The problem is people aren’t valuing the toughness of the grade. If people only cared about difficulty to grade this switch would have never happened. People are just valuing the change in number. That is why I caution speculators. For people who didn’t live through bccg 10s, or are just unaware of prior grading company 10s, this isn’t a guarantee.
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That makes sense from a hardcore collector perspective.
Not from a business perspective. If I wanted harsh grading I wouldn’t be going with PSA either.
“We know y’all like PSA 10s and black labels so we’re gonna have a gem mint 10 AND a black label! But don’t worry, our gem mint standards will be lower than before and our black labels will not be 10/10/10/10 cuz we know that’s Hard : ( and collectors are frustrated by hard to grade cards”
I see the new grading scale and all I can think is “oh the gem mint is like PSA 10 but not really and the pristine is like the black label but not really”
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The toughness of the grade is very much relevant if we’re discussing whether a CGC 9.5 “deserves” to be upgraded to a 10.
The upgrade will make some cards more expensive. Some people who are buying AFTER the announcement will be burned too. The “new price” is already mostly baked into the cards that are being listed AFTER the annoucement
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But below 8.5 psa is more harsh. Psa treats indents like a felony! Where cgc has 8.5 cards with indents.
I think this just highlights the hyper focus on 9+ grades. Because psa is by far the most strict sub 9 grade. Probably because they have the only comprehensible scale below 9.
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If the CGC 9.5 deserved to be upgraded to a 10, it would have gotten the 10 before. Their standards for CGC 9.5s are Mint+.
The exception here is their old label 9.5s. Those are beautiful.
I agree. And I am also hyper focused on 9+.
That said their 9 grading has only recently made sense. I have owned a number of PSA 9 4x certs that would be instant 8’s today.
Psa already give out far more gem mint 10s compared to cgc gem mint 9.5, pristine 10 and perfect 10 combined. Overall cgc still grades harsher. If they did give all cgc 9.5s a psa 10 their 10 pop would be even bigger which would be very bad for them. They definitely keep an eye on the ratios.
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And bgs has 9.5 with dents 
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The point of the matter is that the cards haven’t changed. They were GEM MINT in CGC 9.5s, which crossed to PSA 10s, also called GEM MINT, which will now be CGC 10s, which are also GEM MINT.
I always dreamed of having a full German base set in 10s, but I couldn’t afford it. After the announcement, I bought a number of 9.5s and actually unlisted all my other German 10s, since that collection goal could actually be achieved. I may be an outlier, but not everyone is buying 9.5s to flip them.
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Basically cgc have created something out of nothing. Lots of things in the mix. Overall massive net positive has been achieved.
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I’ve had CGC 7.5s come back that most definitely would’ve been 5/6 at psa. I’ll just stick to 9+ at CGC like I would with BGS.
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No one’s arguing that CGC 10s will close the price gap (or if someone is, then they’re crazy). But it seems pretty obvious that new CGC 10s will sell for at least slightly more than old CGC 9.5s. It’s been shown time and time again how much people care about the number.
That’s the reason why I switched from PSA 10s to CGC 9.5s in the first place. PSA 10s were (and still are) overvalued. CGC switching their grading scale isn’t going to magically close the gap, but I wouldn’t underestimate the psychology behind the number. There’s a reason why people pay more for weak PSA 10s than strong PSA 9s – and that’s because people love the idea of a 10. I think CGC’s move to PSA’s grading scale was a smart one.
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This is true. No one ever talks about how harsh PSA really is. You look at say a bgs 8 and it looks like a PSA 5/6.
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The other issue that I have with the CGC 10 Gem Mint grade is that I would not consider them 10s. Many have imperfections that are far closer to a 9 than a 10, which is why they were graded CGC 9.5 to begin with.
Dyl, you’ve fallen victim to the PSA 10 psychology. I collected almost complete early EX Series holo/ex sets in PSA 10 before I decided to switch to CGC 9.5. I didn’t just switch on a whim – I switched because I realized that any perceived difference in quality between CGC 9.5s and PSA 10s is just that – perceived. It’s illusionary. There is no meaningful quality difference.
And in fact, old label CGC 9.5s were stronger than PSA 10s. With the loosening of the grading scale, CGC 9.5s and PSA 10s became relatively even, IMO.
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I think I’m definitely in the minority by saying this (and I’m not targeting anyone in particular here) but I agree. The top grade should be for the top cards. If cards never get top grades then that’s not the grading company’s problem, that has to do with the fact that there just isn’t a supply of those cards. The idea that we deserve more 10s because it makes people brains happy instead of because more top cards have surfaced is not one that I enjoy 
Disclaimer: I do not collect 10s and will most likely never collect 10s. The gain in quality is not worth the cost to me. If I grade a card a 10 then I sell and buy a 9 and use the profits elsewhere.
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Going to need the industry to completely switch over to AI before that even matters. Because humans make that impossible regardless.
The individual grading standard differences between companies regarding factory issues, surface issues, and centering also make all of it irrelevant anyways.
Indeed it is difficult to have consistency amongst humans. Even having AIs introduces biases related to its training.
See how much better it is to just not collect 10s at all? 
In my mind 9 is “good enough” 
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@zorloth We’re not going to agree, so I’ll leave it at that. 
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That’s probably the best mentality to have. And the healthiest. But it really just comes down to what type of collector you are. I personally since I sold everything off and started from scratch again this year am focusing on quality over quantity. I tend to get more enjoyment from having one specific fancy schmancy card while others like having completes sets, or specific lines of something.
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