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polished_gem_comics aka diamond_comics_llc aka silver_valley_comics CGC slab cracking and overgrading for profit
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595 posts in this topic

Isn't it a case of always Buyer Beware, especially when it comes to slabbed books? :preach:

Especially when they are willing to pay multiples more for a barely perceptible upgrade in condition (whether uncertified or certified) for a book.  :screwy:

Actually, I would be a whole lot more concerned and upset if the second sale was for an upgraded CGC 9.4 or CGC 9.6 copy of the exact same book that was only a CGC 9.0 graded copy a month earlier.  :mad:  :censored:

Edited by lou_fine
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21 minutes ago, Wipple said:

Was watching some of these guys books end yesterday. Glad I didn’t get involved. Thanks for the heads up. Not a fan of this . 

Well, it's also rather obvious that you should stay as far away as possible when the seller lists the item as being SCARCE in bold in the listing title when there are hundreds and hundreds of them listed currently on eBay for sale.  Now, that's the clear definition of COMMON more than anything else.  doh!

With that, your Spidey sense should already be tingling like mad as how can you believe anything else that would be stated in the auction listing.  

Edited by lou_fine
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18 minutes ago, Wipple said:

Was watching some of these guys books end yesterday. Glad I didn’t get involved. Thanks for the heads up. Not a fan of this . 

His wife's father bought all these off the newsstand. He was a picky guy!   :roflmao:

Hello & thank you for stopping in today we will be listing a lot of Golden Age, Silver Age & Bronze Age Comics!!! All of the books that you see are from a original owner which was my wife’s father! He bought these high grade books fresh off the news stands threw out his childhood threw adulthood!! All of them are in high grade as he was a very picky guy when it came to books.

Comic For Sale: Fantastic Four #67 1st. App. & Origin (Warlock)! SCARCE RARE KEY! 9.4/9.6 Needs To Be Graded Immediately! Unread! 100% No Restoration Guarantee! Unpressed! Original Owner! 1st. Print! 10/1967

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1 minute ago, lou_fine said:

Well, it's also rather obvious that you should stay as far away as possible when the seller lists the item as being scare in BOLD in the listing title when there are hundreds and hundreds of them listed currently on eBay for sale.  Now, that's the definition of common more than anything else.  doh!

With that, how can you believe anything else that would be stated in the auction listing.  

He's buying and selling with the same account. The scans show books that are obviously over-graded by a few steps,  most of what he's selling that was cracked still have the original listings on ebay, showing them slabbed, and the books themselves bear the tells of having been once slabbed or pressed/slabbed. This is not a smart con job.

Soon, the neutrals and negatives will start to pile up, as more of his buyers get their submissions back as originally graded, the books worth about 1/4 to 1/2 what they paid. If he doesn't refund, Ebay and/or paypal will do it for the buyer. As the refunds pile up, it'll spike his paypal account, which will be frozen or terminated. It's working for him so far, but it's only a matter of time before the gravy train derails.

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2 minutes ago, James J Johnson said:

He's buying and selling with the same account.

Now, that's absolutely dumb.  doh!

As for bidders on these books here, all I can say is that they have even top the seller off as they are dumb and even dumber.  doh!  doh!

 

4 minutes ago, James J Johnson said:

Soon, the neutrals and negatives will start to pile up, as more of his buyers get their submissions back as originally graded, the books worth about 1/4 to 1/2 what they paid. If he doesn't refund, Ebay and/or paypal will do it for the buyer. As the refunds pile up, it'll spike his paypal account, which will be frozen or terminated.

Ae you sure that eBay and PayPal will do much of anything with these completed auctions if the bidders themselves are not even willing to do their own simple due diligence before throwing down thousands of dollars on a book?  hm  (shrug)

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Dude already got one neutral on this X-Men 9 -- https://www.ebay.com/itm/X-men-9-9-4-1st-App-Lucifer-1st-Avengers-Meeting-Original-Owner-WP-CGC-/143561675531?nma=true&si=LjpuxsFNhGzzUUJ4pVVR7vDHsys%3D&orig_cvip=true&nordt=true&rt=nc&_trksid=p2047675.l2557

His response to the feedback shows he's a scam artist, but at the same time the photos of the book clearly showed two things:
1. The book is not even close to a 9.4, just based on the top left edge of the front cover.
2. He's clearly manipulating the lighting on the photos to hide flaws and enhance page quality to a laughable degree.

People of eBay, stop falling for these scam listings.

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Clearly this seller is a low integrity individual - personally, can't stand these type of folk but perhaps I am not in their situation so can't appreciate how they look in the mirror without distaste

That said, who believes a non-graded 9.4 silver age grade from a typical eBay seller?

Mark

Edited by mtlevy1
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1 hour ago, lou_fine said:

Now, that's absolutely dumb.  doh!

As for bidders on these books here, all I can say is that they have even top the seller off as they are dumb and even dumber.  doh!  doh!

 

Ae you sure that eBay and PayPal will do much of anything with these completed auctions if the bidders themselves are not even willing to do their own simple due diligence before throwing down thousands of dollars on a book?  hm  (shrug)

There are metrics that paypal use to thwart an issue before it's too late. I don't want to go into specifics, thereby giving this seller a tutorial on this, but suffice to say that if he gets enough returns for "item not as described" thereby resulting in issuance of refunds in excess of what their metrics apply based on the frequency of refunds, the amounts, versus his total sales, then yes, they will freeze or suspend him as this falls into their category of "suspicious activity". Now this has nothing to do with buyer's complaints, feedback, whatever. This is based on paypal's own internal metrics applying their system to root out "risky" sellers, and a high % of refunds versus total sales/gross is one of their red flags.

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35 minutes ago, mtlevy1 said:

Clearly this seller is a low integrity individual - personally, can't stand these type of folk but perhaps I am not in their situation so can't appreciate how they look in the mirror without distaste

That said, who believes a non-graded 9.4 silver age grade from a typical eBay seller?

Mark

Apparently, there was $2550 worth of belief for the buyer of that FF 67 and the underbidder (unless it was shilled... I haven't even looked into that yet, but if so, I will not be surprised). As for now, I'm tracking all of his sales, and identifying the source for the book(s).

Notably, he also buys Comic lots on ebay, but applies the same M.O. for their sales as well. There's a partial early run of Spiderman that the original seller listed as predominantly G to VG books that were listed with similarly stratospherically unrealistic grades.

I noticed several books he purchased with disclosed restoration, the disclosure in their re-sale lost in translation, their all newsstand bought, right?

I wanted to quickly establish the paths for each CGC book that he bought, that later appeared in his listings as raw, bought by his father in law off the newsstand, now with greatly inflated grades. After I'm done with this, then I'll research the bidding. Has to be something going on there, I would think. Could there really be that many stupid buyers on ebay bidding like drunken sailors on books that are 2 to 4 grades over-graded, even if they don't know they were once slabbed?

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1 hour ago, mattn792 said:

Dude already got one neutral on this X-Men 9 -- https://www.ebay.com/itm/X-men-9-9-4-1st-App-Lucifer-1st-Avengers-Meeting-Original-Owner-WP-CGC-/143561675531?nma=true&si=LjpuxsFNhGzzUUJ4pVVR7vDHsys%3D&orig_cvip=true&nordt=true&rt=nc&_trksid=p2047675.l2557

His response to the feedback shows he's a scam artist, but at the same time the photos of the book clearly showed two things:
1. The book is not even close to a 9.4, just based on the top left edge of the front cover.
2. He's clearly manipulating the lighting on the photos to hide flaws and enhance page quality to a laughable degree.

People of eBay, stop falling for these scam listings.

I don't know they bid intensely instead looking at the book before bidding. There are alot of creases that cannot be missed.  His tool is to entrap the unsuspected or lazy bidders.

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37 minutes ago, JollyComics said:

I don't know they bid intensely instead looking at the book before bidding. There are alot of creases that cannot be missed.  His tool is to entrap the unsuspected or lazy bidders.

Here's why this unscrupulous strategy he's pursuing is not going to last.  Money.  He doesn't have nearly enough of it for this flim-flam to be effective. Not enough money to obscure the obvious trail of his buying CGC on ebay, then reselling it raw a month or less later at fraudulently inflated grades. 

He hasn't a chance of hiding this transparency because he doesn't have the funding to sit on a quarter to half a million dollars worth of CGC purchases for 6 months, until the images of the CGC slabs he's cracking has disappeared off of ebay and the trail goes colder (for most. not for me though)  He's buying books that there are many of, Hulk 181, AS 129, AS 101, etc. to make tracing more tedious, but as stated, he hasn't got the funding to sit on what he buys. It's a conveyor belt with the speed setting far too fast for this mail fraud to escape notice.

 

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1 hour ago, James J Johnson said:

Could there really be that many stupid buyers on ebay bidding like drunken sailors on books that are 2 to 4 grades over-graded, even if they don't know they were once slabbed?

Moist certainly YES, Yes, and yes!!!  

All they see is that 9.4 or 9.6 number and nothing else.................then their legs start to shake like anything and their brain goes dead and then they rush to check what their line of credit is good for.  doh!  :screwy:

Edited by lou_fine
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1 minute ago, lou_fine said:

Moist certainly YES, Yes, and yes!!!  

All they see is that 9.4 or 9.6 number and nothing else.................then their legs start to shake like anything and their brain goes dead and they check to see what their line of credit is good for.  doh!  :screwy:

But it looks to be occurring in all grades. I think that "my father-in-law bought them off the stands. He was very picky" is the major incentive because he's buying comic lots of raw books that sellers are grading G to VG, listing them as Fine and Very Fine, and they're lining up to pay 3 to 5 times the value of what the books actually look to grade in the pictures! The image shows a G/VG, it's listed as Fine, and the bidders are ponying up CGC 6.0 and up for them!  I've been tracking the raw books he's buying at G to VG ranges, listing as Fine and better, and he's making even more on those than the CGC crackouts!!

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7 minutes ago, James J Johnson said:

But it looks to be occurring in all grades. I think that "my father-in-law bought them off the stands. He was very picky" is the major incentive because he's buying comic lots of raw books that sellers are grading G to VG, listing them as Fine and Very Fine, and they're lining up to pay 3 to 5 times the value of what the books actually look to grade in the pictures! The image shows a G/VG, it's listed as Fine, and the bidders are ponying up CGC 6.0 and up for them!  I've been tracking the raw books he's buying at G to VG ranges, listing as Fine and better, and he's making even more on those than the CGC crackouts!!

Saw a judge judy where a guy was buying crappy cars then polishing em up and selling as 'only driven by little old lady on sundays' so to speak and Judy said this was 'puffing' and legal, and buyer beware.  

Edited by kav
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2 hours ago, mattn792 said:

He's clearly manipulating the lighting on the photos to hide flaws and enhance page quality to a laughable degree.

Yes. Absolutely. Intensity + Contrast + Brightness all jacked up 15%.  He's got the DPI set low to minimize resolution. He doesn't want the fine details scrutinized. I don'/t blame him.

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2 hours ago, mtlevy1 said:

Clearly this seller is a low integrity individual - personally, can't stand these type of folk but perhaps I am not in their situation so can't appreciate how they look in the mirror without distaste

That said, who believes a non-graded 9.4 silver age grade from a typical eBay seller?

Mark

The main question should be, "Who pays GPAnalysis 9.4 to 9.6 for it?"   :whatthe:  

How would you like to have a circulating sales mailing list exclusively comprised of those buyers?  :whee:

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