PCA Grade Graded Pokemon Cards

Mareee, what country are you from?

You can make an account in their website and add a US address. I assume you can submit the cards normally from there. It wouldn’t be a bad idea to contact them directly to double check though.

I’m from Slovenia. That’s the tiny country bordering with Italy on the right

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I have trouble believing their grades… So they have 9.5, 10 and 10+ on the high-end of their scale?
As mentioned above a 9.5 will likely be near-perfect, with a 10 being perfect? But then they also have a 10+ grade, for more than perfect cards?

More than perfect cards are not possible though, so I’m scared of the thin line they are using to distinguish between a 9.5, 10 and 10+.

The only reason I have faith in BGS’s 10s and black labels is because they have subgrades, and with this company also lacking subgrades I’m afraid it will be a very subjective decision.

I was told that PSA grades the Art Academy cards @quaador because they were an English-release of the promo cards.
Things that PSA will not grade include foreign release cards like Chinese Legend Maker or the new Thai cards…

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You messed up my name, so I only read this now. :wink: But ok, that makes sense. I was always wondering why they grade those, but not others, but that indeed explains it. Why the Art Academy being from a North American; European; and Oceanic competition, as well as the Australian Pikachu World Collection 2000 and US/Japan Pikachu World Collection 2010 cards got graded, despite containing foreign cards.

Then again, they also grade the non-Holo 035 Pikachu promo, even though it’s a Swedish exclusive promo, so I guess the other way around doesn’t apply. :wink:

So to sum it up: PSA grades cards which are written in English or Japanese, or are released in US/UK/AUS/other-English-speaking-countries or Japan. Except for the Base Set… :confused:

Hmm, has anyone seen any PSA-graded French Glossy WB Pikachus, released in the Japanese Gotta Magazine? :blush:

Greetz,
Quuador

What would really be interesting is if you could get the label printed in the same language as the card. So you would get Korean labels for Korean cards and Polish labels for Polish cards for example.
It would really add to the look of the encased card imo if the languages matched.

It would be cool but there’s a better chance of someone beating me in a bidding war for the first Black Label 1st Ed Base Charizard;)

This is probably why they’re still not as popular as they could be. As far as I remember they’ve been around for a while.
For me EGS is also an interesting competitor to PCA. I’ve bought an EGS graded card to take a look a their cases but they’re pretty amateurish so I decided to not submit my cards yet.

We’re still lacking a real european equivalent to PSA/BGS.

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That’s a pity because for a while now I’ve been thinking how good the PCA cases look :rofl:

I currently have a card out at PCA (in theory), to test the waters with them.

I have to say, as far as initial impressions go, it’s been abysmal so far!

I shipped the card out on the 7th December, it reached their offices on the 14th…but noone was in to take delivery, so the card was returned to the post office.

I contacted PCA through their social media and they assured me this was normal and it’d be collected. That was five days ago. It’s still sat there awaiting collection.

Good job it’s just a cheap card, because otherwise I’d be pretty miffed if a shipment of valuable cards was just sitting there for days on end.

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Not surprising honestly. I’ve followed them since their debut in 2016 and these issues have been common place for as far as I can remember.
I wouldn’t recommend PCA to anyone. Recurrent delays (some time for months !), ISP level customer support, grading inconsistencies, lackluster compensations but most importantly : grade tampering. Short story : a guy working there graded his cards PCA10+ and sold them on eBay at up to 5x the price for years.Oh and also they’ve stated on multiple occasions that if they were to damage a card, they would still encapsulate it with the grade it was supposed to receive before damage.

If you speak French and are on the verge of placing an order with them, I highly recommend you take a stroll through this thread on pokecardex (biggest french pokemon cards forum) : www.pokecardex.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=22479
Some of the things you can read on here are honestly laughable…

Wow! That’s absolute craziness!!

I only submitted a single sentimental card for an “authentic” grade to protect it, so grade tampering doesn’t bother me on this occasion, but I definitely won’t be submitting any grade-worthy cards to them in future after reading that.

I ended up emailing their customer support directly, stating that they *still* hadn’t collected my parcel. They responded that it’d be “done quickly” (heard that before), and I received a separate order update to say they had the order in hand about an hour later (this was a few days before Christmas).

The order tracking still says the package is at the collection point though, so I’m hoping it’s a case of no tracking updates, rather than them lying.

It’s a shame they seem so off the mark, because their updated English language slabs look very decent!

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I can´t speak for the submitting process with them (Yikes, wanted to send them some german cards for testing them out but ultimately decided to go with cgc…seems like the correct choice with all these stories haha) but their cases are top notch, really like them. I only have a handful of (not valuable) cards from them that I bought already graded, the grades are consistent in the small sample size I have (comparable to bgs grading scale I´d say)

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I think you made the right choice there! I mainly go through PSA via Graded Gem, but I’ve been wanting to try out CGC too, since so many people have praised their service and the quality of their slabs (outside of that one loose slab case that everyone went nuts over).

That’s good to hear about PCA’s slabs though. I’m still looking forward to getting my card back and having one in hand to compare with PSA - with the label, it seems like PCA would have been a good fit for Gold Stars. I paid for express grading, so hopefully it’s not too long before they change the status from “received” to “processing”.

I’ll be sure to update *if* my ongoing experience with them improves at all…it might be a small glimmer against the terrible rep they seem to have!

UPDATE:

Received my card back today (13/01)! (PCA completed grading & shipped on the 06/01)

Considering Christmas, New Year, Covid & Brexit were all causing a disruption storm over the New Year, they got my order sorted in very quick order. I’m impressed.

I can finally, say after handling one of PCA’s slabs, that they are terrific quality in hand and I’m a big fan of how slim & compact they are. The label is also very clean, with that gold foil star adding some style to the look - I’m glad they now provide English language labels as an option besides French too.

I am still miffed over how poor the link was between la poste and PCA, but once they finally marked my order as received, I haven’t had any complains with their service. I’m still weary of the horror stories though, so I think I will use them again in future, but only for “authentic” grades.

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I sent some cards off earlier this month.

I’ve checked the tracking and it looks like they’ve bounced it back (tracking states ‘returned by customer’). No communication whatsoever.

I’m beyond disappointed - shipping with insurance was bloody expensive and now it’s pretty much wasted. Waiting to hear something from them, I assume I’ll be at least able to get the grading cost refunded.

Hopefully nobody else has had as much faff.

Hey. Unfortunately I have problem with PCA. They terribly extend the service time. The package was collected by them in 08.02. But introduced into the system on February 22nd. It’s 3/11, no information. After “millions” of messages to support, I got the information that they are allegedly moving the OFFICE. Today - website not working.

I know they are new, barely 4 years on the market. However, the level of information circulation is tragic. They could put a post on Facebook (silence from the end of October). Now I wonder if they have closed the company.
Failure to collect the package may be due to the alleged relocation of the office. I note: it can be.

Danny King,
From Karczma Gier

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The service time is 20 business days from the date it is introduced into their system, not from when the package is collected. I submitted at a similar time to you and was told they would be completed by 03. 03. Messaging on their IG seems to get the quickest response, you only get an automated message on facebook and they don’t seem to answer calls.

I asked and they told me also that they were moving offices and that my cards would be delayed a couple of days, a week at most because of this. That was 01.03. A week has been and gone and I’ve been trying to contact them. Finally got an update saying that the company that runs their servers has had a fire (not at the location where the cards are, but at OVH in Strasbourg) and that until the servers are up again no cards can be updated into their system. Again they said there will be a delay of a couple of days and that they would compensate me for the delay. Not sure what the compensation will be, but even with these two delays it is still faster than PSA, BGS and CGC standard turn around times

So they had a service on OVH. I hope they compensate for it somehow. I know there is nothing to be tense. I am a bit disappointed with this turn of events, but I know very well that the PCA has a chance to be top in grading. Therefore, I am waiting patiently. Thanks for the info. I will try on IG too.

Update on PCA, which is not what I was hoping for. After moving offices and the problems with the servers, I have still not received my cards. Myself and others have attempted to call them (we think they haven’t updated their new office number), email (no replies) and message them on IG. If you message on IG you can expect a minimum of 1 week between answers, with the person running their IG saying he was on vacation and is replying to everyone in chronological order, so if you send a new message before you get an answer you move down the list… Each time I have had an answer however it is the same line - i’ve passed on your order number to processing as a priority (this has happened 3 times now). On the website it finally updated today that my cards were in processing since 11.02. Which means processing time (not total time since receiving my cards) is minimum 6 weeks.

To say I’m disappointed is an understatement. It looks like they are going down the path of increased processing times as with the other companies. But I’ve also been told of customers that have been contacted by PCA because they included cards in their submission that were not listed on their order. When receiving photos of these cards, it turns out they are from other peoples orders… so either someone is going to be very happy when they receive free graded cards that aren’t theirs or someone is going to be very sad when they don’t receive their cards at all. This is a big red flag from me and I don’t think I will submit any cards with them in the future.