Thank you for providing an update on this. I appreciate it, although no response does signify a response on their part. While it’s not a large-scale conspiracy, most of us know that E4 is very influential in the realm of pokemon (just look at XY evolutions booster box prices/supply as a result of this thread bringing to light the low pop of PSA 10 holos).
I know that I’m going against the grain here, especially with more established E4 members. I have nothing but respect for Charlie, and my original post was not to go after him, but to caveat what @fourthstartcg said. Being financially tied to CGC equates to having “skin in the game” and inevitably aligns Charlie with CGC (and by extension, it even ties E4 with CGC, but that association is much weaker, and to be clear, E4 has no direct/financial ties to CGC). This is not a bad thing at all, but it does affiliate him with the company in peoples’ minds, no matter how much you attempt to sever the two (which is why a statement from CGC would’ve been nice if they truly wanted to absolve this issue, although it’s probably small for them since the TCG base spans more than just pokemon collectors).
Honestly, all of the grading companies have their own issues. This is just the most recent issue for a company and one in which a member has a tie to the company.
I really am not trying to throw Charlie under the bus here, but rather say that it’s too early to say anything about the situation and that despite being an outside contractor, he still has affiliations with CGC as a company. I don’t even feel comfortable continuing this conversation because Charlie himself hasn’t said anything yet (I also recognize that Charlie may be contractually obligated not to discuss CGC and respect that as well).
I think it’s pretty dope of @smpratte and company for being very transparent about all of this and handling it the way it was handled. Also I’m happy it was clarified that @funmonkey54 is simply a third party consultant and should not have his name or reputation in any way dragged into this. Thanks for keeping the forums free of any sort of blatant market manipulation here and trusting the community enough to bring it to light publically.
Let’s please not lump people in with where they have contracts or business work and demand a response to “justify” them staying with a contract because of any fault you witness. It’s not like CGC was found guilty of being a Scientology cult front. If you could never do business with a grading company that had ever done something wrong, you’d be out of business by night fall.
This would start a terrible precedent especially because this forum is not political, and I am sure people are in jobs or have worked in partisan jobs that others might be extremely opposed to.
I am by no means defending cgc but evenryone need to recall everyone does mistakes hopefully they lesrn from their mistskes, this shouldnt overall affect cgc’s service ot customer sercice which have been top notch, not sure if i can say this but recall pas did the same thing 2 years ago, last year they were modifyong and altering cards for pwcc, why noone say anything about them, is ok for psa to do it, no, it is not ok for anyone to do it,
Their statement reflects what I expected to be the likeliest scenario and I don’t personally hold it against them. People get real passionate about places they work, teams they root for, politicians they back, brands they enjoy etc. and sometimes say and do things in an attempt to promote their own interests or thoughts that they don’t realize are counter productive or just straight up harmful to what they attempt to help or promote.
The entire point of this thread is to make members aware of an unprecedented occurrence. How you value that is your choice. Pontificating about other grading companies doesn’t change the fact that this was unprecedented on E4, and that members should have the right to know. We would do the exact same thing for any other business; this simply is just the first and only time this has occurred.
I’ll still grade some cgc cards tho. But yeah that shit is whack. I think CGC is good for anything super expensive if you don’t want to pay some crazy PSA premium, or if you just want to get a stack of cards graded quickly to resell. PSA and Beckett prob command the rest of the market, though PSA just increased their prices again and are still slow as hell so who knows. None of these grading companies are especially stellar. One thing we don’t need is them all logging on personals and circle jerking each other roasting how bad their competitors are.
As someone who has submitted about 400 cards to them thus far, this sucks
even if i didnt have a dog in the fight(my cards) i wouldnt hold this situation against the actual company.
CGC as a whole isnt to blame for a few employees acting out on their own behalf. Of course it looks bad, but i really doubt they would encourage employees to go on boards and act as collectors so they can talk down about the comp.I simply dont see it.
with that being said, i will continue to utilize them for grading, i love their slabs, and their approach to grading.
I’m more amazed at the fact that this was caught! how was it even noticed by the moderators? what was the catalyst? amazing detective work!
On a tangent though, i believe each grading service should have an official rep here answering questions etc etc. Flyertalk is great with this where reps from different hotels programs represent their companies. Pokemon has gotten mainstream enough that I think would warrant that type of a social media consultant. It’s easy to repost people’s IG stories but for the bigger and serious collectors, a direct conduit would be very helpful.
