imo PSA is doing a lot of boneheaded stuff right now - their prices are insane, their backlog is a product of their own doing, and if you want to tell me that corners aren’t being cut due to the backlog pressure then I just straight up won’t believe you
That said, CGC missed an opportunity here with their grading system imo. If they had ditched the 0.5s and added a 10+ (similar to Black Label), the grading system would be more attractive. Right now for Pokemon (less so for Beckett-centric cards like sports/MtG) there exists an awkward discontinuity for grades where BGS 9 < PSA 9 < BGS 9.5 < PSA 10 < BGS 10 < BGS 10 Black Label and my personal feeling is that 9.5 is just a really awkwardly positioned grade.
The label is also so critically important to the overall appeal of the slab. A few more iterations with the label design and even the label printing technology (printing perforations on the label? seriously?) would have helped them a lot. If they had brought to the table a very sexy label I feel like that would have driven a lot more market interest right away. The rest of the plastic slab looks pretty good otherwise.
As for the pricing - I think it’s good, and seems much more closely aligned with more money = faster turnaround than PSA. The add-ons idea to generate more revenue is a neat one and is 100x easier to accept than PSA’s reasoning of you pay (a lot) more simply because the card’s worth more and if you don’t pay us enough we’ll call you up and demand more money. I’m not sure if CGC is doing the whole financial guarantee thing but imo it’s just so incredibly unnecessary, especially if (as several members here have argued in the past) it’s the reason for PSA’s insanely high prices.
There is a ton of opportunity for improvement and innovation when it comes to grading, so I’m hoping a level-headed successor is able to take down PSA from the Pokemon throne. PSA is the clunky king at the moment due to the streamlined grading system, attractive no-nonsense slabs, and name recognition, but with enough successive shots to the foot they’ll eventually fall.