Haven’t seen this yet, but interesting way to do it: Centering received an “O/C” grade
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Pretty awesome. There really isn’t any alternative. That centering is a “2” probably and would destroy the grade lol
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My order from ludkins is back, once it got to them it took one day to get back to me via UPS. Awesome! I’m happy with the grades, except the golduck I can’t figure out why it isn’t higher (but maybe I’m biased since it came from my personal 1999ish collection) lol The misdraevus is definitely a cgc 10, but I didn’t pay for the subgrades. Whoops
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Maybe something on the surface they saw! I don’t know, subgrades would maybe tell. Cool cards!
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@pokecollectoramy Congratulations on your returns. I also plan to skip sub grades myself except for big hitter cards maybe I’ll pay the extra.
One of my thoughts on subgrades are they don’t necessarily always help the sale. I’m sure there are plenty of picky customers that won’t want a card with even one sub grade below X amount.
What’s others thoughts on subgrades on cards worth less then $200?
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I’m not going to lie: I’m kind of warming up to the label. The blue is less obnoxious when the card is photographed (not scanned) in regular lighting. To be honest, CGC seems like a reasonable alternative to PSA except for how the market values cards grading by either of the two grading companies. I just can’t justify grading cards with CGC when they would be worth twice as much if they were graded with PSA (and often times it is that significant of a difference).
One thing that I believe CGC could do to change this, and I don’t believe anyone’s mentioned this idea yet: CGC could offer a ‘PSA grade guarantee.’ The guarantee would be that, if this card is cracked and submitted to PSA, it will get at least as high of a grade with PSA as it did with CGC. And if it doesn’t, CGC will reimburse the submitter for the difference in value between the PSA grade the card actually got and the minimum PSA grade that the guarantee stated the card would get. So if I cracked open a CGC 9 and submitted it to PSA, and PSA gave it an 8, then CGC would reimburse me for the difference in value between a PSA 8 and a PSA 9. What this would do is effectively ensure that a CGC 9 is worth at least as much as a PSA 9. CGC might have to tighten their grading standards slightly to make this doable, but I think it would be one of the only ways to ensure that their cards sell for prices comparable to the PSA equivalents. If this were done, I would 100%, without hesitation, submit to CGC instead of PSA. But instead, I recently submitted cards to PSA because I simply can’t justify sending them to CGC with the way the market is.
Interesting. I don’t think they’d ever go for that specifically simply because the grading standards are simply different. How can one company guarantee a grade for another company?
With time more people will warm up to CGC and the market will speak for itself. Might as well submit now before they get too many submissions and get backlogged, lol.
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Yeah, I agree that they likely wouldn’t do it. But I think it’s really the only way (that I can think of, at least) to ensure that a CGC 9 is treated by the market in the same way as a PSA 9. And if that was happening, then I (and plenty of others) would be submitting to CGC right now instead of PSA. I’m sure that Charlie Hurlocker (or someone with comparable experience) can pretty accurately guess the minimum grade that a card will receive at PSA. It’s not as though PSA’s grading standards are totally opaque and unpredictable. So CGC would just have to tighten up their grading standards to ensure that they aren’t grading over what PSA would.
And I hope so because I fucking hate the turnaround time for PSA and the fact that Pokemon is basically an afterthought for them. But I just don’t see the reason to submit to CGC unless CGC grades are valued as highly as PSA grades. That’s why I think that something like my proposal would, by dramatically increasing the market value of CGC cards, ultimately increase CGC’s market share. I think it’s the only way that any sizeable market share could be taken away from PSA. CGC has to convince people that they’re a better option to submit to than PSA, and this would do it (for me, at least).
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Definitely not disagreeing with you. I think all we need is a little time. Cards in their holders are already going for more than PSA cards, especially PSA 10 vs CGC 10.
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It’s up to the sellers honestly. If they are Selling their cards at a discount to cgc counterpart then it automatically gives them a perception of being less valuable cards. All it takes is for smpratte or someone to sell a big card at a new all time high and it’s off to the races. People should be buying the card not the grade anyways although we know that doesn’t always happen lol in my limited experience I’ve found cgc grades to be great although I am still learning the curve for lower grades (3-7) because they are completely different than psa for those grades.
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Honestly, I think if you don’t care about turn around times and that your a PSA elitist or just care about what case they are in, it is all good. I don’t discount any grading company and it may look nice to keep all your stuff from one company. Let’s be honest though, I think it’s nice to get the quick turn around times. I submitted a lot of cards and get them back within a week even if they are slotted for 20 days. If you are going to submit, submit now, the prices are good too. I would like to see the case in person (although I have some CGC graded comics).
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I love the cases and labels compared to psa and bgs tbh…the turnaround times and customer service are huge pluses too (10-30 days compared to 100+ with no updates is a no brainer). That being said if looking ONLY from a financial/flipping standpoint we are too early to see how the market absorbs the cards
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Agreed! Anything new to the market can be skeptical although they are not technically new and have a great reputation but just the TCG world. Customer service and turn around times are great like you said. When I first saw the cases, I really like how they looked, cant wait to get both my submissions back soon. I do wish they graded foreign though… but in due time. Charlie told me I could send to PSA or just wait until they started doing foreign cards. I also wanted to submit my non-Pokemon cards but it looks like only Magic and Pokemon for now. I will probably post pictures and results once I get mine back here.
I partially agree. But you have to ask yourself: why are sellers listing CGC cards at a discount? They’re listing them at a discount because the market doesn’t want to pay PSA 9 prices for CGC 9 cards. I’m in total agreement with you that people should buy the card and not the grade. And CGC seems to have comparable standards to PSA for 9/10 quality cards from what I’ve seen. But people collect and want PSA-graded cards. The only way for CGC cards to be viewed as equally valuable and desirable as PSA-graded cards is for CGC to implement the guarantee I described in my original post. That would automatically make a CGC 9 at least as valuable as a PSA 9, and the market would adjust to reflect this. And if the value of CGC 9s were the same as that of PSA 9s, way more people would be submitting cards to CGC – and CGC would gain more market share as a result.
As it currently stands, I don’t think that CGC will take any appreciable portion of the market from PSA. The burden is on CGC, in my view, to establish that their grades are equally, if not more, valuable than PSA’s.
I dont believe that people are listing them at cheaper prices at the moment. However, in comics I’ve seen what happens when people value their cbcs books for less than comparable cgc ones even though cbcs grades better and I don’t want the same to happen here
Like anything, CGC is a new player in the TCG Market. They have a long standing for grading other items other than trading cards so it may take time and people are always skeptical of change. I am sure in due time, CGC will have a better track record and people will be more receptive then resistant. Everything right now is just skeptical and eventually the “value” as you said, will change. At least CGC has been around forever than these other smaller players trying to get into the market or just have smaller identities like, GMA.
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I don’t think that the lower CGC prices are because people don’t have confidence in the grading standards of CGC. If anything, it seems to be pretty widely-acknowledged (on this forum at least) that CGC’s grading standards are more or less in line with PSA’s. So the lower value of CGC 9s isn’t because people think they are worse than PSA 9s so much as it’s because there just aren’t many CGC collectors. If I wanted to start collecting, for instance, a graded holo set of Neo Destiny (or whatever set), what are my options? The only option is really collecting PSA because that’s who has graded everything. So my point is that CGC needs to provide a reason for people to actually grade with them. Because right now it makes more sense for people to grade with PSA. But if CGC cards commanded the same prices as PSA cards, people (myself included) would start grading with CGC. And the more valuable CGC cards are and the more CGC-graded cards there are in circulation, there more interest there will be in collecting CGC cards. CGC has to establish that their cards are equally as valuable as PSA’s. And this won’t just naturally happen over time – they have to actually ensure that the cards are valued the same, which is why I think my idea is a good one. Until CGC-graded cards command the same as PSA equivalents, way fewer people will grade their cards with CGC and way fewer people will collect CGC-graded cards. It’s a sort of vicious cycle, and it’s unfortunate. I hope CGC succeeds, but they need to do more than just be a good grading company – they have to go out of their way to ensure the cards they grade are appropriately valued.
I really don’t think sellers are listing CGC at a discount. At a local shop they had some CGC cards and the 9s most certainly were no better than PSA 8 quality. In a couple cases they may be PSA 7 quality in CGC 9 clothing.
The shop owner said he may crack a bunch of PSA 8s and submit them to CGC. Probably not a dumb strategy for a business but I hope it doesn’t catch on:(
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It’s been happening with psa to bgs for a long time now. BGS 9s look like psa 8 and BGS 9.5s are psa 9s.
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Hands down the biggest lie I’ve read on this thread thus far. For context, this user king Pokémon is heavily invested in PSA and has an extreme bias, understandably… Please, your outlandish words mean nothing without proof. Show proof of a PSA 7 quality in a CGC 9. If that’s true, it’s a true testament of how inconsistent PSA really is.
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