Gma grading

What you guys think of gma grading? And why are people using gma grading when you can grade with psa for like 10 bucks.

www.elitefourum.com/t/gma-card-grading-encapsulation-review-bad-design/13110/1

Here’s a guide I wrote a few years ago about them:) From the outset, the cases are worse than any storage method you can consider using.

To answer your second question, for a long time there were only a few companies grading Pokemon cards on a large scale, which were PSA, Beckett and GMA (and the now defunct MAP grading). While PSA and Beckett weren’t very expensive, usually offering pricing in the range of $4 for large quantities and ~$8 for small-moderate, GMA offered $2 per-card grading cost. And since many of the prominent cards in the hobby were worth between $15 and $50 graded mint, some people considered the cost savings as worthwhile, especially for a quick resale. So in short, there’s lots of them out there, and some people were and still are uninformed about how poor their case & service is.

Also a fun fact… They offer a “grade your own“ program so you can tell them what grade to grade it.

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:confounded:

Greetz,
Quuador

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@quuador That’s correct :slightly_frowning_face: I should mention, it’s not with use of their branding on the label, but they will encapsulate into their cases with a label and grade of your choice.

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What a great business model. You grade your own cards, send it to us, and we’ll put it in a holder for you. We’ll just trust your best judgement on the grade.

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So… you could make a convincing fake, and send it into them for an automatic 10 and a slab? That’s a huge yikes from me

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Would you like to buy a 1st edition FR & LG Gem mint 10 Charizard EX? :wink:

www.ebay.com/itm/Pokemon-Card-1st-Edition-Italian-Charizard-105-112-GEM-10-RARE/162001625715?hash=item25b80ca273:g:SaoAAOSwEt9e2SQu

That’s a GMA grading case.

They used to say that they don’t accept obvious fakes.

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But we will accept cards that are pretty, like, you know… high quality fake cards. Yeah, we accept those.

I should stop being mean :3

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If it’s a GMA case then why does it say MGA on the label? XD

This example actually shows another reason to not use PSA tbh too. PSA doesn’t grade other languages outside of English and Japanese past base set. So for a lot of collectors that collect cards in Their native language, PSA is simply not an option.

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@stephneechan

MGA and GMA use the same clamshell (notice the witness marks). I’ve held both in hand and they are identical. GMA just offers the service.

Ironically, GMA are two letters switched from MGA, and both once used a baseball silhouette. And there’s no searchable database for their certs even though the both have certs & barcodes.

This might be a stupid question, but what’s a witness mark?

Edit: tried googling it and still none the wiser since it seems to mean a mark on a machine used for positioning?

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There are different types but generally it’s the mark left by the pins that push the plastic form out of the mold. They are usually round and are present on virtually every piece of molded plastic. In the GMA case you can see round witness marks around the edge of the case. The degree of how visible they are is a sign of the quality of the mold since they are not a desirable feature.