It’s interesting to hear peoples experience from other countries. Here in my smaller city in Canada, I was surprised to find there is a big collector scene and even new shops opening up selling PSA cards and other sports memorabilia. It’s absolutely thriving too as many businesses went under over the past 2 years so the old malls and shopping centres have empty real estate and all these new stores have been opening up. One particular new store that just opened up in November is already a PSA dealer and I can submit cards through them which is really cool (I plan to at some point). This did not exist just 2 years ago here, so things are growing.
Should be interesting to see your results, I’ve seen those European slabs and other grading companies and I know absolutely nothing about them or how they grade compared to American ones.
The set registry is it one of the key that increase PSA value.
There are a few cards (except Charizard, because people just love it and willing to spend x10) where the PSA 10 worth more than 10 times PSA 9 because people want complete set registry.
Vehicles are a terrible analogy. Generally vehicles are valued according to how much they stand out among all the others - by this logic HGA or KSA would be the best choice of grading companies.
A better analogy is currency. In the same way USD is the de facto standard because of its ubiquity, PSA is the USD of grading companies. Similarly, the same way that the Indian rupee still has value but generally less utility outside of India, BGS slabs have a smaller share of the market which necessarily implies that less people are interested in them, making them less liquid.
You can see this effect in action: every discussion about BGS inevitably includes PSA as comparison in the same way a conversation of the value of the rupee would probably include the exchange against the USD.
Your argument from exception is not convincing to me, especially because you have to rely on a completely different hobby to make the point. I know many will point to black labels as an example of the superiority of BGS but I also find this thoroughly unconvincing as it always ignores the 100s of less desirable slabs that are accumulated to produce 1 black label. It’s like saying that playing the lottery is the best way to make money because of how much the winner will make, ignoring the expected number of tickets required to have a winning one.
I’ll just say at the end here that people are free to like whatever grading company they want to but it should be pretty uncontroversial to say that BGS is not a popular choice.
If you’re trying to “invest” there really is no other option besides PSA. Nobody will dethrone them in Pokemon.
Besides that just grade someplace reputable that didn’t open via a kickstarter during the free tendies era
I didnt really mean to include cgc in that statement. Sure they started during the free tendies era, but they weren’t a startup type thing. They have just as long a history doing similar certification as BGS and PSA just not exactly in trading cards, so the reputation building aspect didn’t really apply. Everyone knew they’d be legit, just not sure how serious they would be and how many resources they would devote to this
It was more of the true startup free money type companies I was cautioning against. I see a LOT of new collectors who don’t know what they’re getting themselves into with a pile of plastic from those guys
I also dont really think Rudy was talking about CGC there, but maybe he was
I just finished the video and unless I missed something I don’t think he really directly called out CGC specifically but sort of just used them for making a joke about card grading. I guess in a sense by doing this he sort of pooled them in them as being a more risky 3rd option than PSA/BGS long-term. Personally, I have had no real issues with my CGC cards. I only own a few and to me they are basically right on-par with BGS/PSA in the upper grade ranges (of course, dependant entirely on the sub-scores).
They’ve also been cards that I literally could not find from PSA or BGS or I could not even find the card raw that I literally had to buy the CGC slab to get the cards I was after for my collection, lol. This is a very unique example though that would not apply to many collectors out there I don’t think.
Anyway, they seem to be a more established company than most given they do have the long-running comic book grading rep. I for sure don’t plan on touching any of the other companies that have popped up out of a basement or garage in the past 2 years at the very least.
Except for Black Label, I have been crossing my BGS slabs to either PSA or CGC because I don’t want to maintain different accessories. PSA and CGC slabs have almost the same dimensions.
