I just felt the need to respond to your post because of how manifestly untrue it is. You can believe whatever you want to believe, but falsehoods parading as facts deserve to be challenged.
The reality is that neither CGC 9.5s nor PSA 10s “deserve” 10s. Neither are perfect cards. That said, CGC was only shooting themselves in the foot by not using the PSA scale. If PSA is going to use the 10 scale, then competitors have no real option but to also use it. In an ideal world, grades would max out at “mint” because the typical grader is not sufficiently skilled at differentiating gem mint and mint cards.
I think what @dyl and many other people are saying is what you mentioned in your post; How old 9.5 vs new are different and now the scale changes again with new 10s. Regardless of how cgc compares to psa this is so much change in only 3 years. This isn’t suffering from a psa mentality, it’s just highlighting how the idea of a cgc 9.5 or 10 is so loosely defined.
I agree that it’s too much change in 3 years. They should’ve started with the PSA scale to begin with, but they were too stubborn to. Same thing with their insistence on using a vibrant blue label that no one liked for “brand consistency.”
Say what you want about the label but psa will always and forever have the easiest 10 lol Over 40% off all their cards are 10s vs 24% cgc 9.5s, 10s and Perfects combined. The bigger problem was it was impossible to get a 10 with the og labels…like actually impossible
PSA is a major pioneer in grading trading cards. They basically set the standard for what we see as a nice label. If the roles were switched & GMA or CGC were pioneers & PSA came out today maybe we’d see PSA labels as ugly.
Either way having a label looking closer to a bottom tier grading company like GMA rather than the top of the industry is definitely not good. Of course it’s all subjective, we’ll see soon how most people view the new label.
If CGC made their label look like the PSA label, then people would be calling them a PSA clone/copycat lol. Frankly, there’s no winning. I think CGC’s new label looks much better than GMA’s (although I will admit that there is some resemblance, particularly for the pristine 10).
Okay, I’ll respond even though I know that we won’t agree.
Unfortunately, 10s exist on a spectrum. There are PSA 10s that look poorer than PSA 9s and PSA 10s that are as perfect as they could possibly be. There’s going to be a lot of variability in that single grade.
To suggest that every CGC 9.5 equivalently captures that variability and average grade is goofy. The point here is that old CGC 9.5, CGC 10 Pristine, and CGC Perfect all encompass the same condition as PSA 10s. However, CGC 9.5s contain a lot of PSA 9 crossovers. So on average, they may look more like strong PSA 9s.
Here are the theoretically overlapping distributions if graded accurately.
There will be CGC 9.5s, Pristine 10s, and Perfect 10s that look like PSA 10s. There will also be PSA 9s that look like PSA 10s.
These distributions would look very different for the “old graded” CGC cards, which were absolutely stricter. The newer CGC 9.5s will represent some middle ground between strong PSA 9s and weak PSA 10s, but they will never capture the variability above it because that is what CGC Pristine and CGC Perfect grades were there for.
I don’t think that means they got the easier 10s. Considering the fact that most modern cards today are easy to grade, no one is going to aim for a CGC 10 if they can get PSA 10. Really just means the demand for a PSA 10 is stronger than the demand for a CGC 10.
Except It’s significantly easier to cross a CGC 9.5 to a PSA 9 than the reverse. Primarily because of centering and corners. The only PSA 9s I’ve ever feel good about becoming a 9.5 were ones that exclusively dinged for factory related issues.
I think you keep repeating the same mistake of massively overrating the difficulty of getting a PSA 10 with that overlap. I’m not sure if it’s just because of the cards you personally typically grade or what (vintage holos etc).
Do you have a source for your claim that CGC 9.5s contain a high proportion of PSA 9 crossovers? I could make the same claim about PSA 10s. I see no reason to believe that CGC 9.5s are (relative to PSA 10s) more likely to have previously been PSA 9s.
The newer CGC 9.5s will represent some middle ground between strong PSA 9s and weak PSA 10s, but they will never capture the variability above it because that is what CGC Pristine and CGC Perfect grades were there for.
Maybe this is true for modern cards from sets with really high print quality. But look at the CGC 10 pristine pops for early EX sets, for instance. There are remarkably few. The idea that the variability above weak 10s is captured by CGC 10 pristines/perfects would be much more plausible if there were a meaningful number of CGC 10 pristines/perfects to begin with (for the sets I collect, at least). Again, though, you may be right for modern cards where CGC 10 pristine/perfects are actually reasonably achievable.
I just want to add that there is no data being provided on this subject so it’s a he-said she-said I-saw-on-ebay argument at this point. There is no winner, only those who don’t participate
