Did CGC Change Their Grading Standards?

General
1

Does everybody/anybody still think CGC has changed their requirements within a grade?

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2

yes everyone is getting more 10s now

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I definitely think CGC has become more lenient. I sent in 3 submissions through ludkins before they increased prices in April 2021 with all similar quality cards and modern Japanese was 50% or more of each order. Two submissions went through and were received by me months ago with lots of 8.5 grades and some under 8.5. Also, zero CGC 10 grades.

One submission was delayed until just the other week. That submission was the smallest of the three and had only one 8.5 grade with none lower. Also, 24 CGC 10 grades.

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5

Based on what people are posting for their submissions, it seems like they have. Makes me feel bad with my previous submission as IMO many of the 8.5ā€™s I got would come back as 9ā€™s today. I have lost interest in using them and them changing their grading standards would not be a reason for me to go back.

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Incidentally, today support emailed me back about a silly and goofy question I asked them but they basically claimed that there was no change to the grading scale.

Good afternoon, Troy,

Thank you for reaching out to CGC Trading Cards. At this time CGC Trading Cards has not updated its grading scales; however, our affiliate company, CSG, recently has. Please let us know if you have any additional questions.

Iā€™m not sure what the incentive is to lie. Like my pal Buckna said I think itā€™s ultimately a positive change that their grading scale is more approachable/in line with what collectors are used to. There is, of course, the very real issue of earlier grades being simply different and they might not want to deal with the backlash that comes with people who already submitted hundreds and thousands of cards. They can do what they want. Just interesting. Iā€™m not confident the use case for their service really changes for me personally but when people are getting 80% 10 rates on submissions when you were lucky to break over 1% before itā€™s a bit silly for them to (indirectly) claim that people are just picking minter cards now.

Of course this ā€œtheyā€ Iā€™m talking about was this one customer service rep that emailed me today and I donā€™t believe they made an official statement but still.

8

RIP to anyone that bought a 10 in the last year at a premium.

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Yeah the answer is just a quick ā€œyesā€ and what you do with that info is up to you :grin:

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10

I guess nothing would be surprise me but this kind of sounds like the whole Old vs New Certification number thing with PSA that people like to promote on Instagram and else where (claiming New Cert numbers are ā€˜strongerā€™ than old). Does this mean old CGC 9.5s are now 10s? I feel my 9.5s are all 9.5s and wouldnā€™t deserve a 10 but thatā€™s my own opinion towards them. Until CGC confirms this, it sounds like speculation at best. Would be curious to know though if itā€™s legit.

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Cgc loves their 8.5 grade. See them everywhere. They are tough on centering. This means its easy to keep an eye as its one thing we can all see clearly if that starts to change. Have a look at how many 10s pristine or perfect are in the entire fossil unlimited pop. 2 pristine 10s. 0 perfect 10s. No holo has graded a 10. Just 2 rares. 21618 cards graded as of now. The 2 rares were there from day 1 of the pop report being available so hasnt changed. It does include cosmos holos which are v v v v low pop and 3rd print fossil which are v v low pop. It grouped those in with unlimited. Looking for perfect 10s wotc holos. There are none until you get to gym challenge 1st edition and unlimited which total 3. A perfect 10 holo before gym challenge does not exist currently. They have graded a pretty decent amount of cards in my view and none have got a perfect 10 before gym challenge so if they start popping up from 0 to ā€¦ thats another sign for sure that grading standards have changed.

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ā€œā€¦all similar quality cards and modern Japanese was 50% or more of each order. Two submissions went through and were received by me months ago with lots of 8.5 grades and some under 8.5. Also, zero CGC 10 grades.

One submission was delayed until just the other week. That submission was the smallest of the three and had only one 8.5 grade with none lower. Also, 24 CGC 10 grades.ā€

If true, this is really scary. Summarized: from zero 10s to 24 10s on like cards. Can you post a result sheet showing these three orders?

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It really does seem like CGC is flooding the market with inflated scores.

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Iā€™m guessing its all the newer stuff thatā€™s getting 10s. Iā€™m mainly wotc. My work is done lol.

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These were done through Ludkins so I donā€™t have a results sheet as I didnā€™t create one manually. I have also sold a decent chunk of them so I donā€™t have all the cards that I sent.

I know from my Ludkins emails that the orders were 110 cards, 79 cards, and 113 cards. I paid for return shipping on 12/14/21 for the 110 order, 1/20/22 for the 113 card order, and 4/14/22 for the 79 card order. The largest difference between orders was that the 113 card order had a good chunk of freshly peeled vending while the other orders didnā€™t.

The three different certs for the orders were 381586XXXX (110 card order), 383829XXXX (113 card order), and 391364XXXX (79 card order). I have 171 CGC cards on my eBay. 40 of these are between CGC 7 and CGC 8.5. None of the 391364XXXX certs listed are graded 8.5 or lower and 17 of these certs listed are CGC 10. All CGC 10s were modern Japanese from 2008 to 2021. Most being from XY and newer promos and sets.

That is about all I can offer at the moment. Wish I could offer full returns sheet like orders direct to PSA, but I didnā€™t think to create them when using Ludkins.

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Based on Pichucollectors analysis of the CGC pop report; of all cards graded until release of the pop report, 0.93% achieved a pristine 10 and 0.12% received a perfect 10. One week later, the percentages are as follows, a total of 14,525 new cards graded with 782 pristine 10s and 98 perfect 10s, respectively 5.38% and 0.67%. More than a 5 times increase. Pichucollector chalked this up to a week of people submitting higher quality cards, but I think that is ridiculous. This is a significant, statistically measurable change.

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oh noooo cgc is grading more like PSA now whatever shall we do

also, www.elitefourum.com/t/the-giant-professional-grading-thread/30930/1

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18

changing grading standards and not saying anything about it is sus. people who paid a lot for 10s got hosed

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19

Is it possible that much more wotc was sent previously versus only easier to grade modern now?

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It can explain some variance in percentages, but I donā€™t believe for a second it will explain a ~5.5x increase in 10s. Lets do a quick thought experiment. Assuming only modern cards get 10s, it means that relative to before modern makes up 5,5 times more of the percentage of cards graded. Lets say initially 10 percent of submissions was modern before 3 weeks ago, that means current submissions are around 55 percent modern cards. In reality this is even more skewed since older cards can get 10s.

E: And since the initial pop report is not very different from the current one (1.34M initially compared to 1.40 now). The 1.4M now represent a pretty good average of what was graded before, about 700K pre-Sun and Moon cards, so 50/50 vintage/modern. Even if current submissions are 100% modern cards, that would not be enough to explain a change of 5.5 times more 10s.

It would be worrying to me if a week had even a 2 times higher percentage than all previous graded cards.

We will have to wait for PokĆ©metrics or some other tool to show which sets where graded most these last weeks, and if they consistently get these higher percentages 10s. Iā€™m not about to dive into the API just to confirm something like this.

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21

I have a tiny, 5-card anecdote to give regarding this:

I recently resubbed 5 old-cert cards back to CGC that I felt had a good chance of getting bumped up a grade. These were sent in raw and part of a larger bulk sub. The cards were as follows:

  • CGC 9 RS Swampert holo (quad++ subs ā€“ personally pulled from a pack, would have an extremely good shot at PSA 10, IMHO)

  • CGC 9 RS Scyther ex (quad++ subs ā€“ personally pulled from a pack, would have a decent shot at PSA 10, IMHO)

  • CGC 9 RS Magmar ex (quad+ subs ā€“ personally pulled from a pack, would likely get a PSA 9)

  • CGC 8.5 LM Flygon ex (quad++ subs w/ two 9.5s ā€“ bought this one raw, would likely get a PSA 9)

  • CGC 9 HL Regice ex (basic subs ā€“ personally pulled from a pack, and Iā€™d be genuinely surprised if it didnā€™t get a PSA 10)

I cracked all of the above cards out and resubbed, with the following results:

Scyther and Magmar got 9s again. Flygon, Swampert, and Regice all got .5 higher:

Now, what conclusions can we draw from this? None lol. But figured Iā€™d mention it since itā€™s a directly relevant anecdote. My honest impression (based on the results of my last two bulk subs) is that Iā€™m getting pretty much identical grades as before, maybe slightly higher (but not significantly ā€“ maybe .25 higher on average, if I had to guess).

I still havenā€™t gotten a single 10, and Iā€™ve submitted some pretty clean cards to them lol. So I donā€™t think theyā€™re suddenly giving out lots of (or nearly any) 10s for pre-2007 English holos.

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More anecdotal evidence, but I really do feel like I see so many more CGC10s being listed on ebay and posted on social media. That gold just stands out so it catches your eye easily when scanning though.

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