I think there is more to this than piling on the video for being clickbait. In fact I don’t think you can criticize one without the other.
First, this is less of cgc “making a mistake”, and more of a problem with their willingness to grade unauthorized cards. They designated these as 2 different types of miscuts. The example @pfm provided shows a stark contrast of missing something vs just grading anything. PSA accidentally graded a fpo card that doesn’t have official documentation, so they wanted the submitter to return it to remove the card from their case & pop report. Meanwhile, cgc has no problem grading fpo cards.
There are countless examples of cgc grading sheet cut cards that PSA will not grade. CGC coined the term “inadvertent release”, aka, could be a stolen card, or even better, they could be told it was stolen and just not care (true story).
Basically there are two wrongs here, and both are them are related. The same reason the video is clickbait is the same reason cgc grades anything under the sun. I think the company that boasts itself on their authentication process should be held to a higher standard than a guy making a minute long clickbait video.
Absolutely two wrongs but they are two different issues that people are conflating as if theyre the same.
It seems to me the streamer is trying really hard to start a campaign against CGC and is pretending to be a victim of their response by claiming he was exposing faults and testing their service, despite doing what is clearly against their terms. The original videos were excessively long with no summary and there were 3: pack opening with cutting, pack opening with slab return reveal highlighting the error, video going over cgc’s response. Now another video, a summary for clickbait and sharing.
CGC absolutely shouldnt be authenticating cards that they clearly cannot prove were factory errors. My understanding is PSA stopped authenticating square cuts because they were not able to prove factory cuts and that CGC had determined a way to do that, this calls that into question.
I have always been wary of crimp miscuts being graded because of the chance of reproduction after the factory. I have cards that they refused to grade because they couldnt prove it so its odd that these made it through, maybe theyre more lax on miscuts compared to misprints. Overall, my takeaway is this streamer is capitalizing on manufactured outrage and the separate issue that CGC seems to still not understand the influence this can have on brand perception since their response removes any possibility of strengthening their loyalty and only highlights that they cannot be trusted to respect their customers or have proper authentication ability.
The willingness to grade weird stuff has never bothered me. I’m actually in favor of it. But importantly, doing so requires a level of knowledge and skill that is magnitudes higher than just looking up a Bulbapedia page. I agree with this quoted part 1 million percent.
Just so everyone is informed, OP only linked a short. That YouTuber has made multiple videos on this. The original videos were 17min and 16min, so it wasn’t only a one-minute thing.
We need a reputable grader to authenticate errors and contribute to the “science” of error documentation. But they must be held at a very high standard, perhaps a standard much higher than what we expect from a normal grading company.
In a perfect world, I would also love to see some level of scientific documentation made available for noteworthy errors. CGC has done this with one-off articles for high-value cards, but it would be nice if it could be expanded and included as a QR code on the CGC label. With great power (i.e., “lead” grader of errors) comes great responsibility (i.e., appropriate documentation and careful consideration).
This reminds me that I’ve talked with PSA many times and got them to recognize cards by providing Bulbapedia links. One time I didn’t and they actually told me they needed multiple sources from websites like Bulbapedia. I don’t think they know that you can make a Bulbapedia account and edit pages…
This reminds me that I’ve talked with PSA many times and got them to recognize cards by providing Bulbapedia links. One time I didn’t and they actually told me they needed multiple sources from websites like Bulbapedia. I don’t think they know that you can make a Bulbapedia account and edit pages… 