I love the auto 6 PSA grade. I got a mint Eevee fan club that was graded a 6 for no reason, I can’t find the issue.
But I completely agree. A perfect card with a dent should get more credit than a beat up card without a dent.
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I strongly dislike BGS and SGC slabs but I like both PSA and CGC slabs equally. I have sets that are made up of both PSA/CGC slabs which doesn’t really bother me. I’m generally far more concerned about the actual card and getting the best “bang for buck” than I am about the slab the cards are in or the grade they’ve been assigned.
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PSA. It would drive me insane for my collection to be a mix of grading companies.
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For my personal collection I like to stick with PSA just for the uniform of it and the premium the 10’s add, however I do really like BGS Slabs I just feel they are better in hand.
CGC was growing on me a little at a point but now It feels like I see them just as whatnot streamers “lets just slab it” company.
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How is “other” beating SGC?
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Because it includes the 100 start up grading companies that people may have tried at some point.
But isn’t this “what cards are IN your collection”
I thought those startups were for free tendies, not holding onto or displaying
Someone posted in the unpopular opinion thread that they like some of those companies specifically for their displays (I think ACE Grading in particular was mentioned).
To each their own, I guess.
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Im all for displaying based on the slab you like most, I just haven’t seen anyone saying they like these alt companies yet. Maybe they do though
They are probably newer to grading and are less likely to come to places like this that have been dominated by psa preferences (and still are). I’ve found that most of the alt grading company cards tend to be more modern set cards and the discussions tend to be located on twitter, facebook, reddit, etc.
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i only collect PSA, but BGS has less representation than I expected, even for just pokemon
BGS seems like it has declined in the Pokemon sphere, in my opinion.
When I got back into the hobby in early 2017, I remember seeing a lot more BGS-graded cards for sale on eBay. Now you hardly see them at all (relative to PSA and CGC, anyway).
Remember how common the “BGS 9.5 PSA 10???” listings used to be when you would search for a PSA 10-graded card? You never even see those anymore.
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I have 99% of my collection in PSA slabs, but I’ve picked up a CGC slab when the deal was right. Honestly I really enjoy the look of their slabs, but I like having everything look the same and I feel like I can more reliability predict the grading scale for PSA.
Shame to see SGC being at 2%, guess they are mostly well known in sports and no one seems to use them for pokemon.
Did you know the two most expensive trading cards in the world are graded by them? Both are sports cards.
SGC 9.5 Mickey Mantle - $12.6 million
SGC 3 Honus Wagner - $6.6 million
They also have a really clean SGC 10 diamond first edition base set charizard.
I am amazed that CGC has grown so fast in the last few years but to me, PSA is king, BGS is queen and CGC is the upcoming queen. They probably already took over BGS in pokemon but still have a very long way to go to catch up to BGS in the sports card industry.
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While CGC has not even come close to touching PSA, I think CGC has basically displaced BGS in the Pokemon market.
CGC has been outperforming BGS on the secondary market in every grade except 10 and 8.5 (based on eBay/PWCC/HA auction data). This is to say that CGC 9s and 9.5s sell for higher than the equivalent BGS grades – which is not a good sign for BGS given that this is happening despite CGC having basically zero grading output bottleneck (aka instant turnaround times).
Of course, CGC still lags behind BGS significantly in sports and very significantly in MTG. But Pokemon is a different story at this point.
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Sgc is more relevant in sports. I remember seeing sgc Pokémon cards more back in the day. I have some vintage sgc graded Pokémon cards from the 90s-00s. I thought maybe during PSA’s closure sgc would potentially grab more market share, but they primarily stick to sport cards.
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RE: BGS
I’d wager that instead of becoming “less popular” BGS has stagnated with respect to PSA and CGC. A massive missed opportunity on their end. Ie. They haven’t increased the size of their slice of the pie as the pie grew
It feel like it’s always a few months or years behind these other companies. A label and website change probably should have happened alongside the CGC launch
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Voted PSA but I actually have 1 CGC card. De minimis.
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I’ve kinda wanted to collect some of the shitty slabs from the pop up grading companies JUST so I can look back on this time period in the hobby and look at them like relics. I HOPE. Like, “remember that time 420 grading companies opened at once and every card had the potential to be graded, so they did?” They’re all gone now because the companies crumbled, all that’s left are these weird slab knock offs of the main PSA and CGC.
I dunno, that’s just my meme idea. And only if it’s garbage cheap. 
I just think it’d be funny to have a bunch of 25th Anniversary Pikachu full arts in slabs that are from this grading era. It also hinges on the idea that these companies will fade and so will the slabs. What do you think will happen to these companies down the road, and the slabs? Think they can be something we look back on and have a chuckle with, or will it always remain in the background behind the main titans of grading companies?
Mostly PSA but I have 1 BGS and a few CGC. Plus I have started buying CGA Pristine 10 (as I live is AUS) as the labels are really nice and they are cheap