I heard why PSA has a backlog is because every time a wotc holo comes in they pull the fire alarm to make sure every employee knows it’s time to control the pop on a $100 card.
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Ungraded>graded
For many reasons but the most important is probably environmental. All that plastic and the shipping
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No one grading company cares more about you than their bottom line. Having a preference is fine. Claiming your favorite company is pure while another is all bad is just falling victim to tribalism. They both just want your money.
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King Pokemon reading this thread and wondering if you’ve heard about Logan Paul’s BGS 10 1st Edition Charizard…
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Never understood the claim that PSA does pop control. What incentive would a $20 a hour worker at PSA that sees thousands of cards a day have to purposely undergrade a card? Majority of people that keep claiming this are probably just mad their last submission didn’t get the grade they thought it should.
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I think it’s important to draw the line between fact and speculation.
Fact 1 is that for certain very specific expensive and recognizable cards, there is evidence that you see more 9s and less 10s than you’d expect
Fact 2 is that for these types of cards, only certain more experienced graders will grade them
Beyond that it’s speculation. Is PSA lining the pockets of the inner cabal of submitters? Are they just more reluctant to give 10s because at a certain dollar threshold it becomes a massive insurance liability? Do more experienced graders just have a natural greater level of scrutiny? Who knows. I have yet to see any convincing evidence in any direction.
Ultimately, unless you’re grading a whole bunch of these top 0.01% of cards in the highest grade does it even affect you?
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This reminds me of losing poker players accusing Pokerstars of rigging the rng. Somehow concrete proof is never available to back up the accusations.
What needs to be understood is grading companies are entirely reliant on their reputation. People grade cards with PSA because they have such a strong brand that their slabs command a premium over competitors.
PSA cares far more about protecting this competitive advantage than it does “pop control” or anything else. Why on earth would they manipulate grades and put their reputation at risk - have the people making these accusations ever stopped to consider this?
If any credible accusations on grade manipulation or pay to win ever came out about PSA it would instantly ruin their business.
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Ah the ever elusive PSA 8.5
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There’s a few things I like about BGS but they’re all vanity reasons. I like their labels and the chase of the black label. There are more things I dislike.
There’s more I don’t like about BGS. They aren’t more accurate than PSA in my experience and they are overly harsh. I’ve had 9.5s and 10s on centering with the exact same centering.
9.5s feel worse than PSA 9s.
And don’t get me started on the amount of times I’ve received slabs with dirt and grime inside the case or labels falling off inside. Quality control is just… not there. I’m not a fan of the inner sleeve either.
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As a longtime PSA set collector who has sent thousands of cards to be graded since 2010 and has numerous “Best of Registry” WOTC Holo sets with PSA, I can offer the following:
BGS has the most premium slab and the most nuanced grading scale for high-end cards of the big three companies (PSA, BGS, CGC). As much as I prefer PSA for collection identity and consistency, I think this is a pretty well-establish position for unbiased collectors. The BGS grading scale really breaks down into anarchy for anything below a Mint 9 though. Still, for higher grades it’s quite selective and transparent . . . a quality choice, in my opinion.
I’m not going to change your mind, but arguments for pop control are willful ignorance in my opinion. There are so many reasons pop control doesn’t make sense, many of which have already been stated by others. Heck, the 1/1 MTG One Ring was given a PSA 9. People always tell me I’m biased because I must be one of the “chosen ones” that get preferential treatment, based on my collection. However, I get wrecked over and over again by PSA just like everyone else . . . I’ve even has a single submission with eight PSA 7.5’s in it. That’s just part of the hunt though. Longevity and volume are the only reasons I’ve amassed the collection I have. I’m sure others who have been around forever like Scott or Rusty could attest to this too.
The truth is most people who believe in pop control are inexperienced at pre-grading or don’t realize that vintage cards suffer from unique conditional issues that modern cards and Japanese cards generally don’t. They tend to overgeneralize and expect similar results and then redirect blame for their lack of understanding. It’s easier to assume PSA is actively suppressing grades than to reflect, learn, and grow.
PSA didn’t just wake up one morning and say, “Hey, Neo Discovery Yanma is the next big thing . . . let’s make sure nobody gets a 10 on it.” You’ll find that the distribution of low population WOTC cards are usually not popular Pokemon and distributed across different sets. Furthermore, few even break into five figures: extremely low value comparatively to other cards PSA handles daily. I doubt any of these garner much notice from PSA when they are regularly dealing with six and seven figure cards.
Mis-grades also happen from time to time, which is inevitable when grading over 1 million cards per moth. I would caution people not to draw conclusions based on outliers . . . this goes for each grading company. BGS has a well documented Black Label scandal and there was also the Logan Paul Pristine Charizard upgrade that had previously failed to cross from a PSA 10. The latter may have been preferential treatment or just a fortunate resubmission, there’s no way to know. Neither of these situations is representative though or suggest any sort of organizational conspiracy.
In short, collect what you love! BGS is a fine option.
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this is the beginning and end of the conversation
fwiw i think both suck aesthetically.
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Never trust any company; at the end of the day, they’re here to make money. This doesn’t invalidate your feelings, I just wouldn’t think twice about any company cutting corners to feed their bottom line.
Do you though. All power to you on your preference.
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CGC > BGS.
Beckett is losing market share
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This video🤣
Obviously the original post is just hogwash but this is a great opportunity for me to dog on BGS like I love doing.
BGS is a joke to me because all grading companies show that there is a decent amount of variability within their normal integer 10 point scale grading. Any card at a certain grade can get a grade higher or lower on a regrade. For BGS to confidently say it can accurately and consistently grade your card to a degree of .5 on a 20 point scale is laughable. Who cares if your card is encapsulated and got a 9 on centering, 8.5 on edges, 10 on surface and and 9.5 on corners when at least one of not multiple of those will be completely different numbers on a regrade.
You might as well use a lottery ball picker for all of your subgrades when submitted a card at BGS.
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I like BGS slabs in terms of the protection and I think the gold label can look cool on some cards. However, with Pokemon it’s just not really the preferred company for grading unfortunately, not even a viable 2nd option for most people. The market really discounts them a lot, unless they’re 9.5+ and even then most buyers at that level are going to just want a PSA 9 or PSA 10 from what I’ve seen. So I mainly only buy PSA in Pokemon and BGS for MTG cards since a lot MTG collectors prefer BGS.
This stuff also really comes down to personal collection goals to me. If you have no plans to re-sell or anything, PSA or BGS or CGC slab really doesn’t matter too much at that point. At that point it’s your card and it doesn’t matter what the market thinks, you can enjoy it in any slab you want.
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You mentioned the aesthetically superiority of BGS; lets be honest, both slab suck in that area.
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I like BGS more because the case offers much more protection (physical and UV) to the card plus the inner sleeve is a great addition.
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UV adds value to cards. Haven’t you seen the bleached Charizard?
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Here is how BGS is better than PSA:
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