Crazy. Supposedly BGS documents the grader who grades specific orders so it will be interesting if that information ever gets released.
I have to agree with this.
I’m definitely not accusing this guy of anything, but the concept as a whole needs and deserves attention.
The issue is bigger than a certain few people, this has massive implications, throughout the entire graded collection hobby.
Playing devils advocate here since I haven’t read the other thread and don’t care to and I just hate when it seems the court of public opinion is deeming people guilty until proven innocent.
Isn’t it reasonable that some people out there will have “black label eyes”? Isn’t it reasonable that some people out there will also have great eyes for a PSA 10? In my finding I sure as hell have neither, but the people putting the BGS black label as well as the PSA 10 labels on cards are only human. It’s like people think BGS black labels are some mythical thing. No… they are hard to get but theoretically someone with as expert of an eye as BGS graders could determine cards that will get BGS 10+ grades right? Why do we think this hypothetical person can’t exist?
The only thing I’ve heard about grader pay is that it is low so my logical mind tells me that maybe the most expert eyes of all in the world don’t even work at BGS or PSA. Clearly there is more money outside utilizing their services. If someone tried to say there existed several basketball players better than those in the NBA or any other major sports league it would obviously be met with skepticism… but why would any of the most talented graders in the world go essentially waste their talents taking a huge pay cut to grade bulk submissions when they could simply be running businesses selling high end high graded cards?
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Someone definitely needs to play that role, it’s important we are subjective and that this isn’t a witch hunt.
My concern isn’t this guy, my concern is the concept and if there is a reality where it could happen. Could this actually happen?
The “court of public opinion”, as you’ve put it, has laid out a whole bunch of facts in the OP, countered by the accused on page 9 with counters to that on page 14.
It’s a complete ruckus in between hard and fast facts mixed in with a large, unhealthy dose of opinions. It’s hard to make head and tail of the argument, but when it’s presented it’s fascinating.
Again, I’m not claiming guilt, I’m concerned with the concept of this being reality and what it means for the hobby overall.
One thing I will say, by laws of probability there exists quite likely a few people who have eyes for grading, those able to pick out great cards.
The ability to pick out 22/23 cards that are flawless seems like a stretch though. That’s just my thoughts having seen what a black label looks like (and the obvious non-perfect black labels he has got back).
I think people have better vision then others, its the chance of all of these pristine cards. We all know how QC is on cards, the mere fact that he gets his hands on so many pristine copies is almost impossible imo. I could spot a BGS 10 over a BGS 9.5 raw, or at least tell which is better, but the possibility of me having that many pristine examples just doesn’t seem plausible. He would have to be insanely lucky, over and over and over and over…and over.
This was maybe the most damning. It’s a $1 common card that he was able to sell for $200 due to its Black label status. Who would pay to grade a card worth $1?
That being said, most of hose posting in that thread are people who hate grading companies and appear to be conspiracy theorists, so take everything with a grain of salt
Maybe I’ll have to dive down the rabbit hole at lunch. It feels like there should be dozens of photographic examples if the collusion went on so long.
@ozenigma this sure as hell could happen. Again everyone involved is human and the motivator is money. There would only have to be a few “dirty” insiders to pull this off I’d imagine and in human history there have been countless schemes and scams with dozens of people getting their hands dirty with stakes way higher than the color of a label on plastic encased cardboard.
The subjectivity of grading leaves the door wide open for stuff like this to happen and again is why people should buy cards not labels. Being realistic though we all know many labels are bought sight unseen at very high premiums. Honestly with PSA 10/9 having such a wide price gap for certain cards and a PSA 10’s allowing much more damage than BGS 10’s and especially black labels I think PSA would be if anything even more subject to such a scam going on. I’m not saying it is, but it would be even harder to prove if it were.
@ozenigma this line specifically troubles me:
Why? Again I feel like people are placing some mythical status on a black label that just isn’t there. All it is is an opinion determined by a human or two. Assuming this guy is as good of a grader (or even better) than the pros at BGS, then all he has done is find what he thought were 23 black label cards and submitted them. If he were the BGS grader he essentially would have deemed 23/23 of them to be black labels but assuming BGS uses the theoretical 2 grader system then 1 of his cards missed out on being verified by two other pro graders.
If he were employed at BGS he would literally have a hand in determining which cards get black labels, so why can’t he find them at a very high rate as a customer? We’ve already agreed there very well could be more skilled graders outside of BGS/PSA than inside of them.
If the above quote solely is a matter of getting that quantity of pristine cards then that is a different matter but it felt like you were saying the probability of hitting the quality that frequently which just doesn’t make sense to me and I see a lot. Quantity wise he could just be tapped in to a few huge businesses that crack a lot of product. I mean the Pokemon equivalent imagine having a buddy at T&T, Deriums and TCA gaming.
I’d encourage you to give the thread a read. It’s detailed and there are a lot of completely unnecessary posts that clutter the good content. It’ll also help bring you up to speed with the many arguments being put forth. This accusation has many dimensions.
That being said, the difference between a BGS 10 (being 3x 10’s and 1x 9.5) and a Black Label (quad 10’s) is infinitely smaller than the difference between a PSA 9 and PSA 10. There’s far more to the argument than a string of black labels, but I challenge anyone to be able to submit literally any 23 cards and achieve the same result. Not saying it’s flat out impossible, but to continually see these black labels is interesting indeed.
In fact I’d wager that if I had unlimited resources and a long period of time, I wouldn’t be able to replicate those subs.
I mean there are submitters out there that do this for a living and haven’t got anywhere near the same results. =\
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@gottaketchumall
I agree in spirit about theoretically picking out consistent black labels but the most damning thing is why do we not see other people with the same consistency in picking out black labels? Black label to me is just marketing ploy most seasoned people with years of experience cannot tell me what a black label card looks like outside of a case, then why should I believe someone being paid minimum wage aka a BGS grader? Not directing the question at you moreso the world at large lol
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it was only a matter of time until such a case emerged on the surface, there is just way too much money involved.
I wouldn’t be surprised if the same will come out with PSA. The one signed PSA 10 Alpha Black Lotus that supposedly sold for 400k USD had visible chipping on one border, there is no way in hell that card is a GEM MINT.
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The analog to Pokemon is English vs. Japanese. Do you think Japanese cards grade easier than English? Even newer XY/SM cards compared to old XY/BW in English are much easier. Look at the 10/9 ratio in the pop report for many of these cards.
I’m sure “easy” cards exist for sports as they do for Pokemon. Throughout the witch hunt I see completely random people showing submissions where they got multiple black labels within one small order. “Mathematicians” throughout the thread are calculating the “odds” on getting X number of black labels in a row by just dividing what percent of cards overall are black label not taking into any account the actual quality of the cards. Grading is not a random number generator.
At worst they would be bumping strong BGS 9.5’s or BGS 10’s to black label, which I know obviously would still be very wrong, but again where are the scans of all these bad cards. He offered in his post to sit down in person with anyone at some upcoming nationals event. He offered in his post to buy back ANY weak BGS 10 black label he sold that someone thought was not worthy. Further he mentioned that the OP wanted to group grade cards with him which he declined so this guy is sour and has it out for the alleged cheat.
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The issue I see with this argument that is brought up by multiple people in that thread and touched on by ozenigma here is that there’s basically no difference between a BGS 10 10 10 9.5 and a BGS 10 10 10 10. There is no objective answer to grading. If you buy a random black label card, crack and resubmit it 1000 times, how many times would you expect it to get the black label again? I agree with the idea that the black label is a bit of an artificial concept since there’s a large element of luck determining whether a card is pristine or black label pristine. Grader psychology is also a factor because I’m sure most would be reluctant to give 22 black labels in a row (but still unclear if BGS groups black label certs together which could explain this).
If you subscribe to this idea that there’s some superficiality to black labels, then the concept of ‘black label eyes’ is just nonsense. You’d have to believe that the distribution between BGS 10 10 10 9.5 and a BGS 10 10 10 10 is both linearly separable and the graders at BGS are consistently able to distinguish them. If either of this are untrue and this individual is able to get a significantly larger ratio of black labels than expected, it’s plausible that something suspicious is happening.
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This thread truly highlights the inherent arbitrary aspect of a Black Label.
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But it still looks cool 
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There’s a lot of people here that rightfully believe PSA cannot discriminate between a PSA 9 and PSA 10 in a perfectly consistent way. Yet there many who seem to think there’s a consistent way for BGS to distinguish what is essentially a 9.875 (pristine) and a 10 (black label).
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For me, this additional information doesn’t provide anything convincing enough to add credence to the likeliness/unlikeliness of some kind of “underhanded” operation going on at BGS.
This problem is no longer a Joe problem - it’s a BGS problem, so I don’t really see anything constructive coming out of chatting with Joe, because if he is doing something wrong, he sure as hell won’t admit it himself. If he has a good eye for BGS 10s, that’s fine, but I want to hear BGS come out and say it.
The buyback action is just a form of damage control - whether he has done no wrong or not, this would be a safe option to provide given that his reputation has been questioned and the cards that he has sold hold questionable value now. We’ve had so many gate-like controversies recently (hell even eFour had one in the giant auction thread lmao) and they’ve all taught that you can never have enough damage control regardless of your innocence/guilt.
The last part to me is a red herring - OP laid out the facts and established solid boundaries between subjective and objective information in his/her post. Whether or not OP has it out for Joe has no bearing anymore because the facts (i.e. submission labels) are what are most important here. If you piss someone off and they expose you… well tough luck.
@pkmnflyingmaster I have always been one to call into question the precision and reproducibility of grading companies. I have always thought they are less consistent than people give them credit for. I know I can’t figure out the differences between some of my PSA 9’s and 10’s and I’ve never held a BGS black label nor a “plain” BGS 10 in hand to compare at all. Theoretically I think the entire companies are based upon the fact though that the have experts who can and do discern these minute differences and taking that as fact (which to me personally is a bit of a leap, but graded cards and their valuations are founded upon that) it isn’t unreasonable to me that “black label eyes” could exist. Again, there are dozens of people whose literal job involves discerning I’d imagine dozens of them per day every single business day of the year.
At PSA it is “easier” to be consistent in that it is either PSA 9/10, only two tiers. At BGS the same span covers dozens of possible combinations of the 4 subgrades and 4 final tiers those being black label, pristine 10, 9.5 and 9. So mathematically speaking I can appreciate the comparatively lower odds of some consistency like this occurring at BGS, but since they have the designation they would hold by the claim that it is a valid and reproducible grade.
I’ve not been saying that I think the guy is innocent anywhere I just wish due process was more of a thing. Honestly I have no stake in BGS and even having stake in PSA I wouldn’t be too surprised if some big scams like this alleged one were uncovered. I believe both companies have some history of lawsuits and as we see weekly anecdotal stories of pretty bad consistency issues.
At the end of the day my biggest takeaway is that I still don’t and never will understand the markets obsession with, and premium given to the minute grade differentials at the high end.
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I’m a PSA guy, I don’t even own a bgs card. Forgive me for the dumb question but what exactly is the difference between a pristine 10 and a black label?
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Black label is 4x10 subgrades. A normal BGS 10 is 3x10, 1x 9.5.
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Describing it just sounds silly. There is probably in most cases no noticeable difference between Pristine and black labels. It looks “cool”…
This is why for all the issues with PSA, it’s better to have a bit more room for error built in I think.
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