Tuesday, January 29, 2013

Fake Star Wars 35 Cent Price Variants in PGX holders bring big bucks in January ComicLink Auction

In the recent January ComicLink Auction, two altered Star Wars comic books brought big bucks.  In my opinion, it is obvious that a scammer has altered the price block on a Star Wars 1 and a Star Wars 2 regular issue book to make the books look like the much more costly 35 cent price variants.  How these two books ended up in a PGX holder makes for interesting speculation.  Perhaps the scammer submitted the books to PGX and PGX simply missed the alteration through negligence or incompetence.  Maybe the scammer is an employee of PGX who altered the books and encapsulated the books themselves.  Maybe the books were altered and sold to an innocent buyer who sent the books to PGX.   Regardless of how it happened, the end result is that two mid-range Star Wars books which should normally sell for a few bucks were altered, encapsulated in PGX holders, and sold at auction for hundreds of dollars.

I have bought many books on ComicLink and I have sold books on ComicLink.  ComicLink does a great job and I recommend them to others.  I do not think that they played any part in the scam and trust them to do right by their customers.  I do think that they should reconsider whether they want to allow PGX graded books in their auctions.   I also hope that ComicLink will cancel the auction and send the books back to the seller.

I am not sure that PGX offers a guarantee for missing alterations in their grading.  I am certain that I will not use or recommend their services.

Here is a screen capture of the listing for the altered Star Wars 1 35 cent price variant.


Here is the scan of the altered Star Wars 1 and a close-up of the label.


 
So how do we know that a scammer has turned a common mid-grade book into $705 bucks?  The dead give-away is the price block.  Here is a close-up of the altered title block which you can compare to a close-up of the title block of an authentic copy below it.  As you can see, the "3", "5" and "c" and "Ccc" are not even close.
 
 
Here is a full-comic scan of an outstanding and authentic Star Wars 1 price variant that sold for $4367 in the same auction.
 
 
In the same auction, this altered Star Wars 2 sold for $390.  It has the same problem as its PGX brother above.
 
 

 
 
Here is a close-up of the altered price block and below it a close-up of an authentic Star Wars 2 35 cent variant price block. 
 


5 comments:

  1. Exactly why I would never use PGX!

    ReplyDelete
  2. You blame PGX for this error. But has anyone contacted them to find out when or if they even graded these books? If they are selling for 700+ dollars average then im sure they would have a record of it somewhere. I mean I have held both PGX and CGC slabbed books both of which and be opened and altered if someone really wanted to. Also whos to say thst this person on this article is 100% creditable. ( no offense) but these ate just pictures that they could have altered or if this person is creditable they could have just been given the pictures that were altered and informed about the "scam" I'm just saying that because the only people I see that are anti pgx are blinded by cgc because they have been around longer. But with out competition companies become complacent and therr quality of work tends to go down

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Yes. I contacted Comiclink and they confirmed that it was PGXs error. The comic looks like the original price has been rubbed/erased/worn off and the new price printed on the paper.

      Delete
  3. Who was the person who had it listed?

    ReplyDelete
  4. Whew! I just bought a 35-cent variant Star Wars #1 (not slabbed or professionally graded) on eBay, paid for it, THEN read this article. Looking at the pics in the auction, I see the copy I bought is legit.

    I can see how this could fool a lot of collectors, but PGX or CGC should know better.

    ReplyDelete