Ok, wtf… Mark Haspel, co-founder of WATA, accused of grading and selling WATA graded games (at the same point in time), was president and primary grader of CGC…and CGC not having a pop report for pokemon cards is overblown?
If the majority of newcomers and people returning to the hobby have been mislead on rarities of modern and unlimited (they have), then yeah I think it is relevant to even the collectors of efour
From what I’m seeing online, that seems correct – he’s a comic book grading consultant. Do you know that he’s acted unethically in his capacity as a consultant? Because, from what I can tell, the allegations against him are just related to WATA. I don’t see how any of these allegations relate to CGC at all, let alone to the trading card branch of CGC.
Wait, what? I’m simply saying that CGC has AI, QR codes to an online data base, over a decade of experience in publishing pop reports, but can’t work out how to publish one for the pokemon cards they grade. It makes no sense what so ever.
Now…let’s look at what WATA is accused of doing and the people involved…and would you look at that, the person who was apparently selling the games he graded himself 1. Was the president and primary grader of CGC 2. Has been working with CGC in a professional capacity since 2014
Now let’s look at the price of pokemo cards that haven’t been fleshed out by the PSA pop report…would you look at that, massive speculation
CGC has been grading cards for just over a year and they’ve made it clear that a pop report is coming soon. It makes complete sense to me; are you familiar with the back-end work involved in establishing a data base like that? Totally different situation from WATA, who never even expressed an intention of establishing a publicly accessible pop report. Whereas CGC has repeatedly emphasized that a pop report is in the works. I expect that they’ll keep that promise – if they don’t, then I’ll be the first to take issue with them. But based on their track record, I believe that they have the honest intention of releasing a pop report.
He’s a consultant to CGC, not a grader or executive. And he’s not even a consultant on the TCG branch of CGC. Again, I see zero evidence that his unethical conduct with WATA has anything to do CGC grading at all, let alone the TCG branch of CGC. If you have any evidence beyond baseless, conspiratorial allegations, then I’m all ears. As it stands, the fact that a consultant to CGC did something unethical in his capacity in a completely separate position isn’t sufficient basis to conclude anything.
Lil grading company in Australia managed a pop report at launch…and I’m pretty sure they don’t have the capital the CGC does. So no, it doesn’t make sense that CGC can manage AI and an online QR code data base but not a pop report.
I don’t need evidence to demand transparency from a company that doesn’t have a pop report and has a person with his reputation working in a professional capacity in its midst. You have NO idea what work he is involved in at CGC, nor do I.
How many cards has that company graded? I bet that they haven’t graded 10% as many as CGC has.
It’s easy to be an armchair developer; it’s another thing entirely to actually be a developer. Neither of us know what exactly is involved in establishing and maintaining a database like that.
Which is precisely my point. Perhaps we should learn more (or anything at all) before we accuse CGC of impropriety?
I once thought the same thing but then in the middle of the night I felt a burning pain on the back of my hand and I saw a scar that said “Stop digging, stop asking questions”, and the next morning it was gone.
Be careful, there are some things the man doesn’t want you to find out.
Its a database,its scalable, and they’ve been grading cards for over a year. Yeah I have an idea and I’m qualified (not that I expect you to believe me).
My point is actually that there is someone working within CGC, who was the president and primary grader, and did what he did. What happened with the speculation on WATA games was made possible by the fact that there was no pop report. Well it looks like history is repeating itself and the fact that there is no pop report reinforces that.
I’m not mad at you or anything, im concerned for the vast majority of new and returning collectors who I believe were taken advantage of because there was so much hype and no pop report by arguably the second biggest pokemon cards grading company (biggest meaning most cards graded during this time in the hobby)
I agree that CGC should publish a pop report. But they’ve literally said that they will a thousand times. Neither of us have any good reason to believe that intention is anything less than sincere. If they don’t publish one within the next year, then I’ll be the first to call them out on it.
I’m also not sure what you mean by “so much hype” for CGC-graded Pokemon cards. CGC-graded cards simply haven’t been demanding the dramatic (i.e., 5-10x) premiums over raw values that PSA-graded cards do. There’s been plenty of hype around Pokemon cards in general, but I haven’t seen that translate into unreasonable premiums for CGC-graded cards. I haven’t seen anyone overvaluing CGC slabs, though I’ve seen plenty of that with PSA slabs (*cough* PSA 10 modern cards *cough*).
Yeah, I guess if im the only person here who actually think CGC has the potential to manipulate people in the pokemon market…well, simplest answer n all that. Ah well
I actually think all modern qnd unlimited base through rocket is extremely over valued, and the only company that could grade within the time frame to capitalise on that would be CGC. All it would take is shilling a PSA card up for everyone to send into cgc.
Any company has the potential to do shitty things. But it’s my view that it’s irresponsible to make serious accusations without backing them up with serious evidence.
One of the scariest parts to me is that WATA absolutely has pop reports (like come on, you get a cert number, it goes into a database) but does not share it. This means WATA and WATA employees have more knowledge than we do, and while no pop report is 100% accurate, even 98% accuracy can be telling of the value of something. If you think you have the highest graded at 9.6 and then you see 10 more come out and one at 9.8… that sucks. Having that knowledge is, to me, important for determining value. and WATA has a huge leg up on everyone else because of it.
industry transparency is key.
I really like the idea of graded video games and collecting them. I wish there was more transparency though, and that makes it hard to jump into sometimes.
Don’t kid yourself. CGC has a pokemon pop report. They are intentionally not disclosing this information for a number of reasons, so far.
You can’t possibly do business and not record the primary piece of information about the business you’ve done. For legal reasons, accountability reasons, everything. The information is already stored and retrievable in a database, I’d bet the farm on that. CGC has pop reports for comics.
Build a pop report database is trivial and already happens at every company. Period. I bet the entire farm on that.
Intentionally withholding that info - imo different reasons between CGC and WATA - is a play.
Again, the difference is that CGC will release pop reports. They’ve committed to it in writing dozens of times.
WATA, on the other hand, hasn’t expressed any interest in releasing pop reports.
Another difference is that we already have a (relatively) comprehensive pop report for Pokemon cards – PSA. Neitherof the two main video game grading companies (WATA and VGA) release pop reports. There’s zero transparency and zero available info about the rarity (or lack thereof) of certain video games.
What is stopping from WATA/cgc releasing a pop report now? Slapping a search interface on a database is fairly trivial these days. I know because I teach people how to do it as part of my job. I’ve had undergrads prop up working systems over a weekend.
Not saying they only need a weekend, but they certainly don’t need as long as they have had (and still no registry in sight). The fact they they aren’t delivering a registry to us when it’s trivial to do should be a huge red flag IMO
What in the actual hell are some people in here talking about? Lol. Are any CGC Pokemon cards being sold at inflated prices due to not having pop reports out? The WATA 9.8 games I get a bit more because there has been more time on those, but if there were 50 owners out there with some of these 7 figure games do you not think they’d be in the next block or the next one? Or at least posted about somewhere.
CGC having Pokemon card pop reports so early would arguably do more to artificially inflate prices if anything. Every card would be “LOW POP OMG <10 IN THE WORLD!”
The concerns against WATA brought up in the video are extremely valid such as employees buying/selling/grading and the relationships to past bubbles/lawsuits and the fact that they came out of the gate as the Heritage Auctions #1 trusted service despite not having graded anything yet just because of their ties to HA. People keep saying how CGC needs to prove itself over time yet they have with grading in other markets yet when WATA came out for video games it seems like that was all it was and they were just pumped to the top with no rep. Yikes