PGX & Terrance Leder: A Love Story
The goal of this webpage is to supply the comic book collecting community with information about the PGX (aka CGG) comic book grading company, its owner Daniel Patterson (PGX's only confirmed employee as of 4/15/06) and Ebay seller Terrance Leder (aka christinascollectibles, ma4pres, TDcomicsandcards, et.all). This information was gathered from multiple sources and is being complied here in order to make it more accessible to the public. The following is an account of some of the behaviors of both parties.

Below you will find a series of images outlining incidents of scan manipulation, missed restoration, multiple suspensions and mystery label changes. It's my hope that they will enable you to draw your own conclusions.

Please feel free to send me feedback.
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What Restoration?
Terrance Leder sells these two PGX (CGG at the time) certified comics on Ebay:

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They are then sent to CGC and graded by them as restored....

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When asked, Daniel Patterson says that the ASM #68 wasn't trimmed when he graded it. So he provides a scan to "prove it"....


It turns out that the scan has been digitally manipulated with a bottom edge added to make up for the trim....
Daniel Patterson then states that he received the scan from a "CGG (now PGX) employee" that was "let go". He also states that Terrance Leder will not be allowed to submit comics to CGG (PGX) anymore....

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The following is a side by side comparison between the CGG(PGX)/Terrance Leder ASM scan and a known copy of the book.

This .jpg offers a split screen view of several images. The images on the left are taken from the one that Danial Paterson posted on the CGC message board of the book in question. The images on the right are of another copy of the same book that shows the correct lineart for the area in question.

Each section has an area circled. Look inside the circle to see the black lineart from the book. The lineart in the CGG (PGX) picture is not correct for this book. There is missing lineart. It was cloned to make the book appear untrimmed.

If that isn't enough, maybe these images will make it easier to see.
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During this "suspension", another CGG (PGX) certified comic shows up for sale by Terrance Leder on Ebay. The book is submitted to CGC and comes back as restored with amateur color touch noted:

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They Put Dates On Those Labels?!

During Terrance Leder's "suspension" for the ASM #68 fiasco, other CGG (PGX) graded comics show up on Ebay from Terrance Leder under his TDcomixncardz seller ID. When various posters on the Comicspriceguide.com and CGC message boards noted the comics were graded during the "suspension", the scans were digitally manipulated by Terrance Leder to change the grading date back to before the "suspension" was announced. Some examples of those manipulated scans:

Before:


After:

It's a litte hard to see, but the grading date, located on the bottom right of the label, was changed from 6/04 to 3/04 as well being blurred to further hide the change.

For a clearer image of the change, here's a copy of Swamp Thing #8 after the date change from the same round of auctions:

Note the weird appearance of the "3" in the graded date on the label. Here's how the date should appear and the different font used by CGG (PGX) on their labels. The top date is the one manipulated on the slab. The second is a proper date notation as used by CGG (PGX):

Below are further examples of dates that were manipulated by Terrance Leder during those same round of auctions:

Daniel Patterson was asked why the comics were graded even though Terrance Leder was "suspended". After being initially non-committal, Daniel finally confirmed Terrance Leder was unsuspended and CGG (PGX) was grading books for him again. When asked why, Daniel stated he couldn't find any reason to continue the suspension and wasn't convinced the ASM #68 scan was indeed manipulated.

When presented with the manipulated graded date scans (changed to hide the fact CGG (PGX) had graded these comics during Terrance Leder's "suspension") Daniel announced that Terrance Leder was suspended yet again from submitting comics to CGG (PGX).

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Trim? What's That?
In the following case Terrance Leder bought this comic off Ebay.
Original Ebay auction picture:


Enlarged:


The book is then certified by PGX with no mention of any restoration. Take note of the trimmed right hand edge.

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Realizing Their "Full Potential"
Terrance Leder bought these on Ebay:
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About two weeks later these were listed for sale on Ebay by Terrance Leder....
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Identifying marks are very subtle, but the flaws show that these are the same books....
(White arrow upper left shows identifying mark. White line to the right shows where it was trimmed.)

(White arrow middle left & black arrows in yellow on bottom right and near bubbles middle right on Donald Duck book)
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In this picture the top image is the trimmed book placed exactly over the original and made slightly transparent so you can see that the artwork on both is perfectly aligned. Notice the huge chunk of the original visible behind the top and bottom trimmed edges of the graded version.
This is basically the same image except the bottom copy has been tinted green and the transparency of the trimmed copy has been laid on top of it. Any green you see is part of the original that has been trimmed off.
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This Atom bomb 9.9 TD is selling on Ebay now (3/25/06) was previously a 9.8 with the same serial number and grading date. I'm not sure what to make of this, but it seems odd.

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Here is another book bought off Ebay by Terrance Leder and sent into PGX for certification. Notice, again, the trimmed right edge.





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In His Own Words - Daniel Paterson Speaks
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In An E-Mail Dated April 20, 2004 sent to a CGC forum memeber regarding the restored Batman 238 - We are looking into this seller as possibly switching books and are keeping an eye on any of his auctions that come up. We no longer allow this seller to submit books, and hope that there are no other suspect books out there. We have tracked down many of his books and have confirmed they are the same books without restoration on them. We have also regraded books originally sent in by this seller, to confirm they are the same books, and they were then encapsulated in our new holder. This was done on all books this seller still had in his possession, and he was willing to cooperate with us. We have taken this situation very seriously and are doing what we can to protect our reputation, and our customers purchases.

We have long since increased security on our holder to ensure that the possibility of a switched book cannot happen in the future and will be adding another security feature this month.

We are aware of our restoration detection abilities and have complete confidence in them, but it is possible this is a case of simple missed restoration, and if that is the case we apologize for the inconvience to yourself. As we have never had a serious complaint involving any other customers books we absolutely do not believe there is any need to worry about any other books that are out in the marketplace, and we hope this will not completely sour you toward books graded by us.

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January 08, 2005 5:14 PM (In regards to Terrance Leder) - "I have seen no proof of wrongdoing by this person. We did ban his submissions for a short time as we investigated claims made on the CGC boards.

All of these claims that have been raised are either unfounded or based on information that has been taken and twisted. We looked into all things that were brought up and although I do not want to go further into explaining this, for anyone that needs more information please call myself and I would be happy to provide the truth to any of these different claims.

There is no customer we would not permanately ban if they were attempting to use our service or manipulate our service to commit fraudulent activities.

I do not like having to expain about this seller, but we are willing to stand up for any customer that we feel is innocent. I have met this seller and I thought he was a very decent, stand-up guy."

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January 09, 2005 2:33 PM - "We will have a bio page up on the website soon but I doubt that we will be listing specific dates and information as much as just our overall experience."

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March 12, 2005 6:11 PM (In regards to Terrance Leder) - "We have weighed our options and honestly, it was not a difficult choice and perhaps one that would have been better to have made a long time ago. We have sent correspondence to pgxit/leder stating we will no longer accept submissions from him. We stated whether he was guilty/not guilty of anything no longer was the deciding factor, and that the controversary always surrounding him was always coming back to make PGX look bad.

I am not interested in trying to explain situations and things that are brought up about this seller any longer, I will just let everyone draw their own conclusions on what they chose to believe is the truth and leave it at that.

I am sorry if this mess has caused anyone to lose trust in PGX and if that is the case we look forward to being able to earn it back.

We also asked him to discontinue selling any PGX books he currently owns on ebay, though I don't know if he will comply with that or not. We also asked him to discontinue any use of pgxit or anything with pgx in the name.

I still don't believe this person is out to rip people off, reading feedback on his ebay account it appears readily apparent that almost everyone that bought from him left postive feedback. My conclusion is that he simply has bad business practices that open a lot of doors for negative speculation, but I will leave that up to everyone else to decide for themselves."

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March 29, 2005 2:50 AM - The worst things I have heard about us is that we supposedly missed restoration on several books a YEAR AND A HALF AGO! No books that I know of have been brought forward since that time. And that we supposedly show favor to one of our customers, which is not true but somehow turned into one of the biggest conspiracies I have seen. I have read so many things that were so false and so far from the truth I have had a hard time keeping the truth straight and back then it seemed anything I said or did only made things worse. I hope that all that BS is behind us.

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May 12, 2005 10:09 PM - "Although we would prefer not to have this seller selling PGX graded books simply because of the backlash it seems to create, we will not attempt to ban anyone that may be submitting books for him.

All books that come in go through the same grading process, go into the same holder with the same protection against tampering.

The best thing I can say is, if you don't like this seller, the books he sells, or the way he sells them, don't bid."

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June 11, 2005 5:55 PM - Everyone is welcome to believe what they will, but our resto detection skills are not lacking.

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October 23, 2005 2:34 PM - We stand behind every book we have graded, including every book graded for leder or anyone else that just happens to live in Oregon.

I haven't seen or heard of a single book we have missed restoration on in almost two years. Well, except for one book where someone intentionally replaced a staple needlessly for the sole purpose to try and sneak it past us.

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March 22, 2006 11:09 PM - Could he (Terrance Leder) be submitting books through someone else? Sure, and if he is I really don't care. We have excellent restoration skills and grade everyone's books the same.

..........not a single book has been brought forward in the last 2 years where we have missed restoration. Oh, except for one book where someone intentionally replaced one staple for no reason other than to slip it past us.

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March 23, 2006 9:12 PM - We banned Leder because of public perception. I will not do that again. We have no reason too. Nobody is slipping restored books past us and nobody is getting 'gift' grades.

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March 25, 2006 7:01 PM (In regards to the Cheerios/mini comics) - Do we need to ban someone else? At this point I would think not although if someone is consistently 'intentionally' trying to slip restored books past us it would be a consideration to ban them rather than to worry that eventually a restored book could slip by.

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April 04, 2006 2:31 PM (In regards to the Cheerios/mini comics) - We are currently putting all books similar to the Cheerios Premium books through several other tests to ensure trimming is not missed on these type of books.

We have chosen to ban the person that was submitting these books. Although the responsibility falls on us to catch these things I feel okay with not dealing with anyone that is intentionally trying to get books past us. We will not reverse this decision(as I know someone will mention that possibility).

We take responsibilty for errors we make and we are working hard at not letting anything get past us. I understand people being upset and hope to regain their trust.

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April 11, 2006 6:38 PM (In regards to the Cheerios/mini comics) - It certainly appears we made an error with that book and I believe we have taken neccessary steps to avoid this as we move ahead. We are more than willing to talk compensation if there is any book we missed restoration on.

.....I have posted some things I regret, many of which were turned around and used against us, and perhaps I should consult our lawyers before making posts, but oh well.

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