The falling prices will probably lead to me buying a few soon
The simplest reason is that I got past my weird fixation on PSA being the best when I started to focus on collecting for myself rather than try to primarily sell for profit.
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I like the prices to submit and buy, case clarity and label a lot more than PSA. I also don’t believe in the PSA 10 premium that exists but that’s sorta off topic. Used to use bgs for the simple labels, but CGC’s new label is much better
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Most of the times im buying CGC is to crack and sub to PSA.
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I wanted a modern card that came out a bit cheaper in a cgc slab as opposed to psa. But for a vintage PC Card I don’t think I could do cgc
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I was pretty happy with the feedback I saw from MTG collectors with CGC being at least on-par or better than BGS from what I was seeing, and the slab clarity is nice for foil cards that I collected mainly. Note that BGS outside of 9.5s and 10s have had a bad rep in Pokemon, so I want to clarify that as well. CGC also had the harsh standard in the early days and that reputation seemed to be established pretty quick from most collectors and people who were grading with them in MTG & Pokemon. However, I think now some people got upset by the label/grading changes over time (particularly around CGC 10s).
Anyway, CGC 9.5s on the old standard were a tremendous value option compared to PSA 10s for a lot of cards. In fact, I managed to get several old CGC 9.5s for PSA 8 or PSA 9 prices and they’re still some of the nicest cards in my collection to date. That was the main reason I collected some for a while, they just felt like a really good value. Example would be my Charizard, which I could ‘upgrade’ to a 10 if I wanted to:
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Outside of specific set goals where the uniformity of the slabs matter, I think that having loyalty to a particular company just gets in the way of owning good cards
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People can say what they want but the real answer inside is probably some combination of desperation, alcohol, or other chemicals explaining the lapse in judgement.
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Totally agree. If you’re building binder sets especially, it’s worth looking at all options IMO.
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Why do you think the Pokémon community feels this way?
Seems that unfortunately a lot of poorly graded BGS cards in Pokemon in cards below 9 grades. I’d even go as far as saying even some BGS 9s are more like PSA 8 quality depending on the sub-grades. Sometimes they’re actually mint cards, but other times not even close. Then as you get down to BGS 8 or less it’s just not consistent really at all compared to what you expect compared to PSA in the same grade range on average (i.e. BGS 7 is never on par with PSA 7).
So it seems that BGS just never caught on and was able to garner a proper reputation for consistency, and so people don’t really trust them or value them the same as PSA. CGC basically took over the market that BGS failed to capture it seems.
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That’s really interesting. I do agree a bgs 8 isn’t on par with a psa 8. But they seem to do really well in magic the gathering and sports cards. So I wonder where they went wrong with Pokémon.
I find with Sports there’s been a bit of a shift as well the past few years. Lots of preference towards PSA, depending on the sport or era. Hockey cards is one of the few I know of where people still prefer BGS, and that’s more on the modern side. PSA pretty much dominates the vintage side, and now that they have SGC, they will probably take over the rest of the market for most sports.
BGS and CGC both seem to do better than PSA with MTG cards. I think MTG people just really like having the sub-grades and I think the label/slab just looks better with MTG cards as well. All my MTG cards that are graded are BGS & CGC, I rarely see PSA that often.
So anyway, BGS 9.5+ still can garner a premium in all these cards, but that’s pretty much it from what I’ve observed the past while. Lower grades you definitely need to do some discernment, I would still buy & crack them out of the case if the right one comes up for sale.
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not buy, but i grade with CGC because of their turnaround time. If i just received a batch of raw cards and need them graded and only have 2 weeks before a card show, CGC is the cheapest way with their 3 day turnaround.
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As others have said, I bought my first CGC slab to crack and grade with PSA. That said, I was impressed at the time by the case and the slab, so it made more open to CGC for future purchases!
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I bought my first CGC slab because the card looked nice for the price and I plan to crack and submit to PSA.
I bought my first CGC card because it had subgrades and also gave me some belief it was graded stricter than a PSA10.
Eventually I sold it to a card shop in akihabara last year. The card remains on their shelf unsold to this day. I kinda feel bad for them as CGC is nigh on impossible to shift here.
I haven’t bought another CGC since. I feel they’re decently strict but unfortunately the liquidity just isn’t there. This isn’t really for flipping purposes but as someone who needs to trade up to get access to better cards, I need to be able to get them off my hands.
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Out of almost 40 replies I’m surprised that not a single person has mentioned errors/misprints. I use CGC exclusively for misprints because they are much better at authenticating them than any other grading company, and they will recognize errors that other companies won’t. Their error recognition is not always perfect but it’s the best we’ve got so far at least. With PSA beginning to grade errors it will add some competition and error grading will (hopefully) continually improve 
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I bought Neo Destiny Shining cards to crack for my binder.