I personally wouldn’t be so quick to write off new grading companies.
PSA are busy souring customers, shedding middlemen & hiking prices to the point it’s almost a joke for the service that’s being provided (even on a good day from them).
Meanwhile, everyone was laughing at CGC almost exactly a year ago, calling them pointless & mocking people choosing to grade with them - they’re now giving PSA a run for their money, and have largely replaced BGS as “second choice” already.
Companies based in Europe don’t have that inherent problem of being based on the same continent as the big hitters, so already have a slight advantage with starting up. There are a lot of potential and willing customers on this side of the planet.
If they can craft a unique identity, while making a good product to a high standard, there’s no reason why any company can’t build a solid reputation; so long as they’re willing to commit to the long-haul.
If that were true then I imagine Ludkis would be losing its middleman services because Charlie works with cgc. However, I still see them on the PSA dealer list. I recall there being a lot more PSA dealers in the 162 that are listed so it’s possible that they definitely cut ties with a lot of people.
I mentioned this in the Giant Professional Grading Thread, but comparing Randolph’s new grading company to CGC is laughable. You’re comparing a new branch of the one of the most reputable and longstanding names in collectibles grading to some random startup that has no more experience or knowledge about collectibles preservation/grading than my dog.
No, I’m comparing the dismissive initial responses and gatekeeping attitudes that still seem a little too popular in some quarters.
Of course CGC have a stellar pedigree, and started out on a level most other newcomers could never match. They’re personally my go-to choice. You’re only backing up my point, that a “branch of the one of the most reputable and longstanding names in collectibles grading”, as you nicely put it, was still laughed at and ridiculed from the get-go around the community. How can anyone win with that sort of environment being happily paraded about?
I have no expectations that Ace Grading (let’s face it, Randolph is just the face/financier for GG’s project here) will be a game-changer, or even any good…though I hope they are. Truth is, they could have poached 20 PSA staff, built a hand-blown glass slab & installed facial recognition to secure the card, and some graded collectors would still find something to trash them over.
I don’t remember people being critical of CGC except in terms of their ability to compete with PSA. They weren’t laughed at – people were (and are) rightly skeptical of their ability to compete with PSA.
With Ace Grading, people are critical of something different – the actual service they’re intending to provide. They’ve already explicitly stated that the graders they’ve hired have zero grading experience. And there’s been no mention of anything to do with card preservation. Instead, Randolph spent 80% of the video talking about the graphic design of the label.
I wish them the best but there’s every reason to not be confident in them, unfortunately.
Yup…in the grading megathread I talked about how reputation is the number one factor for a grading company. The design of your label, the security features it has, the feel of the case do nothing for reputation.
It’s not impossible to start a new grading company. If you want to get me (and others like me) on board, tell me about the experience your graders have or your rigorous training procedures by people who are experienced. Talk about your authentication processes. Explain your grading scale. Explain what you grade, why you grade it, and why you’re qualified to do so. Innovate beyond standard PSA/BGS/CGC procedure like some companies (ex DSG) have done. But most of these companies are not aiming for people like us. The target demographic is people who don’t know about grading, don’t understand the difference between PSA/BGS/CGC and Barnaby Crumpetsworth’s new UK grading company, and who value aesthetics over actual trusted services.
I’m happy that they made this so it’s much easier to follow the process. I’m also July gang, rip. But at least there is some hope with that 3%… Better than zero right? Right…??
And overall I’m sad that Graded Gem is quitting. I’m a long time customer even before they were called Graded Gem so it’s sad to see this happening after all the growth they have made.
Sounds like buy the grade not the card. Trusted services I don’t know about that either , more like trusted to have more value because they started it first. A lot of people report that PSA cards move or rattle in case or getting bits in them. A card that rattles in case can damage cards I don’t care what anyone says it does and can. And that makes them not trustable and preserving cards but still trustable selling or buying for more money
This is such a scary figure when you look at it, ive just gone on the site as I have a July submission with them also.
I only started sending what i considered low value/ “Junk slab” October time and even then i was picky as i knew they would be backlogged.
To think July time people were still being pretty picky with their submissions and to only have 3% back is just a mind blowing figure.
I clearly remember watching hours and hours of videos of submissions with tonnes of wotc 1st edition and mint raw cards coming through all the way from May - Oct time.
I saw a lot of attacks against CGC in the beginning; criticism of where they were sourcing card graders from, how they’d go bust within 6 months because PSA & BGS would chew them up, how terrible the blue labels and design choices were, etc. I still occasionally see people on Instagram mocking someone choosing to grade high value cards with them, even now.
There’s just too much of that “buy the grade, not the card” mentality around, even though it’s supposed to be the opposite (I don’t mean from you in particular Zorloth, just that it’s everywhere on E4).
I agree with you that Ace haven’t given any particular reasons to be confident in them yet. I’m willing to hear them out if they’ve got some of that important technical info yet to share and see the final product before writing them off though.
I couldn’t agree more - we just aren’t the target market for Ace Grading. I think sometimes we lose sight of the fact that we’re on a forum with the world’s biggest and most serious collectors and that we only represent an absolutely miniscule percentage of people who collect Pokémon cards. Do you think 10 year old Timmy who pulled a Shiny Charizard VMAX on his birthday cares whether his card is graded with PSA/CGC/BGS? Probably not. He might not even know about those graders unless his parents are into collecting too. In all likelihood, he’d rather go for the special label with Ace and know he’ll have a really cool looking slab to show off to his friends at school when he gets it back. Ace Grading might not appeal to a lot of people on this forum for a variety of legitimate reasons, but we can’t underestimate that market I’ve just mentioned, because I’m sure it’s huge.
