I’ve been thinking about this for a while and I want to see what you guys think
CGC has two options when grading, either with or without subgrades. Subgrades cost an additional $15, which means the price is doubled for bulk submissions.
I’ve learned through the forums (not publicly stated on their website) that CGC offers the ability for a user to resubmit a card without subgrades in its original CGC case and have subgrades added. The overall grade will remain the same.
CGC has said it themselves via the forum that coming up with individual subgrades takes more time and that is part of the justification for the added cost. It’s easy to see that these cards are put under more scrutiny for each individual section, and then the final grade is determined after combining the four subgrades.
Having the ability to add subgrades after the fact seems completely backward to me. Since an element of grading is always subjective, it seems very likely that the sum of their subgrades will not amount to the same overall grade every time. Since we’re dealing with 0.5 grades within the subgrades, I would even say that most of the time the overall grade will not be the same. Do the graders then have to change their subgrades to justify the same overall grade? The formula they use for the overall grade is always the same, so if your card’s subgrades don’t sum up to the right amount then they have no choice but to fudge the numbers.
Proposed loophole: submit your cards without subgrades, and then take the ones that received the desired grade(s) and only resubmit those for subgrades.
This feels icky to me, but makes me wonder if it’s the more economical decision in the long run for those of us who stick to specific numbers (I only collect CGC 9s, for example).
Just to make sure I (and other readers) fully understand - apart from shipping, there is zero cost to have subs added retroactively? Or is it just less than the original $15?
This sounds gross, unless the original subgrades were recorded internally during authentication and grading. It may be that CGC adds subgrades as justification during the original grading process, but only posts those numbers if desired by the customer.
Ahhh that makes way more sense. I think I misunderstood the intent of the post.
I guess I would want to know how/when the subgrades are actually derived like @dyl mentioned. If they already have them available and it’s just a matter of adding them, then it’s just another normal business transaction. But if it’s re-judging the cards to determine subgrades, that indeed sounds slimy.
I’ll also add a clarifier to my first response - it was sarcasm in case no one could tell
Currently there are tons of cards where even in 9.5 the 15$ plus shipping is more than the value of subs would add. Its also something that lots of people do already im not really sure how this is a loophole
You need to pay for the price of the whole card plus subgrades. So a minimum of $30 plus shipping per card to resubmit. You are essentially resubmitting a raw card but guaranteeing the overall grade.
As far as I know the original subgrades are not recorded. I can’t find the post right now but one of the admins had mentioned that the extra cost is associated with them determining individual subgrades, meaning subgrades don’t exist unless you pay for them.
That’s the part I’ve never understood about CGC’s grading system. If the components of subgrades aren’t recorded at the time of grading when subgrades aren’t selected, what criteria could they be using instead?
Like if I submit a card with no subgrades selected, aren’t they still looking at the centering, surface, edges, and corners to determine the overall grade? Surely the recording of each of those components would take 30 seconds at most in a computerized system.
I don’t see how they can claim that it costs that much extra to include them
I’m going to guess that for those cards they determine them the same way PSA does. I don’t agree with being able to guarantee grades after the fact, I think they should remove that option personally.
On low end-cards, sure. But what about high end cards? Thinking about cig’s illustrators, I’d bet the grade would be higher on the one that he got graded with subs if he didn’t opt for subs.
I think this “loophole” is operating under the (mistaken) assumption that CGC is grading no sub slabs less harshly. It’s possible, but I’ve seen no evidence of it (for all we know, the opposite could be true). I’m sure they spend more time grading cards with subs, but that doesn’t necessarily translate to harsher grades.
Anecdotally: I own hundreds of CGC slabs, many with subs and many without subs. I inspect all my cards super carefully and keep a pretty detailed spreadsheet with my subjective condition assessment of each card. And I can say that I’ve seen zero indication that the presence/lack of subs impacts how harshly a card was graded. Personally, I see no reason to suspect there’s any impact whatsoever.
Just a minor update that I found while reading the CGC forums. Back when this service was first offered someone had submitted 7 cards in CGC slabs, and 3 of them came back with lower grades. The submitter reached out and was confused because one of the CGC mods said the grade would not change. The submitter reached out to the CGC mod and the mod actually had their order pulled from shipping and they changed the grades…
I summarized the forum but I recommend you read the whole thing.
I know it’s a small sample size and seems to have been a one-off thing, especially since they can’t do that anymore, but that definitely made my eyebrows raise
