Hey everyone!
Finally made it back to the States late last night. Thanks everyone for the messages and responses! I was not able to get a moment alone during the past few days while I was in Europe to write up a post so apologies for the delay.
@wooltchi - hahah love it, I am saving that meme for future use.
@smpratte - Yes, I unfortunately no longer have a good sense of CGC’s 10s with all of the exceptions they have made for specific clients and cards. It’s a shame because even after the grading scale change from 9.5s to 10s, there was a valid marketing/business decision if they only maintained the integrity of their updated standard. And thanks, I’ll take it - glad I could leave my mark on E4 
@amcgl58 - thanks!
@octaane - Thanks! I am very hopeful for TAG, but they definitely still have a long way to go of repeatedly proving themselves in the community. Will be interesting to see their progression within the next few years.
@haytertcg - Agreed, I think until the software is absolutely flawless (assuming that can one day happen), there needs to be a complementary engagement between the software and human graders. That video link you provided is a really good example of what I was referencing when TAG’s software needs to be tested at all levels to see how robust it actually is. As that saying goes, “we don’t know what we don’t know.” It looks like TAG did respond to that video so I am curious of their findings and their subsequent solutions.
@PokemonClassics - Agreed! At the very least, I really hope there will be some form of integration and improvement to the current grading system.
@pfm - Thanks! I honestly was not planning on picking this card up, but then negotiations started happening so one thing led to another. Was definitely a memorable experience last year with all of the subsequent interactions that took place!
haha, I suppose in all fairness, I was not expecting any special treatment outside of physically dropping the card at their headquarters. Everything after that was a surprise for me. I hear rumors and read about stories online, but I try to reserve judgement until I’ve experienced it firsthand, or I hear it secondhand from a trusted source.
I fully concur with this statement. There should be something that can be referenced or some report out, which would be unheard of in the grading industry.
Agreed, the value proposition that TAG provides will need to be significant for any long-time collectors to fully pivot their collection to a different slab. Licensing out their technology may be the most logical/lucrative if they are effectively able to deploy their tech consistently. I’m curious to see what course they take pending their traction in the community.
And to clarify on my mindset, it wasn’t so much of a shift in mindset toward grading as it was a reaffirmation, for lack of a better word. As much as I try to give people and companies the benefit of the doubt, this was more or less the last straw in this aspect. But agreed, I never believed the Illustrator was a flawless or indisputable 10 - I was just not given a clear reason from PSA for why they did not believe it was a 10, which has resulted in a lot more inferencing and deep dive interpretations that I would otherwise not care for as a customer.
@lyleberr - that’s a good question - from what I understand, their tech is restricted to identification of defects - so authentication of one-off special items would not be feasible. I didn’t specifically ask about their plans for this type of authentication, but I would imagine their priority is getting their existing grading optimized.
@pfm - oh, I was actually telling them that they weren’t “pushing” hard enough given their tech 
. I think one of their primary focus is optimizing their process to increase output of cards/month.
@xileets - haha thanks! And agreed, the repeated emphasis of “AI” never made sense to me. I think I saw TAG use the phrase before, but I haven’t seen it since so hopefully they did away with the phrase. At the end of the day, it’s repeated inputs into an algorithm that provides a calculated output, not so much the generation of new, profound “intelligence” standards based on those inputs.
@SeasidePokemon - Thank you! Good question - I do have a better understanding of my card’s condition after reviewing the DIG report. I am a number’s guy, however, so I enjoyed studying the report and cross checking based on how I personally assessed the condition prior to formally grading. I do agree that this can be overkill for a lot of cards, which I believe TAG’s “TAG X” service accounts for this, but I don’t have a full understanding of what that service provides besides a simplified version of the report?
@filthynwah - Oh interesting, that would make sense about the potential security risks. I really don’t have a good understanding of the Proof Authentication yet. It also seems like the authentication is independent of the slab itself. But I am guessing that since the codes are theoretically inseparable from the slab, then the authentication verification is implied?
@Dyl - Correct, from what I understood when talking to their team, the software algorithm was mostly complete before they began publicly grading the cards. This is why they also do not grade prior to a specific year in sports cards because there was too much variability from cards of the earlier years because they need to finalize those algorithms before they publicly provide that service.
And agreed, the Big 3 have the resources and the capital to create a team to build the software and hardware, but they are now in a waiting game of seeing how the market receives TAG since they cannot legally infringe on their patents.
Thanks! At the end of the day, my Illustrator is clean but not flawless by any means. My biggest issue was the lack of clarity around why it received a certain grade and the subsequent need to interpret the results and interactions.
@randox - It’s interesting, pfm mentioned the same thing about TAG earlier. I feel like they haven’t been trying hard enough unless I’m just completely not seeing some of the advertisements or engagements they’ve been doing in the community 
I’m not a big sports card collector, which I think it’s where they started, so I really only started paying attention to them when they graded the 1st ed. Zard ~ end of last year.
@brendantheclayboy - Thank you! And yesss, Philz Coffee is on my top 5 coffee joints!
@Will - Thanks! And very interesting - I had no idea coin collecting had two main forms of grading. I will have to do some more research about that! I wanted to get into coin collecting a few years back, but Pokemon took up most of my collecting bandwidth haha.
Regarding your Point 2), I think this is a really good question, which ties back to the video that @haytertcg shared. Some clarity from TAG would be very helpful.
@traineramy - Thanks! And correct, I am curious how they will be able to tackle your first point given all of the differences in production of these cards back then. And yes, they told me that they only started publicly grading last year (or Q4 of 2022? Can’t remember).
@codytcas - Thanks!
@inasuma - I’ve probably been living under a rock, but I actually don’t understand what your comment is referencing 
@jeverstones - Indeed, it was!
@Mr.Garrison - Thanks! Agreed, theoretically is doable, but I am waiting to see what happens in practice.
@expedition - Thank you! And yes, that is a very good counterpoint. I think at the end of the day, the quality of service will make the difference. I haven’t performed any formal market research, but anecdotally, whenever I am attending events in person and speaking with enthusiasts, and collectors, they either take PSA grading as the truth or they plan to crack and resubmit because they don’t agree with the results. I think clarity is important, but I do agree that people do not desire such clarity for every card that they own, let alone the resellers of these cards.
@kranz - Thank you! I should clarify that I do not know enough to be able to state that they are “pop controlling.” There’s a difference, even if the end result is similar.
@pfm - @kranz what he said
@pokemonargentina - Thank you! And yes, given that I have no plans on selling the Illustrator anytime soon, I would have opted to keep it raw, but since I purchased it in a slab already, I figured it would be worth seeing the additional defects I may have missed when I was eyeballing it myself. If I ever do decide to sell my cards in my collection, I would just grade/cross grade my cards to the leading company to capitalize on the arbitrage. Until then, I’m all for supporting companies on their merits until they prove me wrong.
@Lemon - As much as I agree as a fellow #bigergang, I do think there is value with third party graders/authenticators should people choose that route. Semi-rigids are also not the best form of protection (having carried both slabs and semi rigids during my most recent travel, I was only concerned about possibly damaging cards in my semi-rigids due to sharp points or compression in my bag).
@thsigma - Thanks! And yes, the 7.5 is the 4th Illustrator they have graded, I believe.
@bk2021 - Yes, I am curious if TAG will be able to economically provide value through their cheaper service to cards that wouldn’t really need the level of depth and analysis they provide.
@koala - Possibly, but that would imply they have a nearly identical grading scale. A possibility I’m leaning more towards is that their algorithms and software could be adjusted to the different grading scales of the Big 3 and licensed for their use.
cpbog1
but practically all I see here on e4 is TAG hate so thought I’d drop something more positive lol