I am looking into submitting some pokemon cards + sports cards to get graded, and I’m wondering about the long term affect of choosing SGC over PSA. I like the black borders, and it has a shorter turnaround time with slightly cheaper prices per card. Despite all of this, would you still recommend grading PSA due to it being the main player in the grading market? I wouldn’t want to switch to SGC to save a few bucks per card, but end up losing much more value by not having it in the most popular case. Do you think someone would value ~$500 cards less due to it not being PSA?
Honestly, it won’t have that much of a long term effect, but right now CGC graded cards are selling less than PSA graded cards. Over the span of a couple of months the prices should be relatively the same.
You think SGC is the lowest out of the bunch? I get that PSA and beckett are top 2 but the CGC logo and grades look very cheap to me. Also I am not familiar with GSM.
What kind of cards you are grading matters a lot here. You can grade $1000+ cards with anyone and be fine. If you’re grading $10-50 cards, you’re going to severely disadvantage yourself not going with one of the main three companies.
That said: If you like the way they look in your collection, just do it. You can cross-grade later if the price differences justify it and if they don’t, the difference in price wasn’t that significant anyway.
Have to factor in established market, prices people will pay and if the card is modern or not.
For instance I would never send WOTC to CGC, but new cards just released I might consider if I have a need to sell them quickly. (Cgc biggest upside is quick turn around to help flipping)
SGC has been growing with sports cards, there are some people hyping them up. Investacard grades exclusively with them and he makes a lot of social media content. I have heard they are very accurate with their grades. The cases look ok but I think they could make them a little better. I have never personally graded with them but I have heard you can get HD scans of all your cards for free so if you plan on selling this would save you a ton of time! I really love that because scanning and cropping cards to list for sale is my least favorite thing to do.
