Hey guys, watched a few YouTube videos of people doing flea market buys. I see a lot of 3rd party non psa, Beckett, or cgc graded Pokémon cards and they are significantly cheaper then those 3 and I was considering buying a bunch of them and then regrading with psa or Beckett. Obviously, during the peak the back log for psa and become was so high people graded with GMA, sgc, ISA, HGA, and even AGS. I’m curious if it would be worth it and has anyone else here done it and seen success? Not really trying to turn a profit but if i could pick a card in a solid 9 or 10 condition for a fraction of the price and regrade it with one of the big 2 would it be worth it?
This thread may be interesting to you: Cross grading experiment to PSA
Personally I would not trust that a lot of those 3rd party companies 9/10 actually will transfer over to a 9/10 at PSA or BGS. However, there are certainly some hidden gems to be found if you look at the card itself, not just the grade. Overall I bet you’d have a better chance to profit just off buying raw cards and grading them.
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Just treat them as raw cards; ignore the grade. A basement grading company’s grades shouldn’t be viewed as significantly more credible than an eBay or TCGPlayer seller’s condition assessment.
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Ive cracked and resubbed a ton of different 3rd part slabs. Some grade better than others. Off the top of my head,
Dsg is pretty fair grades and crossed 1 to 1 most times
Hga was a little loose and dropped .5 grade more or less
Pgc should be avoided and was garbage
Gma i never bother with
Pca went up .5 grade
These were all to bgs. ive tried it with a few of each company but not enough to guarentee anything
Oh and ags seemed ok but i didnt crack the 2 i had, just left them alone
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about every listing I’ve seen for a SGC Pokémon card looks two grade points lower than what is displayed on the label
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As others have said, treat them as raw cards. Do not let the flashy label tell you anything about the supposed condition. Basement grading companies have been around since the inception of grading and they will never go away.
Do not pay a premium over the raw version of the card. It’s just not deserved.
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The best way to get these grading companies to go away is to not buy their slabs on the secondary market. Sellers will get more and more frustrated with the inability to move them, and they will no longer consider using them.
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CGC is the gold standard for cracking 9s and 8.5s and getting PSA 10s. I wouldn’t touch some random basement company’s slabs with a 10 ft pole though. Unless you can get good cards for like $2.
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CGC = Cracking Graded Cards
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Funny PCA went up I looked into them a while back and they seemed a good company to me outside of the usual suspects.
If it helps, I bought a PGC 10 1st Edition Lugia and regraded it BGS 9.5, so was happy personally with that. Not a 10, but a BGS 9.5 is still great.