Welcome and thank you for sharing your experience with CGC. It’s helpful because I’m considering where to sub my mix of vintage and modern NM.
I won’t be resubmitting to CGC Germany since I already gave them 3 chances. I already cracked open some slabs and submitted them to AOG here in Germany. They have really good reviews and the slabs look similar to CGC slabs. Let’s see how that goes, can’t get worse than this. 
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Hi! Welcome to the forum!
Sorry to see how badly they butchered your submission. It also looks like they have incorrectly labeled your Venusaur as Shadowless instead of 1st Edition.
eBay example of correct designation:
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2 down, 1 to go. I wonder how bad PSA deutschland is going to be.
I didn’t even notice that mislabel, well spotted!
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Maybe it’s just that German graders are super harsh graders? 
As a sub-question, why are both CGC and BGS basing their EU operations from Germany, and PSA is following soon? What makes Germany so attractive to open up a facility?
I think Europeans are definitely harsher graders, but I think a lot of them haven’t seen much vintage - especially higher end cards - therefore either have a greater bias or jealousy(?).
Let’s remember they aren’t typically high salary jobs either.
BGS took over cardmarket grading believe.
CGC had their original hub there so I imagine they just expanded that.
Well here I am making another submission…
BGS EU is closed so CGC Germany here we go.
Let’s see how they shaft these Naruto Mythos promos…I like pain.
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I think this should basically be the main reason (Germany has not only by far the highest GDP in the EU, but even the 3rd highest in the world). Besides that Germany is basically the heart of the EU and has the 3rd biggest population (Russia and Turkey have higher populations, but wouldn’t make for political and geographical reasons).
I don’t have data on that, but I would also suppose the biggest percentage of collectors (target demographic) lives in Germany or the neighboring countries.
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Still waiting for my submission to be finished. It’s been 33 business days since arrival at CGC Germany. It’s been stuck in “grading” status for over a week. I have a couple of metal cards, so maybe that’s why it is taking them a bit longer? I’m still in the “45 business days” turnaround time, so I can’t complain too much.
The wait is agonizing. 
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Contact them - if you haven’t paid all invoices
I have another sub in about to send them but I expect it’ll be longer than my last one
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How long do they take to ship? I have 4 submissions, all fully paid 4 weeks ago. They keep telling me my submissions are in the shipping queue. It’s been 4 weeks now… 2 days ago they told me the same thing
Usually pretty quick (1-2 weeks) but I imagine they are backed up massively as BGS EU is closed
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Finally an update on my first submission with CGC Europe. I contacted their support last week as my bulk tier was passing the 45 business days estimate and seemed stuck in “grading/imaging”. They replied back after a few days that it was now in the final quality check, and it finally seemed to move after that. Got the invoice paid just now, so hoping for quick shipping now.
Hoping for 10s and a couple pristines on the modern part, and hopefully some 8.5s, 9s, 9.5s and maybe 10s on the vintage part of the submission. I was quite brutal in pre-grading so there should not be any surprises.
May the grading gods favor me!
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let us know the results!
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I’ll sacrifice a PSA slab in your honor
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CGC Europe seems to be very kind with Prestine on modern, and brutal on vintage
Grades are back! 
Let’s start with the not-so great news. This cracked PSA9 got back a 7.5
Not sure why, there seems to be a white scratch on the back. It was not there before, so I’m hoping it’s just some lint on the slab. Still, 7.5 was wildly unexpected. Might just crack it and sell raw or resubmit.
Most of my vintage got somewhat expected grades. I sent in a bunch of E-series reverses and got mostly 8s and 9s on those.
I got a single 10 on my vintage. This Entei that I carefully selected after inspecting 20+ sealed copies, opening up 5 and ruthlessly choosing the best one. Not the best result, looking at the pop report. It has a high gem mint rate for vintage.
I sent in 2 of these Eevee promos. This one is extremely clean, and I was expecting a 9.5 but hoping for a 10.
The other one got an 8.5, but it did have a couple of scratches.
Onto modern! I sent in 24 modern cards.
I got the following grades:
- 7.5: 1 card (the Pikachu Vmax)
- 9: 1 card (Radiant Eevee, has a bad gem rate)
- 9.5: 1 card (Mew ex SVP053, one of my favorite cards. Difficult to find a well-centered copy)
- 10: 14 cards
- Pristine: 7 cards
Looking back, I’m not displeased with the result. I’m very happy with the pristine Umbreon masterball and the pristine metal Mew. I would have LOVED to get the vintage Eevee promo in a gem mint 10. A bit sad that the Mew SVP053 promo got an 9.5, as that was my favorite card of the lot. I thought it had pristine potential.
What do you think?
What I learned about CGC Munich:
I think that CGC Munich is decent for grading. It doesn’t look like they’re overly harsh on vintage, but I do feel that there was a tendency to not give 10s. And I’m a pretty harsh pre-grader.
Modern seems fine as well. The pristine rate was as expected (about 30%). I did add a couple of cards where I noticed a defect as well to see how they would score. Those cards still got 10s.
What I learned about grading in general:
If you’re really wanting a certain card in a high grade, you need to send in multiple copies. I sent out 3 copies of the metal Mew, and am glad I did. It’s also super clear to me what to do with those: I’ll keep the pristine and sell the gem mint 10s. For the other cards that I only sent out 1 copy of, I now need to decide what to do with them. That’s a bit difficult.
Will I be grading in the future? You bet! But first I’ll be selling off about 70% of this graded result. That should recoup the costs of the cards I’m keeping.
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It’s more or less what I got although I overall felt it was a negative experience.
Comparing to the cards that come out of CGC USA, Munich is like a totally different grading scale, for vintage.
CGC 9.5-10s are basically PSA 9. They are allowed a minor flaw, with 9.5s having two minor flaws but otherwise very clean.
My expectations were met for modern and they more or less followed this in Germany.
But it seems the bar is higher for vintage. Perhaps the graders just are more strict on expensive cards.
For example this should be a pristine 10.
It was a PSA 10, BGS 9.5++ (two 10 subgrades). It’s an exceptional card.
I hope as they get more used to vintage they will treat them the same as modern.
I moan but I just sent them 26 modern cards on economy. I’ll probably just grade vintage with BGS + PSA when they open in EU.
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