The plastic around my children’s cardboard is better than your plastic.
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That’s so plastic. It’s all about the card. Would it feel more premium inside a PSA or BGS slab for long term housing? If it’s a card you like, give it the best housing.
The psa edges constricting the pokemon card is sometimes too close for comfort. I also hear the BGS cards breathe the same air from the year it was encased. Unlike PSA, which air seeps in from our normal environment to the card.
PSA is a nice budget alternative and favored for many collectors. I’m sure many true collectors own a plethora of a combination of the two.
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@pkmnflyingmaster, Arigato tomodachi for the nice video. That was enjoyable.
For the plastic lovers, I hear BGS is 30%+ more plastic in every sense, up to master plastic black labels.
Hahahah another one of these
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BGS and PSA are second rate. I start using Special High Intensity Titanium grading. No one touches SHIT. I can tell you a grade 1 SHIT is much better than BGS 9.5 and PSA 10. You feel so good after you take a SHIT. I know many collectors after enclosing their cards in SHIT can be heard chanting SHIT, SHIT, SHIT, SHIT.
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@omahanime , If you don’t mind enclosed in shitty, you would love a damaged card market, buy one or buy many and enclose them in a binder. You can even collect your favorites where the back is all messed up, bent in half, and it’s still a fantastic card and its enclosed in a lightweight binder.
Many binder collectors opt for the nm cards and I wonder why not just deal with scratched and damaged cards, they’re not 9s or 10s anyway. Also of note, its fun to see last sold listings for black lotus on ebay, most sold are played cards with terrible whitening that generates thousands of dollars!
Better yet, hot tub or no hot tub
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Just because I put my cards in a binder doesn’t mean I want trashed cards in my binders…
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@merciersj , What if it’s a really good trashed card? Like a holy grail to you in damaged format. You wouldn’t want that in your lightweight binder?
But that argument isn’t true just for binders, it’s true for graded stuff also. If you’re wanting a holy grail card bad enough and are willing to compromise on condition, and you’re a graded card collector, you might settle for a lower grade to have the card in your collection.
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I’m a damaged card collector as well and I can tell you they are not going into graded, even if I think it’s a holy grail, as it has a great house in a binder. I don’t mind if it has scratches and foil peel even, they look great in the binder and you can’t even see the scratches until you look closely. Some people are particular, will even request video footage of said card, to add to a binder. Can you believe that? It’s as if they are deciding if it’s going to be an 8 or 9. Those are likely graded, so if you want binder cards 4-7 is fine expectations, and 1-4 ‘graded’ (if that’s a consideration) shouldn’t be too far off. To me if it’s not 8+ it doesnt make much difference if it’s a PSA 3 or psa 6 if it’s for a binder collection…
Taking a gander on the other side of the grass, it seems BGS charges more for grading, they use more material from sleeves to plastic material and are harsher graders. Some people don’t want the highest level analysis for their card, subgrades, and pretend their card is flawless 10, where there maybe edge chips already anyway and other less then perfect grade considerations.
Would be useless to argue PSA is indeed superior to BGS. The authoritative Black Labels are rarely questioned if 'its capable of being PSA 10"
Anyways that’s the other side of the grass for the people that collect tons of BGS. I’ll tell you my secret of collecting a lot of cards. I buy the Japanese Damaged version, they look just like their English counterpart and most of the time, people are practically handing out creased japanese set cards, can you believe that?
@dblast , Saying that “BGS has higher standards” than PSA is absolutely laughable.
BGS has higher standards for their 10 grade, yes.
But a PSA 10 is held to a higher standard than a BGS 9.5. A PSA 9 is held to a higher standard than a PSA 9. And going down the grades PSA is held to a far higher standard.
Not long ago, I almost purchased a very expensive card. It was a BGS 8 but I withheld from buying it when I noticed a massive dent on the back of the card.
This card received sub-grades of 9 or above except for the Surface grade, which was given a 7. That mathematically made the card an “8” despite the fact that the surface grade indicates that they noticed the obvious dent.
It was then I realized that the card had only been submitted to BGS because the mathematical scoring average would inflate the grade compared to what PSA would give it.
It’s certainly not something that gives me a great deal of confidence in BGS.
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@hyruleguardian , I read:
Laugh.
Confirm Dblast.
Denial.
Story about BGS 8’s. That’s an 8 w/ a 7 surface… lol
As a Damaged Japanese Set collector, this is very valuable information.
I talked about BGS as the other side of binder collectors because their 10s are not easy to obtain (focusing on higher end of spectrum).
As for the differences in the lower subgrades, they are different companies and have varying grading criteria, which is fine.
I would not be surprised to see BGS 9 regrade PSA 10.
Essentially if you want shit enclosed cards, binders are prefect for damaged cards. If you want the best highest graded card, you probably going with BGS. If you don’t like damaged or BGS and ‘enjoy PSA cards’, okay.
If even the #1 BGS fanboy refuses to defend any BGS below a 9, I don’t think that’s a particularly good sign for the grading company as a whole.
As the hobby offers fewer and fewer available gem mints (for the vintage stuff anyway) the lower grades will only become more important going into the future. It doesn’t reflect well on BGS that the consensus seems to be that with anything below a 9 they’re just all over the place.
I still can’t get past the fact that they could acknowledge a dent the size of what I posted (as opposed to simply missing the dent which would be bad but significantly less egregious) and still have the audacity to call that card “Near Mint to Mint.”
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I think BGS collectors share the same passion as vegans 
Well let’s be fair. How did the front look? Was it NM or M? It seems they graded the surface clearly with what they describe as 7, whereas you might consider it a 4.
but how was the front looking? did the golf ball size dent protrude through the other side?
I’m not sure what you guys want. If you are an elitist card collector, want the highest levels of cards, you get the BGS 10 or black label. If you are on a budget, you get the lower grades or even binder cards. Sometimes get the GMA cards because they’ll tell you your 5 looks like 9 or 10.
It’s a low-quality picture but if you look carefully the dent in the lower-left corner is visible from the front of the card too, it’s just much more noticeable with the picture that was sent of the back of the card.
I understand that other than that sizable dent the card is fine, but I don’t think any serious collector would ever consider a card like this to be anywhere near “Near Mint to Mint.” If a seller was trying to sell this card raw and advertising it as being in that condition I would say it was a fraudulent listing.