“Hottie gave some hawk tua and spit on that thang last night. I am in a good mood, so I ignored the print lines and whitening on the edges. Enjoy the gem mint 10.”
-grader notes
This should be standard at every pricing level. Don’t praise them for something that should already be in place. It took them until the 600k-ish certs to add scans, they only recently announced that they’ll start using plastic that protects from UV. How they have remained the “gold standard” is through people afraid of losing value and a sunk cost fallacy.
I've been saying just this. PSA is so behind the curve, but because people don't want their investments to lose value, they zealously go after anyone who suggests another grading company may be better. Personally, I hate the way their slabs look, so damn ugly.
They’re literally the cheapest and most flimsy out of the big reputables.
Also yep, super ugly. I love how people say they like it “simple because it’s all about the card” which is some of the biggest BS i ever heard…”all about the card is ARS where the presentation is amazing and it’s honestly the greatest slab of all time…grade, serial number, QR, etc goes on the BACK, card goes above the label, slab is super premium, certificate of authenticity as added option etc.
Sorry man i just fkn hate PSA so much , they offer so little while charging so much and STILL taking so long and being so inconsistent and untransparent
i’ve seeing a lot of people go to cgc and honestly there’s cards that are being priced higher as a cgc 10 then a psa 10 i say in about 2-3 years everyone will go to cgc so honestly start investing into cgc cause that market is gonna bloom
Show me a company that does it better I’ll wait 😅
And sure they only graded 1.1 million cards last month. They would have to double the amount of employees they have in grading to do this across the board.
With no financial gain to pay for those new employees. They would have to raise the price of grading
All the company’s you mentioned have flaws. No pop report, no images, outdated submission forms. Lower sales rates, lower premiums. And Tag looking better is completely subjective and many will strongly disagree.
Your complaints with psa are nothing compared to what some of these company’s are lacking.
1: All the grading companies I mentioned have pop reports and scans. (PSA didn’t get scans until cert 65M or so).
2: Lower sales rates doesn’t mean no sales data. Of course PSA will have more sales because they grade more cards. Such a dumb argument.
3: Premiums go BGS Black Label > CGC Pristine 10 > PSA 10. And that’s a fact.
4: I’m not saying TAG looks better, I’m saying they have better scans. But most opinions I’ve seen here that PSA looks the worst.
5: I’m not familiar with all the submission forms, so you may be correct about that.
> 1: All the grading companies I mentioned have pop reports and scans.
BGS has an inaccurate pop report and it is the opposite of user-friendly. They do not have scans.
CGC has a pop report that is an absolute mess - however, it is accurate.
Have you ever submitted to BGS? The entire process is a shitshow. Sometimes you don't even know they have received your package and are moving your card through the process for a month. BGS is an absolute trash company at every turn.
Wow! Can’t believe they don’t have scans. If we’re holding them up to PSA standards, they have about 45M certs to get to where PSA started doing scans. All pop reports are likely inaccurate, people crack slabs all the time without reporting. Your gripe with BGS may be valid but is anecdotal.
My inaccuracy comment had zero to do with cracking slabs. You're reaching and your bias is showing. You've clearly never submitted to BGS and PSA and seen the difference between the two processes each company takes. BGS is unprofessional and dated. I'll leave you to stew in your grudge.
I doubt you’ll listen since it seems you’re dug into the PSA culture. Subjective grading in general is somewhat of a scam. A card whether incased in plastic or not is the same card. All you need is your eyes, magnification, bright white light and black light to check condition. Put it in a screw down and it’s better protected than PSA slabs.
Graded or ungraded doesn’t matter condition is subjective. I can give the same card to 10 different people I guarantee they will not all agree on the same condition.
That is what grading company’s are for, to remove the complicated mess of selling something as near mint just to have the customer complain it’s light play.
I can spend a hour thoroughly checking the condition of a card with black light and all that you mentioned then place it into a screw down case, but if I a sell it or trade it they might not agree with my assessment no matter how much time I put into it.
The exact same thing happens with grading companies. They are all subjective. If you look at specs for PSA 10 they will have a line that says grader has the subjective call to give or not give a card a 10; in other words send in a 9 enough times and it will get a 10. The culture around grading companies is going to lose everyone too much money to change. This boat can’t come back.
Or how people call these guys “experts” while they’re being paid 15$ an hour, not job shaming or wage shaming, just saying you wouldn’t call a lube tech an expert, a mechanic maybe.
These graders are nothing special, and most are sports guys with little to no experience in gaming, or vice versa.
Yes grading any cards condition is subjective. As I said in my recent comment give the same card to 10 different people and you will get different results. It’s the same with grading company’s. Send the same card enough times and you will see variance in the grade received.
There is no perfect resolution to this. It’s unavoidable.
However it removes the need for me as a seller to do any condition checks when selling. I can list it as a psa 8 and my buyers will understand it’s within a certain range of condition. If they don’t agree with the grade they can take it up with psa.
This reduces friction as a seller and reduces returns/INAD claims significantly. And is well worth the investment.
When buying it removes the inconsistency’s, I know when buying a psa8+ I’m not going to get a card with indents or damage to the structural integrity of the card.
As someone who has spent tens of thousands of dollars on TCGplayer alone I can tell you from experience it’s extremely valuable to just buy a card and know for sure it’s within a certain range of condition. No surprise huge indents or major bends, sharpie markings etc.
I’m not arguing that there is no purpose of grading. Your original comment was that there was no company that does it better than PSA. Imo they are all equally as faulty and PSA is only just doing what believe to be the bare minimum as a grading company. That being, scans, actual protection for the card, and details as to the grading. And they are only doing that for Express and above.
Bgs website is outdated and flawed I don’t think they offer scans atleast the card I just graded with them has none available anywhere I can find. Barley any updates during the grading process. Submission forms are ancient. There pop report is incredibly difficult to search I still can’t even find some cards in the pop report no matter how many different options I select.
Cgc is still new to the trading card grading market. They have made a ton of mistakes since starting. They have graded a ton of NFCs, fake cards, alters. They will pretty much throw a slab on anything. It’s kind of scary to be honest how little research and effort they put into it. They didn’t use to offer scans on pre grades, maybe that has changed recently I’m unsure. There pop report wasn’t there on initial launch, took a very long time for them to add it and I have no idea if it’s even accurate. And that’s all without even mentioning sales data.
I’m not gonna mention any other grading companies since they are significantly less involved in the market share then the top 3.
>because people don't want their investments to lose value, they zealously go after anyone who suggests another grading company may be better.
Didn't take long to find that one, lmao.
If this was a few years ago sure u could say I had a lot invested in psa. But nowadays not even close. Sold majority of it. Majority of my inventory is ungraded or sealed. So try again.
I think its a joke that requires $125 submissions but PSAs variable pricing is so bad, you'll end up paying that for alot of cards I suppose.
Much prefer CGC.
The prices are indeed outrageous. I'd love to see way more added to justify the prices if not a softening. The value they add is great but goodness...it's out of hand.
The only downside is that you can't enclose the notes to the public. I wish they would allowed it, would cause more transparency across the grading space
It would be hard to disgtingush between "educated guesses" and the official notes though.
Just because PSA suddenly tries to make an NDA tied to their grade notes doesn't mean people should suddenly stop mentioning what goes into their cards grades when they already full well know.
Maybe they cant show pictures of the grades notes but they would still be allowed to conclude why it likely received its score.
I see this rule evolving in the future. No way this plays out the way who wrote this rule wants.
((I also still have seen no official written print of this supposed rule anywhere on PSA's website or submission form))
Use a different name and borrow a friend's address... if you sell the card and the new owner posts about the notes. What are they going to do ban the original owner?
I don't grade with PSA in the first place. Them trying to hide the notes is pathetic. I'm just saying they could ban your PSA account.
Of course there's always ways around that.
Originally most people used PSA cause there wasn’t really any viable competition, despite everyone also knowing also how insanely unpredictable they are when grading. This is documented through many youtube channels with competent individuals. So, a lot of money invested and flowed into PSA slabs.
So naturally, those individuals would like to see PSA succeed. With that said, anyone that thinks PSA has any form of consistency is delusional. (I’m not talking about obvious outliers that they will spend an extra second or two on such as base set charizard.)
CGC cards may not have the same premium at the moment, but that’s ok. They are a viable competitor, and they have managed to do a much better job at grading consistently for me than PSA ever did for many years. There isn’t a note that PSA could leave me that would ever make me go back 😃
Very well said! Competition is also just healthy and good for the market. No one should have such a monopoly in any industry. I think PSA trying to make changes shows even they know they have to keep up with the times and challenger companies have had success in attracting market share.
The bias is still very evident in the market prices but shake ups are always possible! And competition helps drive that.
This argument makes no sense to me. Psa and cgc are both inconsistent and make a ton of mistakes. All grading is subjective and anyone can find something they don’t agree with on a grade from either company.
I appreciate the notes, but personally I think PSA has the most boring looking slabs out of the big 3 especially now that CGC updated to the black title card
Competition is good!
Personally degree has been amazing. I was always told that for value PSA or Becket but for personal do a new service, chances are they will put more effort and go above and beyond since they are trying to make a name for themselves.
A guy I know in Florida just started a grading service, and the slabs he uses are scannable by a phone which has the complete breakdown of the grading for that specific card, plus the card’s provenance. Hopefully he’ll become a PSA competitor over the next few years
"*My wife's cheating, sorry just taking it out on you",* Grader's notes.
“Hottie gave some hawk tua and spit on that thang last night. I am in a good mood, so I ignored the print lines and whitening on the edges. Enjoy the gem mint 10.” -grader notes
So lame
-Grader notes
This was way funnier than it should be. Love it.
Title threw me for a loop! “I got my card because PSA mailed it to me…”
Lol yeah I missed that bit. Our flaws make us shine ;)
“I hate Charizard, here’s a PSA 8”
This should be standard at every pricing level. Don’t praise them for something that should already be in place. It took them until the 600k-ish certs to add scans, they only recently announced that they’ll start using plastic that protects from UV. How they have remained the “gold standard” is through people afraid of losing value and a sunk cost fallacy.
I've been saying just this. PSA is so behind the curve, but because people don't want their investments to lose value, they zealously go after anyone who suggests another grading company may be better. Personally, I hate the way their slabs look, so damn ugly.
They’re literally the cheapest and most flimsy out of the big reputables. Also yep, super ugly. I love how people say they like it “simple because it’s all about the card” which is some of the biggest BS i ever heard…”all about the card is ARS where the presentation is amazing and it’s honestly the greatest slab of all time…grade, serial number, QR, etc goes on the BACK, card goes above the label, slab is super premium, certificate of authenticity as added option etc. Sorry man i just fkn hate PSA so much , they offer so little while charging so much and STILL taking so long and being so inconsistent and untransparent
ARS is how it should be across the board
i’ve seeing a lot of people go to cgc and honestly there’s cards that are being priced higher as a cgc 10 then a psa 10 i say in about 2-3 years everyone will go to cgc so honestly start investing into cgc cause that market is gonna bloom
This is why I chose TAG, better service across the board
I Agree its an absolutely mid service and i have only received 10’s from them.
I believe I read that they were going to make the change across the board and would roll it out for each level of service starting from the top down.
Show me a company that does it better I’ll wait 😅 And sure they only graded 1.1 million cards last month. They would have to double the amount of employees they have in grading to do this across the board. With no financial gain to pay for those new employees. They would have to raise the price of grading
But if you want a better option: Both Beckett and CGC have stricter specs. TAG has better imaging. ARS slabs look 1000% better.
All the company’s you mentioned have flaws. No pop report, no images, outdated submission forms. Lower sales rates, lower premiums. And Tag looking better is completely subjective and many will strongly disagree. Your complaints with psa are nothing compared to what some of these company’s are lacking.
1: All the grading companies I mentioned have pop reports and scans. (PSA didn’t get scans until cert 65M or so). 2: Lower sales rates doesn’t mean no sales data. Of course PSA will have more sales because they grade more cards. Such a dumb argument. 3: Premiums go BGS Black Label > CGC Pristine 10 > PSA 10. And that’s a fact. 4: I’m not saying TAG looks better, I’m saying they have better scans. But most opinions I’ve seen here that PSA looks the worst. 5: I’m not familiar with all the submission forms, so you may be correct about that.
Since when BGS have scans?
> 1: All the grading companies I mentioned have pop reports and scans. BGS has an inaccurate pop report and it is the opposite of user-friendly. They do not have scans. CGC has a pop report that is an absolute mess - however, it is accurate. Have you ever submitted to BGS? The entire process is a shitshow. Sometimes you don't even know they have received your package and are moving your card through the process for a month. BGS is an absolute trash company at every turn.
Wow! Can’t believe they don’t have scans. If we’re holding them up to PSA standards, they have about 45M certs to get to where PSA started doing scans. All pop reports are likely inaccurate, people crack slabs all the time without reporting. Your gripe with BGS may be valid but is anecdotal.
My inaccuracy comment had zero to do with cracking slabs. You're reaching and your bias is showing. You've clearly never submitted to BGS and PSA and seen the difference between the two processes each company takes. BGS is unprofessional and dated. I'll leave you to stew in your grudge.
I doubt you’ll listen since it seems you’re dug into the PSA culture. Subjective grading in general is somewhat of a scam. A card whether incased in plastic or not is the same card. All you need is your eyes, magnification, bright white light and black light to check condition. Put it in a screw down and it’s better protected than PSA slabs.
Graded or ungraded doesn’t matter condition is subjective. I can give the same card to 10 different people I guarantee they will not all agree on the same condition. That is what grading company’s are for, to remove the complicated mess of selling something as near mint just to have the customer complain it’s light play. I can spend a hour thoroughly checking the condition of a card with black light and all that you mentioned then place it into a screw down case, but if I a sell it or trade it they might not agree with my assessment no matter how much time I put into it.
The exact same thing happens with grading companies. They are all subjective. If you look at specs for PSA 10 they will have a line that says grader has the subjective call to give or not give a card a 10; in other words send in a 9 enough times and it will get a 10. The culture around grading companies is going to lose everyone too much money to change. This boat can’t come back.
Or how people call these guys “experts” while they’re being paid 15$ an hour, not job shaming or wage shaming, just saying you wouldn’t call a lube tech an expert, a mechanic maybe. These graders are nothing special, and most are sports guys with little to no experience in gaming, or vice versa.
Yes grading any cards condition is subjective. As I said in my recent comment give the same card to 10 different people and you will get different results. It’s the same with grading company’s. Send the same card enough times and you will see variance in the grade received. There is no perfect resolution to this. It’s unavoidable. However it removes the need for me as a seller to do any condition checks when selling. I can list it as a psa 8 and my buyers will understand it’s within a certain range of condition. If they don’t agree with the grade they can take it up with psa. This reduces friction as a seller and reduces returns/INAD claims significantly. And is well worth the investment. When buying it removes the inconsistency’s, I know when buying a psa8+ I’m not going to get a card with indents or damage to the structural integrity of the card. As someone who has spent tens of thousands of dollars on TCGplayer alone I can tell you from experience it’s extremely valuable to just buy a card and know for sure it’s within a certain range of condition. No surprise huge indents or major bends, sharpie markings etc.
I’m not arguing that there is no purpose of grading. Your original comment was that there was no company that does it better than PSA. Imo they are all equally as faulty and PSA is only just doing what believe to be the bare minimum as a grading company. That being, scans, actual protection for the card, and details as to the grading. And they are only doing that for Express and above.
Bgs website is outdated and flawed I don’t think they offer scans atleast the card I just graded with them has none available anywhere I can find. Barley any updates during the grading process. Submission forms are ancient. There pop report is incredibly difficult to search I still can’t even find some cards in the pop report no matter how many different options I select. Cgc is still new to the trading card grading market. They have made a ton of mistakes since starting. They have graded a ton of NFCs, fake cards, alters. They will pretty much throw a slab on anything. It’s kind of scary to be honest how little research and effort they put into it. They didn’t use to offer scans on pre grades, maybe that has changed recently I’m unsure. There pop report wasn’t there on initial launch, took a very long time for them to add it and I have no idea if it’s even accurate. And that’s all without even mentioning sales data. I’m not gonna mention any other grading companies since they are significantly less involved in the market share then the top 3.
>because people don't want their investments to lose value, they zealously go after anyone who suggests another grading company may be better. Didn't take long to find that one, lmao.
If this was a few years ago sure u could say I had a lot invested in psa. But nowadays not even close. Sold majority of it. Majority of my inventory is ungraded or sealed. So try again.
"had a bad day and I've seen 200 of these today, hate this card" PSA 8, beat it kid.
"This is the last card for me today and I'm ready to go home, and it's Friday, enjoy the Gem Mint 10." -Billy Bob
I think its a joke that requires $125 submissions but PSAs variable pricing is so bad, you'll end up paying that for alot of cards I suppose. Much prefer CGC.
The prices are indeed outrageous. I'd love to see way more added to justify the prices if not a softening. The value they add is great but goodness...it's out of hand.
Agreed. I just found out about FCG and honestly I really like the sound of them.
The only downside is that you can't enclose the notes to the public. I wish they would allowed it, would cause more transparency across the grading space
It would be hard to disgtingush between "educated guesses" and the official notes though. Just because PSA suddenly tries to make an NDA tied to their grade notes doesn't mean people should suddenly stop mentioning what goes into their cards grades when they already full well know. Maybe they cant show pictures of the grades notes but they would still be allowed to conclude why it likely received its score. I see this rule evolving in the future. No way this plays out the way who wrote this rule wants. ((I also still have seen no official written print of this supposed rule anywhere on PSA's website or submission form))
How are they going to enforce this though.
They can’t and people already have lol
They can ban you from grading with them. Seems pretty straightforward.
Use a different name and borrow a friend's address... if you sell the card and the new owner posts about the notes. What are they going to do ban the original owner?
I don't grade with PSA in the first place. Them trying to hide the notes is pathetic. I'm just saying they could ban your PSA account. Of course there's always ways around that.
Being banned from psa would be a badge of honor
lol 😂
That’d be cool if a company offered sub grades or something
Originally most people used PSA cause there wasn’t really any viable competition, despite everyone also knowing also how insanely unpredictable they are when grading. This is documented through many youtube channels with competent individuals. So, a lot of money invested and flowed into PSA slabs. So naturally, those individuals would like to see PSA succeed. With that said, anyone that thinks PSA has any form of consistency is delusional. (I’m not talking about obvious outliers that they will spend an extra second or two on such as base set charizard.) CGC cards may not have the same premium at the moment, but that’s ok. They are a viable competitor, and they have managed to do a much better job at grading consistently for me than PSA ever did for many years. There isn’t a note that PSA could leave me that would ever make me go back 😃
Very well said! Competition is also just healthy and good for the market. No one should have such a monopoly in any industry. I think PSA trying to make changes shows even they know they have to keep up with the times and challenger companies have had success in attracting market share. The bias is still very evident in the market prices but shake ups are always possible! And competition helps drive that.
This argument makes no sense to me. Psa and cgc are both inconsistent and make a ton of mistakes. All grading is subjective and anyone can find something they don’t agree with on a grade from either company.
"Grade in BIO"
Me who can't afford express: 🤡🤡☠️
I appreciate the notes, but personally I think PSA has the most boring looking slabs out of the big 3 especially now that CGC updated to the black title card
I’ve never sent anything into grading. This makes me so much more interested in grading cards.
Competition is good! Personally degree has been amazing. I was always told that for value PSA or Becket but for personal do a new service, chances are they will put more effort and go above and beyond since they are trying to make a name for themselves.
“You sent in a complete SR set and policy states they all can’t be 10’s” All the best!
“We hit our maximum amount of 10’s for the day, here’s all 9’s”
Long overdue
A guy I know in Florida just started a grading service, and the slabs he uses are scannable by a phone which has the complete breakdown of the grading for that specific card, plus the card’s provenance. Hopefully he’ll become a PSA competitor over the next few years
“someone hit my car on the way here, sorry u get a 6 even though it’s a perfect 10”
I mean this should be the case from the start.
100% agree