CGC Grading

General
773

Yeah I’m definitely leaning against the CGC is grading a 9 what PSA would grade a 7/8.

The only thing that could account for this is centering. In which case that’s a contentious issue anyway amongst collectors.

I still think it is way too early for CGC to be compared to any established grading company, we just don’t have the data yet to even try.

I also disagree with saying CGC cards should be priced comparably with their equivalent PSA grade. But hey, if it sells it sells.

I’ll give two examples though of the same card in comparable grades:

Both of these copies look fairly similar, except the use of a scanner detracts from the actual centering. Here is a pic of the card I got from the seller and I was able to enhance the lighting:

The price discrepancy is just inexplainable but people honestly think they can price cards like this. It’s pretty clear to me that the PSA graded copy has better centering (who knows what copy has the better surface, corners and edges) and the price of the CGC copy is 50% more than the PSA copy? This stuff just doesn’t make sense to me.

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774

That doesn’t make PSA inconsistent it makes CGC too lax on grading.

775

I’ve been seeing cgc quad 10s sell for more than psa 10s though

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776

From what were seeing so far it clearly seems it’s harder to get a CGC 10 vs PSA 10. Let’s stop hating on CGC. If you don’t like them then don’t use them.

I can’t stand PSA. Everything PSA stands for is bullshit.

No turn around times.

Hidden Upcharges!

Underpaying graders.

The horrible label.

Chipping in the cases.

Known to damage cards.

Doesn’t believe in FIFO system (First in first out)

You can pay to skip the line.

Favoritism towards long time submitters. (Cough Cough we know who you are)

One person submits cards as bulk with no issues. Someone else submits the exact same cards as bulk but gets slammed with charges.

They will even upcharge Modern. Garentee they will be up charging people who submit these new Zards from Champions Path. That’s what happened with Hidden Fates for example… PSA is King tho and could never do wrong right…?

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777
778

Those are potential ways to abuse the guarantee, yes. But there are ways to abuse any guarantee. Look at eBay’s Money Back Guarantee – a buyer can falsely claim an item was not as described, return a different item than the one received, and receive full compensation. No system is entirely airtight. That doesn’t mean that the vast majority of people wouldn’t use it properly and as intended. There’s a reason people still sell on eBay despite the Money Back Guarantee – it’s because people generally use the system honestly. Abusing a guarantee in the ways you’ve detailed would violate federal law (mail fraud). It’s possible to break the law in any number of ways, but that doesn’t mean systems can’t rely on the fact that the vast majority of people don’t break the law.

779

I get the poor comparison. However if you think CGC is going to seal a card with a 9 on it and say “Hey, if you take a set of pliers and screwdriver to this case, smash the card out and submit it to PSA for them to give it a 8, we’ll give you $500+.” You are dreaming! That is just ridiculous. There is no reason why people wouldn’t just submit another slightly worse version to PSA to cash in on the guarantee.

Even my comment is a stretch as PSA could damage it themselves. The only way this could be anywhere near implementable is if you did the crossover option where PSA actually grades the card in the slab and ONLY crosses it IF it will get a better grade. This then gives PSA a slight incentive to grade slightly higher on line ball cards to charge you more AND to fuck with their competition…

The reason you don’t want to submit to CGC comes down to you being overly focussed with resale value/money. It’s been a couple of months… Either the benefits of CGC at the moment outweigh your distaste for PSA’s shortcomings at this time and you give them your business, or you don’t. Right now for you this isn’t the case as your primary goal is high resale value. If CGC keep their shit tight, the proof will be in the pudding and the market will adapt over time. I’m talking longer than 2 months. They may never have the volume, but neither does BGS and their high grade cards still sell for large amounts.

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780

lol you said to stop hating on cgc then popped a blood vessel hating on psa

781

The point wasn’t a comparison. The point was an example of how every single system that relies on trust is abusable. Yet systems that rely on trust can work. I could think of ways in which one could abuse any sort of system. But the fact that you can abuse a system doesn’t mean that the system isn’t viable. Systems can exist despite the fact that people can abuse them, because most people don’t abuse them.

And no, that’s not the reason I don’t want to submit to CGC. The reason why I submitted to PSA over CGC is because there’s literally no reason for me to submit to CGC instead. The submission prices are basically identical and I don’t prefer one case over the other. The only real difference is the fact that getting a card graded by PSA increases the value more than getting it graded by CGC. That doesn’t mean I only care about resale value – that’s not true at all. But what it does mean is that there’s basically no reason for me to submit to CGC instead. Why would I pay the same amount to submit to a company whose certification increases the value of the card less? That’s the reality right now, as much as you or I may not like it. And if I have the choice between having a card worth more and a card worth less, I’m going to chose the card worth more. That’s not being ‘overly focused with resale value/money.’ That’s common sense – if all else is equal (which, to me, it is, since I’m not in a rush to get the cards back), then I might as well submit to PSA and receive a card back that’s worth more. If there was a compelling reason to submit to CGC over PSA, I’d do it, despite the difference in value. But there’s not.

782

You should definitely read my entire post then…

783

my first cgc sub of a crystal kingdra and no symbol blastoise is coming back any day now!

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784

We have differing views, i’ve explained why i think your system is not viable. Just because it is viable for you, it does not mean it is viable for CGC, it would be suicide.

You said “If this were done, I would 100%, without hesitation, submit to CGC instead of PSA.” This indicates that yes, resale value is the only thing you are putting considerable value on, as it is the only thing holding you back.

You have changed your tune, why would you submit to CGC if the resale value is (in this incredibly early adoption period) lower than PSA?

You said it all with “I fucking hate the turnaround time for PSA and the fact that Pokemon is basically an afterthought for them.”

You see value there, it’s just not the “value” you’re looking for.

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785

You think it would financial suicide for CGC. I disagree. And I’ve already given my reason for disagreeing: there are tons of successful systems that place trust in consumers to not break the law. Some people are criminals, but most people aren’t. I don’t think that the abuse would outweigh the benefits associated with the system. But clearly we just disagree on this point, and I don’t think I’m going to convince you otherwise.

I haven’t changed my tune. I still stand by the statement that “I fucking hate the turnaround time for PSA and the fact that Pokemon is a basically an afterthought for them.” But the long turnaround time and the fact that PSA doesn’t care about Pokemon aren’t particularly important factors in terms of what drives me to submit to one company or the other. The two most important factors for me are:

  1. The aesthetic properties of the case – how does the case look and how well does it frame the card?

  2. The utility of the case – how well does the case protect the card?

For both of those points, CGC and PSA are equal for me. I think that both cases look fine and that they both adequately protect the cards. So when you state:

You’re not considering the possibility that there are other factors at play but that neither CGC and PSA are better than the other when it comes to those factors. And since CGC and PSA are equal when it comes to the most important factors for me, my decision comes down to secondary factors such as resale value. And PSA objectively beats CGC on that front. If CGC did better than PSA on any of the two most important factors (#1 and #2 that I listed above), then I would submit to CGC instead of PSA. But, as I said, CGC and PSA are equal, in my view, when it comes to those factors.

786

One major other factor I considered in my argument was turnaround time because you specifically made a point to mention how much you hate PSA turn around time. I see someone making that point and then later saying turnaround time doesn’t bother them and that it’s no big deal as changing tune.

The simple aspect of you wanting this guarantee shows that you want better turnaround time while maintaining the resale value and therefore value it to some degree or you never would have bothered saying you would switch to CGC to begin with…

However I digress as this is going to turn into a never ending circle. If you truly believe your smash the CGC case and resub yourself to PSA guarantee is a good idea, speak to @funmonkey54 or call CGC yourself and suggest it.

All the best.

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788

I just laid out all the facts at hand. There’s plenty of people with in the community that are oblivious to these issues.

I stopped posting in this thread for awhile until all the CGC bashing continued happening. When in all reality they are going to be a great help to our community!

Think about someone on a budget. They save up $500 or so for their PSA submission. They are anxiously waiting to recieve their graded cards back so they can possibly sell a few. Months and months pass with no updates.

Six months plus later you get a update. Your excited to open the email. Then the email reads:
Dear Timmy it looks like you got a few 10s and because they are worth X amount on the open market you owe a additional big sum of money.

Timmy thinks what will I do to come up with the money for these new charges? Well I guess I better sell my Favorite Charizard :disappointed_relieved:

Sorry for the reenactment I thought it was funny but you get my point. PSA’s policies hurt the community on a daily basis. CGC is here to help. If people don’t like the company wether it’s PSA or CGC or BGS that’s their opinion. Everyone’s free to make their own choices.

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789

Turnaround times should be a more important part of the factors you mention, in my opinion. It genuinely shouldn’t matter if a CGC card sells for 10% less than equivalent psa card today because…you don’t actually have the psa cards in your possession to sell and probably won’t for 9 months given current tats lol The opportunity cost is just too damn high at the moment. The pokemon market could have retraced 50% (not that I think it will) in 9 months by the time you get your cards back.

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790

Hmmmmm

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791

You’ve been one of the biggest cgc sellers on eBay Squeaks, tell us your thoughts!

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792

Can anybody here name the CGC shills on this thread? lol

793

Sure. I wanted to wait to write until I not only had data to prove my points (this will be a public video soon but would be too much to already include in this quite long post), but time to really flesh out my thoughts. I’ll try to be as concise as possible. TL;DR bullet point list to begin, better explanation below, and a followup with some of my personal thoughts on how cgc fits into the overall market and predictions for the future.

Pros:

  • Turnaround Time
  • Consistency
  • Errors
  • Price
  • Visibility of the Card in the Case
  • Realized Sale Prices
  • No hidden upcharges
  • Customer Service

Neutral:

  • Label/Case (Overall Aesthetic)
  • No true cross comparison with PSA
  • Ability to use subgrades/or to not use them

Cons:

  • Liquidity
  • The peanut gallery
  • Early growing pains
  • Lack of Hard Data
  • More expensive shipping
  • The Perfect 10 Sub Grade Requirement

Turnaround times:
These are pretty self explanatory. They are faster. Whether this can be maintained overtime is yet to be seen, but at the current juncture they are the fastest option on the market. This is scientific. It can’t be argued. The turnaround times are what they are.

Consistency:
This one is more up for debate. Consistency is subjective. Whether or not someone agrees with consistency comes down to their perception of what X grade truly is and looks like. That being said, from what I’ve seen across 1000+ CGC slabs, versus thousands of PSA slabs, I’ve found that CGC’s current grading is consistent WITHIN THEIR OWN SCALE. That last part is quite important. At the end of the day their scale is different than PSA, or even BGS to some degree. The reality is that it is imperative their scale remains consistent within itself, not within the scale of a competitor. So far it has done that. I’m sure at one time PSA and BGS also did that and it became more difficult overtime as cards changed, more cards were graded, new graders, market standards adjust, etc. Only time will tell if this will remain, but the beginning seems promising.

Errors:
They are willing to recognize and accept many errors within the hobby that before didn’t have an outlet. Whether you agree with an error or not is irrelevant. It provides a means of security and protection for a card that gets authenticated to be within the parameters of what is consistent with authentic cards. You can debate the validity, origin, or intention of errors until you’re blue in the face, but at the end of the day they are merely authenticating the authenticity of a card to be consistent with other cards, not the origin story of the card. I think once one accepts this is how it is, it is overall a net benefit. YOU do not have to accept an error, but it provides the option for someone else to. Most errors are in the eye of the beholder anyways (holo bleed, crimps, red dots, etc.)

Price:
Again, this is strict data. Their prices per turnaround time tier are better. This is quantifiable. There isn’t much to argue here.

Visibility of the Card in the Case:
This is also strictly data. You can measure out exactly how much of the card is visible to the naked eye in each case. The more of a card you can see, the better as it removes ambiguity.

No Hidden Upcharges:
At least up to this point I’ve not seen, experienced, or heard of any hidden upcharges that anyone has received. This directly contradicts PSA’s policy and overall is a net win for the consumer. Whether you agree with the increased cost to grade $X card, you should never NOT know the cost of your grading and appraisal the moment you submit the cards. When my house was appraised they didn’t charge me more because the house clocked in higher after the appraisal, my cards shouldn’t either.

**Customer Service:**This up to this point is their biggest redeeming quality. Their customer service is responsive, on point, and their employees engage with the community. Maybe it is lip service, but it truly gives me the impression they are trying to be the company the community has been wanting PSA and BGS to be for years. Whether they can realize that or not will only be told with time, but the reality is if the community wants better, and expects better, they have to be willing to give better a chance first…even if it comes in a form they weren’t expecting.

Realized Sale Price:
This one is debatable. Are the prices CGC cards are selling at higher or lower than their respective counterparts. If you focus solely on the few Ebay sold listings visible, you’d probably argue the latter (lower). My personal data (which doesn’t show in Ebay sold) completely contradicts this. I’ve been quite public with my data. Of nearly 100 slabs sold graded by CGC, not 1 went below PSA prices for the time sold based on the market value of sold ones in the same respective grade. Obviously if the market moved and I didn’t catch it in time it might have moved low, but based on when the card was priced it was even (all of them were priced even or higher intentionally). Pristine 10s and Perfect 10s are selling at a 20-40% premium from what I’ve seen PSA 10s selling at. *(Example. Zacian V gold - $475 CGC 10 Pristine, Zacian V gold - $275-325 PSA 10.)*Just as many of you wouldn’t sell your cards blindly based on arbitrary sold values of random people on Ebay, I don’t value my CGC cards against that data either. I have no control over their market reach, impressions, titles, photos used, auction end times, shipping locations, payment forms accepted, listing duration, or a myriad of other variables that could influences prices. I avoid blanket assumptions based strictly on Ebay sold not because it doesn’t write the narrative I want (I have no preference), but because I wouldn’t do it for any other grading company either.

**Label/Case:**You either love it or you hate it. There isn’t anything left to be said on this topic. Get one in hand, decide for yourself.

**No True Cross Comparison with PSA:**This is probably one of the more controversial things I’ll say here, but the reality is there is no cross comparison between the two scales, just as there really isn’t with PSA/BGS. At the end of the day the two scales are vastly different. Trying to make a perfect cross comparison that blanket judges cards is futile and just leads to bias not based on facts. Some CGC 9.5s are PSA 9s, some are PSA 10s. It heavily depends on the card, how it is being graded, what the sub grades are, and what type of damage is being docked and why. There is no perfect cross metric. Each card is a case by case basis. The Articuno referenced above was in fact sold by me. That card I believe would cross to a PSA 10 based on the subgrades as I feel they are far more lenient on centering based on data presented to me. The owner clearly believes otherwise based on the data they have and their one point of card reference. That’s okay. They are two different scales. At the end of the day though when I priced mine on the market there was no other data point of reference and I priced accordingly. Whether you agree with the price is irrelevant. It sold.

**Ability To Use Subgrades/Not Use Them:**This is neutral because it provides cost efficiency for low end/low grade cards and I love that option exists to lower the barrier of entry on grading for virtually everyone. That being said, subgrades also provide accuracy and remove ambiguity. It highlights areas that are under contention for damage and therefore makes it much easier to assess cards and whether or not they fit within someone’s perception of what the card’s grade is and what it should be. Not having subgrades keeps the ambiguity, which overall I think hurts the end product because it makes it easier for people to write their own narrative on a card grade when in a perfect world grading would be largely scientific and a tiny part subjective. Hopefully the average consumer will realize the importance sooner rather than later and add them as a priority.

**Liquidity:**I put this in the negative, although I think you could probably neutral this. Overall the liquidity of CGC cards is lower. While I’ve had no difficulty realizing even or higher prices than PSA/BGS in respective grades, they do sell at a slower rate. This is all part of the “market adoption” argument that people keep touting. This is natural for a new company though. Some will take the leap, others will wait to see how it plays out, and some will be critics regardless for their own personal reasons.

The reason I believe you could put this at neutral is because while the liquidity in the same sales time frame is surely lower, you also gain additional months to sell those cards. If a 100 card PSA return all sells in month 1, and I can only sell 20 a month on a CGC return, but my CGC return is 5 months faster, not only do I clear the full inventory before I see my PSA cards back, but I also begin to realize profits on the first month, and throughout the whole duration. This overall lowers investment/flip risk and is a net positive, so…I guess maybe it should have been neutral after all.

**The Peanut Gallery:**Probably the biggest con in my opinion is just feeling like you have to answer to the peanut gallery about grading with CGC. Everyone has an opinion, some are louder than others. If you post a return, an opening, or a sale thread, you almost get put on trial from the get go. You pretty much have to defend your actions. The reality though is you don’t have to explain yourself to anyone. Do what works best for you and whatever you’re doing. You’re not required to answer to anyone or justify anything to anyone.

**Early Growing Pains:**The early growing pains are absolutely a negative. It is no secret my first return had damaged cards. I was however compensated and completely made right. That being said it still shouldn’t happen. Luckily my cards had the ability to be compensated, but had there been sentimental value, that isn’t something for most people that a dollar amount can be attributed to. Another user had the same. Another had a case not fully sealed. I’m not going to make excuses for them. This stuff shouldn’t happen, and can’t happen. That being said, volume models, regardless of checks and balances in place, are bound to have flaws occur. The biggest key is how they respond to those flaws. So far once an issue was spotted and fixed, I’ve yet to see it replicated again. So while the growing pains here are a negative and shouldn’t be given slack, the customer service pro mentioned above really helps balance this out where it can.

**Lack of Hard Data:**This is a negative that isn’t really as much a CGC negative as just a negative for a new company. There isn’t really a lot of hard data to base prices and such off of, especially on modern cards that are arriving back faster. Some may say this is a positive (set your own price), but for the most part this to me is time consuming and cumbersome to cross analyze every card against the competitors to find where it slots in and price accordingly. That being said this is one of the things I think works itself out with time and adoption, so I rank it pretty low on my qualms list.

**More Expensive Shipping:**This one isn’t really up for debate. It is hard data. While the shipments generally return faster, they are more expensive. As someone who has the #1 goal of cost efficiency for the product I’m receiving, the higher cost is a bummer. That being said it isn’t so much higher that I rank this very high on my qualms list. Hopefully down the line they can make a better contractual agreement with a shipping company to get even better rates and extend those to their customers.

**The Perfect 10 Subgrade Requirement:**BGS actually does this the same way, but I don’t like the system because BGS black labels and gold labels are both still Pristine 10, one just has a color difference. CGC the grades are actually different (Pristine/Perfect). I think it invalidates the pop report and creates ambiguity where none is needed. Overall I think the amount of Perfects being graded are relatively low to where free subgrades as a bonus on a perfect would be far less of a financial detriment than CGC would expect it to be and the benefit of consumer confidence in their scale and pop report would heavily offset the loss. That being said at this point I don’t expect it to change. This reverts back to the Subgrade requirement in neutral and hopefully the community will just apply subgrades to cards they expect could be in the 9.5-10perfect range.

**My Thoughts/Predictions:**Honestly, I think I summed everything up pretty well so I’ll try to keep this short. I do think a lot of people are emotionally driven in their arguments and far less data driven, which is what I am trying to remain for the most part. The data does most, if not all, of the talking. The hobby is shifting to a more modern focus. Collectibles are shifting to more modern focuses (baseball, sports, video games, card games etc). It is the natural progression of hobbies as accessibility and price entry favors current. Future 10 years from now re-entrant nostalgia will more likely correlate to Hidden Fates or Evolutions than it would to Base Set.

The hobby is also shifting away from vintage set collecting and will continue to. The barrier of entry on vintage set collecting is too high for most entrants. I think we shift more toward individual Pokemon character collecting, artist collecting, etc. Essentially smaller sub categories that have lower barriers to entry and more accessibility. Maybe I’m wrong though.

CGC has poised themselves to be the modern power house. Eventually the market cap will be in modern and their market cap will correlate if they continue on the same path their on. This is debatable. You don’t have to agree with me, but the current data backs the theory up. Only time will tell.

Hope this helps some of you and brings you value. :blush:
Squeaks

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