Before I open a new thread, I thought I post this here. But if you prefer that I open a new thread, I am happy to do it!
@yamahap45 made an interesting comparison between grading companies, specifically analysing high-end grades of modern cards. He used the population reports of various grading companies and compared the fractions of cards getting 9.5, 10 or perfect/black label designation. It is quite interesting to see how comparable those high-end grades are between companies.
For vintage collectors, it might be also interesting to look at lower grades, as the population of graded vintage cards do not pile up at the top end of the grading scale. I thought it might be interesting to see how comparable the grades are within the whole grading scale, ranging from 1-10. For this analysis, you have to take vintage cards, as there will be too few modern cards graded below 9.
I chose 3 popular vintage cards, including Lugia Neo Genesis 1st ED, Charizard Base set unlimited and Blastoise Base Set unlimited and quantified their grades from PSA, CGC and BGS.
One way of interpretation is that BGS is giving out 8s and 9s too easily in comparison to PSA/CGC. PSA and CGC grades seem similar until about 8, and PSA 9s might be easier to get than CGC 9s.
An alternative interpretation could be that people submit their lower- and mid-end grades preferably to PSA and CGC and not to BGS, resulting in a higher fraction of high-end grades in the BGS pop report. Similarly, there might be even a slight preference of people sending slightly more higher-end cards to PSA than to CGC, which would explain the sharp decrease of the CGC population after 8/8.5s.
It would be interesting to hear what you guys think
BGS white label is pretty ugly, people prefer to submit lower grade cards to PSA. In EU there wasnât a official BGS middleman for submit cards, so in 2020 Pokemon boom everybody have submitted their cards to PSA middleman like Ludkins/Gradedgem.
BGS is less harsh than PSA on surface, see some PSA 8 come back BGS 9, recentely there is an instagram user that I follow â100charizardsâ, he cracked a PSA 8 1st edition Charizard French and sent to BGS, it come back BGS 9 with pretty strong subs 9 9.5 9.5 9, 0.5 for BGS 9.5.
CGC have less high grade score for vintage cards for two main reason, like you said:
1)difficulty. Is it more easy to get a PSA 9/10 than CGC, so why people should send a packfresh card or very clean mint card to cgc? When the possibility to than PSA 10 is almost x10 compare to cgc 9.5/10. The only thing strange is it Lugia 1st edition 9.5/10 CGC ratio. 2.1% is it pretty high.
2)PSA grades have more value. If I have a Lugia,Charizard,Blastoise in good condition, I rather prefer to spent $150+upcharge to grade with PSA than CGC.
I think your interpretation makes a lot of sense! Most of it is also supported by general peoplesâ opinion and comments here in the forum, from what Iâve read. Particularly, surfaces of BGS 9s and lower grades are apparently worse than PSA 9s on average, indicating that it must be easier to get BGS 9s.
There is just one thing I am not completely sure about. I assume you think CGC 9 > PSA 9 > BGS 9?
Do you have any other evidence that supports CGC 9 > PSA 9? Has anybody done any cross-grading experiments?
The reason why I am asking is that there are some comments in the âmega giant grading threadâ about CGC 9s having overall worse surfaces than PSA 9s. I possess 31 PSA 9s whose surface I could not inspect before purchase. Only 2 of them have noticeable scratches. So in my experience, about 95% of PSA 9s have a clean surface. I was wondering how CGC performs in comparison. From the reports, I almost suspect that the reason why it is harder to get CGC 9s is particularly because they are very harsh about centering. But I suspect apart from centering, PSA 9s might look better?
I would like to add that due to the price differences in the grading services of BGS/PSA Vs. CGC some collectors may opt to send lower quality cards to CGC to get the âslabbed premiumâ.
It seems weâre under the assumption that the cards being submitted are âchosen to be 10sâ, but perhaps people are sending their NM cards (7 and 8s) to CGC because the current bulk price is relatively inexpensive. And now we would expect CGC to have a higher percentage of cards graded 7/8s compared to the other two companies who are receiving mint caliber cards. Ofcourse CGC 10s, BGS 10s are much harder to get than a PSA 10 but that is due to the scrutiny of the subgrade system, but as for 9s and even 9.5s that may not be the case.
Centering Surface Corner Edge
9 9 9 9
10 9 9 8.5
10 8 10 10
etc. I am not good in maths but should be a formula that can show you how many combination could be right?ahaha
In my opinion in these combination where the surface is 8 or 8.5 and the overall grade is it 9. PSA 9 > CGC 9
The only scenario where PSA 9 = CGC 9 is it 9 9 9 9.
The other scenario CGC 9 > PSA 9. Remember i am talking about how hard it is to get and not the value.
I donât have some example, PSA is still too expensive to try this kind of experimenti. Usually people try to crack CGC 9.5 for PSA 10. Few people try to crack CGC 9 for PSA 9.
At the end for cards as Pokemon TCG where the printing quality is pretty low people will use PSA.
But for Japanese and other TCG like Dragonball, Weiss Schwarz I think the story will change slowly. For collector who can afford it, BGS and CGC > PSA.
I am following a lot of high end collectors of Dragonball and Weiss Schwarz. 90% of their post are BGS slab. Recentely one of biggest dragonball collectors started to use CGC and say goodbye to BGS, this choice is very admirable and brave. But for Pokemon this choice still too early. When Pokemon Company decides to improve the quality of production we will see what happens, but maybe it will be too late.
I want add that Yugioh collectors will never change into CGC when it will lauch. Yugioh print quality is it even poor than Pokemon, haha.
This validates what a lot of people expected. I should start looking for cards I need in CGC slabs and regrade with PSA. I also have some PSA 8 cards that I would love to grade with BGS possibly.
I think youâre absolutely correct that people are sending fewer of their mint/gem mint cards to CGC than to PSA. But I will say the following: Iâve sent quite a few PSA 10-potential cards to CGC and most of them get 9s. Whereas every card Iâve sent to PSA that I expected to get a 10, got a 10. I think the subgrade system at CGC makes 9.5s very difficult to attain. I have several CGC 9s that only missed out on getting a composite 9.5 because of a 9 on centering. That same centering is well within PSA 10 parameters.
On the other hand, I do also have a couple CGC 9.5s that almost certainly wouldnât cross to PSA 10. But Iâm fairly confident that a higher proportion of my PSA 10s would fail to cross to CGC 9.5.
Maybe 65-85% of the time a CGC 9.5 is better than a PSA 10. But if there is something like an obvious nick of whitening on the back that PSA deems unworthy of a 10, that imperfection can still fall under the â9â sub grade from the other companies.
