I’ve seen some CGC gold label 10s with visible scratching, whitening, edge wear etc. to the point that I wouldn’t even sell them raw as NM. Sure, misgrades happen, but for a card that is supposed to be in better condition than gem mint it’s a little too inconsistent for me to hold in the same regard as Beckett.
We meme on BGS for black labels being RNG, and <9 grades being all over the place (especially for vintage Pokemon) but I really don’t recall seeing any gold label 10s that were horribly misgraded.
That’s because they grade like 1% of CGC and PSA. If they did more you’d see some. Also it’s hard to see defects between plastic sleeves and thick slabs that come from the factory defective many times.
They mess us as often as anyone else though in my experience. I’ve owned several dented bgs 9.5s on higher end cards that you’d think would warrant more scrutiny. Granted that’s not a 10. But there’s really not many 10s so it’s almost a moot point
tag just brought back express grading with capacity upgrade and they claim ~50,000 cards graded monthly. That means they already caught up to Beckett. I know in the pokemon world we dont care about SCG, but they are a major player in general and soon BGS will be a distant Fifth in the grading ladder
Why grade with BGS when your best case scenario is a 9.5? and if you really have a 9.5 worthy card your likely to try your luck with psa 10 unless its a generally perfect with a singular flaw such as a surface issue or bad centering and you want to take advantage of the sub grade system
with cgc, you get fast service that is transparent and cheap. I cant say any of those 3 things about Beckett unfortunately. You can actually achieve a cgc 10 for your strong psa 9s and people simply want 10s.. and if you score pristine thats just a plus
BGS 10 is the most iconic label in all of collecting, but the gold labels are selling at only a small premium over psa10s, so it seems like a high risk low reward proposition. The black label is still the greatest thing since sliced bread but its a pipe dream for vintage at least
I would love BGS to regain their strength and become a major player again but with the way things are going, I see the cgc 10 Pristine becoming the new gold standard (pun intended) of the industry
It’s that the point? Ofc their overall volume is less, but the percentage of cards getting those highest grades is also less. As well, I would speculate that the average card submitted to BGS is in better condition than that being submitted to CGC—people know the black label premium is absurd and want to give themselves the best chance of it, while 9.5s are
I guess. I mean if they wanted a grade where nobody dare question it and they hand it out to one in a million cards then I guess good job on them.
If the general consensus even among people who like bgs is that their grades “matter” only for 9.5 10 and BL then it’s no wonder people don’t use them very often
They’ve only done 360k pokemon cards ever and all the other categories are completely negligible so 50k a month isn’t really mathing but maybe they have moved on up!
But assuming that tag became relevant this year and they did most of their grading this year then 360k/8months is 45k/month. So sorta close to the claimed 50k
I believe it. They made a huge social media push and a lot of ppl really swear by them
50k is still small fish compared to the 2million+ cards graded monthly in the industry
Saw that. Guess they have reached that figure now! I’ve also learned that about 270k of that 360k are post 2020 sets. Having fun diving into their pop report. People not trusting the vintage there just yet.
all great points – I’ve actually thought BGS was the gold standard for japanese vintage for awhile (at least 9.5 grades and higher) but man im worried about the future state of company, not to mention how much black label and bgs 10s are effectively strong 9.5s spammed over and over again for re-grades. I don’t think any other grading company is as egregious about “paying-to-win” for a black or pristine label.
I may end up going with gold label CGC 10s or even TAG at this point…
speaking of TAG – they also have some major issues. have you guys seen this? I dont think I’ve ever seen something as egregious with other major grading cos.
