of value in these reprints edition.  Although I get how the slabbing phenomenon works, I never did like the idea of encapsulated comic-books that, while preserving an accepted grade, only displays a front and back cover.  That idea, to me, works best for things like coins or trading cards.  Glad to be out of the comic-book collecting community and happy with my reprint editions which I can actually re-read and not get hung up on things like grading or restoration issues.

Edited January 25, 2020 by The Voord

[vodou]

2 hours ago, grapeape said:

What else you guys got? If I do buy a few more books I gotta navigate this minefield. 🤮

Probably a question for everywhere else but the OA sub-forum

1 hour ago, The Voord said:

Glad to be out of the comic-book collecting community and happy with my reprint editions which I can actually re-read and not get hung up on things like grading or restoration issues.

Me. Too.

[grapeape]

1 hour ago, vodou said:

Probably a question for everywhere else but the OA sub-forum

Me. Too.

Nah Vodou, those comic book guys all saying there’s nothing to see there.Ha ha. No I get it, not soliciting a comic book thread just saying if it comes up in the discussion of fraud in general specific examples are better than “because I said so.”

No doubt I agree with you and Terry. Getting out of comic collecting saved my sanity. All the classic stories I cared about are in well worn hard or soft cover reprints on the book shelf.
 

Uggh....ever since the name Dupcak was dropped during the Shuster thread I’ve been out of sorts. 
 

Let’s get back to discussions of second run Cockrum X-Men pages and ASM Ditko splashes!!!!!!
 

                        🍇.    🦍.   🎈🎈🎈      

 

 

[comicartcom]

On 1/25/2020 at 2:03 AM, Rick2you2 said:

Why is pressing a fraud? I have some old books, badly stored, which, when located, were a bit curved in the middle (from being stored standing up, before there were boards). I simply placed them under a heavy box of old flatware, and turned them every few weeks. They are a lot better now. 

because pressing is 'restoration'. Period. Just flattening a bow may not register as much, but what about fixing a spine roll? Eliminating small dents in the paper?

Restoration is the act of returning something to it's original state, or improving it's current state.

Period

[RBerman]

22 hours ago, comicartcom said:

because pressing is 'restoration'. Period. Just flattening a bow may not register as much, but what about fixing a spine roll? Eliminating small dents in the paper?

Restoration is the act of returning something to it's original state, or improving its current state.

Period

Why do collectors frown on restoration? If the damage was incidental (e.g. dented paper) then undoing the damage returns the work to its original form. Obviously some restoration is more intrusive than others.

[comicartcom]

27 minutes ago, RBerman said:

Why do collectors frown on restoration? If the damage was incidental (e.g. dented paper) then undoing the damage returns the work to its original form. Obviously some restoration is more intrusive than others.

I don't buy restored movie posters (where I reside now) with the exception of it would be otherwise impossible to find a copy under any circumstances. I do not send my posters to be linenbacked, because I collect paper, not linen. Moreover, raw copies are worth more & far more desirable than restored, or in the case of posters, backed.

this statement: "If the damage was incidental (e.g. dented paper) then undoing the damage returns the work to its original form." is the technical definition of restoration. I fully believe that pressing should be noted and cleaning as well.

[zhamlau]

On 1/21/2020 at 2:24 AM, grapeape said:

Things mothers should teach their children

1)Wipe the Dupcak off your shoes before coming in the house

2) Wash your hands after making a Dupcak

3) Never buy a Mickey Mantle rookie card from Dupcack

4) Private Auctions on eBay are the devils work

 

 

Haha I knew of Danny through his sports card trimming, forgot he was a comic book guy too. He was a “renaissance man” no doubt.

[comicartcom]

2 hours ago, zhamlau said:

Haha I knew of Danny through his sports card trimming, forgot he was a comic book guy too. He was a “renaissance man” no doubt.

I know many people who would like to punish him the same ways that the Renaissance authorities would have. I have a fire with a hot poker ready to go for him myself