I dont think they can do the 9.5 to 10 upgrade the same way cgc did
Didnt they try to do this already? But the market freaked out
Ill admit whenever i look up cards i literally type cards name followed by “psa X” (x for desired grade)
Its an issue for other graders honestly
Only recently have i started to search for cgc pristine 10 in my searches but normally just psa
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And you are certainly not alone in doing this. Even most recent sales are immediately compared to their PSA equivalent. This is something that will be very difficult for any of the other, newer, grading companies to replicate.
They tried to downgrade quad 9.5 and below to mint+ which caused the vast majority of collectors to explode. No Bueno.
I think TAG is riding the AI wave right now with their offering of new cutting edge technology. I like how their slabs look but have too many reservations with them to move away from PSA and grade with TAG. Some of these reservations include how easy their slabs are to break into, what happens to old TAG cards when they inevitably upgrade their tech/AI models as well as their respective liquidity compared to PSA.
I’m based in the UK and, whilst I’m not a big fan of their slabs, ACE is becoming very popular and I can see them becoming a big player soon if they can expand outside of the UK. Their custom labels are quite unique (again, not a fan but I know many who like them) and their turnaround times are rapid making them a feasible alternative to PSA here in UK.
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PSA will always be the standard grading company for pokemon cards and everything else, especially TAG, is junk. You’re better off just putting your cards in a one-touch than paying cgc or TAG or any of these other fly by night grading companies to assign their meaningless opinion to your cards.
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Some of these new companies may offer something potentially more accurate or discerning with respect to grading (or so they claim), but in the end of the day, the market and big players in Pokemon always value PSA the highest, with few exceptions. It simply comes with the largest amount of potential collectors across all grades, and this makes them the attractive from pretty much every angle (collecting, investing, liquidity, value, risk, etc).
Of course PSA is not always perfect either, they have made mistakes at times like all the other graders. But it remains the gold standard overall when you consider that long running reputation and large amount of cards they’ve graded to date.
I’ve collected BGS & CGC as well, but mainly because they cross up with some of my other collection (MTG, etc). They can be a great value option, especially for cards where re-sell or other reasons is not as much of a priority or end goal. I would say this would apply to any other non-PSA grader as well, it’s your collection in the end, and we all have different goals as collectors.
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Fly by night lolz
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I personally will not buy any CGC graded cards after all the shit theyve been up to the last few years. Theyve completely eroded whatever trust i had in them and im honestly surprised people still grade with them as much as they do
Overall i think the market for grading kinda sucks rn, none of the companies are hitting it out of the park for me. If im buying graded, its PSA, but i have stopped submitting, as i also do not trust them with my cards at this point
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CGC can grade cards properly, authentication of signatures and cards is another story. I do however, completely understand the trust factor. At least they handled refunds well…
CGC has changed their grading scale so much I wouldn’t trust them to not keep making changes. A blue label cgc 9 is completely different than a new label cgc 9. Its obvious in the beginning their plan was to gatekeep 10s and try to make super rare 10s their selling point, but with their most recent grading scale changes they overdid it the opposite way where it’s too easy to get their regular 10s now. I know a lot of people debate old cert vs new cert with PSA but with CGC you practically have to dig into the month/year the card was graded to even figure out what their grading scale was at the time.
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Examples?
Right now I only grade to increase the value and liquidity of cards. Currently, PSA is the best place to do this. Could this change in the future? Of course, but until there is enough proven change I will be sticking with PSA.
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Examples aren’t necessary, it’s common knowledge CGC changed their grading scale. You can find articles on their own website from the time all their 9.5s suddenly became 10s.
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I don’t have specific examples but Politoed is right, as someone who was big into CGC at the beginning of their journey into card grading they got more lax as they stayed in the game.
There were complaints that they graded too hard (and the complaints were valid) when they rolled out. Getting a Prisitine ten or Perfect ten actually meant something because they visually matched with those grades.
Looking at newer CGC slabs they give higher grades than they should to where even I think “That (regular) 10 would be a PSA 8”
I do understand that different grading companies are harsher or more lenient on different grading aspects and that PSA can give the same card anywhere from a 6 to 10 depending on the day and what a grader saw in the minute they spent looking at the card.
But I have to inspect CGC slabs as much as PSA ones now to see if the grade I see is what I’m actually getting and it is an annoying thing to deal with.
After things normalize with TAG in terms of dealing with volume and crappy slabs (if they can get it together) I will send my personal cards to them because next to ARS they have the best looking slabs and ARS is hard to access.
For anything I will grade to selI I will still go with PSA because there is that chance an 8 or 9 could get a 10! 
which is more value for selling
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Perfectly put, no notes lol
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In general I think it’s agreed that (some) cgc 10s wouldnt cross to psa10s. That said I dont think this cgc 10 = psa8 is common place. They are pretty close to each other albeit cgc slightly more lenient and generally much more willing to use .5 grades (which i think is a good thing). If the card is a really strong 9, let them use the 9.5 for instance. with psa is so cutthroat “well your card has the worlds tiniest flaw so we arnt going to give you the 10” With CGC the 10 isnt the highest grade so they are willing to give really strong cards with an insignificant flaw a regular 10… and also make good use of the .5 intermediate grades
I also dont think the "cards used to be graded differently by cgc is a good argument because it can easily be thrown back at psa comparing to their older certs. It just opens up a can of worms that people are very sensitive to
- With that said i disagree with your sentiment on pristine 10. Yes there are always exceptions and misgrades but from what I have seen a pristine 10 is definitely a higher tier compared to psa10. There is a reason many of these vintage cards are pop zero or pop 1 - 2 despite thousands of submissions. The standard is very high
case in point, base set charizard. 11 pristine 10s in 12,417 submissions
thats a percentage of 0.0008
legendary collection most reverse holos are pop zero or pop 1 despite a large amount of total subs
Japanese torchic gold star still pop zero despite being relatively easy to grade with 97 psa10s
I can go on and on. Pristine 10 is a big deal and absolute deserves the price premium
I would absolutely take any card in a pristine 10 over a psa10 without question
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Pretty sure 3xxx CGC certs are more often than not quite under-graded.
Had a couple 3 cert 9s go to Quad BGS 9.5s
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Quad?
the good ol days when u could buy super old label cgc 9.5s for pennies on the dollar and cross em to psa 10s at like a 50% rate
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