PokemanDude90

6 hours ago, PokemanDude90 said:

CGC needs to raise bulk to a more competitive $15/card price and use that extra $6/card (for bulk, which people are abusing right now) and hire an additional package opener or two among other necessities to improve the grading operation. I literally cannot stress enough how badly this needs to be done. 

Clearly people aren’t getting sub-grades nearly as much as CGC anticipated, so just raise the base price and secure that top line revenue to funnel it back into the business guys. This is business 101!

I should buy a lottery ticket lol.

Bulk now $15/card effective 04/28

CGC needs to raise bulk to a more competitive $15/card price and use that extra $6/card (for bulk, which people are abusing right now) and hire an additional package opener or two among other necessities to improve the grading operation. I literally cannot stress enough how badly this needs to be done. 

Clearly people aren’t getting sub-grades nearly as much as CGC anticipated, so just raise the base price and secure that top line revenue to funnel it back into the business guys. This is business 101!

15 hours ago, Andrew Mercene said:

Current submissions & statuses

Submission created 1.9.21
Type - Bulk (51)
Received - 1.29.21
4.20.21 Status - Received

Submission created 1.16.21
Type - Bulk (62)
Received - 2.2.21
4.20.21 Status - Received

Submission created 1.23.21
Type - Bulk (62)
Received - 2.4.21
4.20.21 Status - Received

Submission created 1.29.21
Type - Bulk (60)
Received - 2.10.21
4.20.21 Status - Received

Submission created 1.29.21
Type - Bulk (51)
Received - 2.10.21
4.20.21 Status - Received

Submission created 2.22.21
Type - Bulk (56)
Received - 3.25.21
4.20.21 Status - Received

Submission created 3.28.21
Type - Bulk (54)
Received - N/A
4.20.21 Status - N/A

Submission created 4.3.21
Type - Bulk (57)
Received - N/A
4.20.21 Status - N/A

Submission created 4.10.21
Type - Bulk (99)
Received - N/A
4.20.21 Status - N/A

Submission created 4.11.21
Type - Bulk (84)
Received - N/A
4.20.21 Status - N/A

Just curious, you doing subgrades on these bulk submissions? 

Alright I’m sending in my fat boi as well.

21 minutes ago, C Boyd said:

should have the results later today or tomorrow has been in QC grading for the past 2 days

 

Stoked to see how yours goes cuz mine looks nearly identical w/ a 9 grade as well and I want to send it back in. A 9.5 Centering bumps this to a Gem Mint, and I'd put my card up against almost any 9.5 I've seen on the open market!!

There's 3 of us on this forum with this same exact concern on the same Pikachu Vmax card. 

Really wish CGC graded these. One day....

I know it depends on the severity. But let's just say it's minor and only visible in angled light, but it's clearly there.

From my experience, CGC is slightly more lenient with digs/dents vs other grading entities that treat a microscoping ding like a full-card crease  but just wanted to get some dialogue going on: 

• What is the best grade you've personally received on a card with a binder dent/ding?
• What do you think the MAXIMUM best possible grade is on a card with a binder dent/ding?

I've asked CGC about it before, and they gave me a very eloquent non-answer. Personally, I think the best I've received is a 7.5 as the surface was a 6.5 and the rest of the sub-grades carried the card (to a max of 1 overall point above the lowest sub-grade). I'm going through my slabs to find it and will post a pic. 

30 minutes ago, jd619641 said:

Ahh so it changes EBay’s requirement of sending a 1099-K for people who sell from $20,000 and 200 items to just $600.

Not only just Ebay/PayPal... all online processors. 

7 hours ago, UncSven said:

What tax law? What the heck are you talking about?

Yeah I have a feeling a lot of people don't know about this. Starts in 2022. Basically, in 2022 it will be impossible to not report taxes on Pokemon sales. 

https://www.cnbc.com/2021/03/26/its-going-to-get-harder-to-avoid-telling-the-irs-about-income-from-online-sales.html

What if people that paid for Bulk in December/January don’t get their cards back till 2022 and the new unavoidable tax law is in effect and they lose end up losing money on grading after paying Uncle Sam, as well as the opportunity costs of having money tied up for a year.

HA HA.

WHAT IF AM I RIGHT GUYS.

Edit: yes people should pay taxes anyway. Just painting a potential scenario that will impact a lot of people who do not have their ducks in a row.

1 hour ago, Tan MYWZWKJH said:

144 business days / 20 business days per month (average) would take about 7 months .... if submit now, they would be back around late Jan or mid Feb of 2022 with the current opening backlog GIVEN that CGC doesn't raise TAT again...

Im 99% sure these turnaround times are based on where they are currently for Bulk, which is early/mid December.

Those of us that have already paid for services when Bulk TATs were 30 days (but now I’m looking at 7 months+) can attest to this. You cannot make any TAT assumptions based on the date orders being sent in, because the TATs are a snapshot in time to where they currently are in the backlog — there’s a “lag”, if you will. 

By the time they get to the Bulk being sent in today, TATs might be 2 years and I am not joking. Buckle in.

Just now, ShiningCollectibles said:

Very Happy all 3 12/11 Bulk Submissions Schedules for grading. And my express sub! 😁

42 minutes ago, onlyweaknesskryptonite said:

I love how the old timers on the forum take nothing too seriously and communicate 90% through gifs lmao 

4 hours ago, DonLaGreca said:

PSA caters to sellers and CGC is great for buyers. The PSA TAT extension, followed by the price increase, followed by the recent shut down should help CGC cards close the gap in price on the Ebay market, which I feel is far too large right now. PSA is far too laxed with their handing out of 10s and this benefitted sellers tremendously. I see soooo many PSA 10s that are just straight up 9s, and there are tons of people who are perfectly accepting of them and buy them up. Gone are the days of sending in tons of cards to PSA, getting 10s, and flipping them for cash, at least for now. Ive got a few CGC 10s in my collection, unfortunately no perfect 10s yet, but I anticipate these are severally undervalued currently and this PSA shutdown should clearly point that out. 

A late night streamer watch sometimes got a Bulk submission back from PSA a month ago or so and it was literally almost straight 10's. I couldn't believe what I was seeing. Infuriating that these things are the 'pinnacle of condition' in the community. Absolute joke. Another Poketuber ZandGemporium got a big Japanese bulk return of nearly straight 10's, and quit his day job!!! He listed all the cards on Ebay, made sure he was the lowest priced on each card (didn't matter because he still made BANK with that 10 premium) sold out and then made a video complaining he had nothing to sell a few months later. You know there is a serious inefficiency when people are quitting day jobs over bulk submissions. And I think the new owners of PSA recognized this because.....

Anything returned within the last month or so I see TONS of 8.5's, 7.5's which has never been the case. Either the new ownership put a stop to the madness of handing out 10's like candy due to depreciation of their brand long term, or they recognize that in the long run CGC's harsh but impartial grading is going to win out as the grading community becomes more and more optimized (buy the card not the grade), so they started getting way more strict and also implemented .5's more often as well.

5 minutes ago, ShiningCollectibles said:

Na, the kids in school didn't bully me because I'd knock their teeth out. I didn't like bullies. And that's all I'm going to say about that.

Stop feeding these clowns, it’s not healthy for you to fight this frenzied groupthink and continually get bashed on. These people literally have nothing better to do than gang up on you. 

Just now, Buzzetta said:

Cardies will stick though... It's gold Jerry... Gold 

Right now I have to update pernts for a lock I missed.   

Are you the head moderator of our Trading Card forum? 

15 minutes ago, Buzzetta said:

Or raise their prices to dissuade people from sending in 200-300 a month but still reap the profit.  They can grade on time and still make the same amount of money and people will be more selective about what they submit. 

This is the answer.

CGC’s leadership team is paid (presumably) high salaries as well all the perks that come along with being a senior leader because they are expected to make a few important decisions each year. THIS IS ONE OF THEM. 

If CGC does not act quickly in response to this current PSA decision, things are going to get very, very bad for CGC and very bad for us as customers.

Bulk from December is being cut in line by higher tiers as we speak, per Paul. PSA folks who were presumably going to spend $20 or $100+ per card with PSA are going to ABSOLUTELY POUND CGC’s Standard/Express tiers. Bulk from December 2020 might not even get returned this year if they do not make the right decisions in the next 24-48 hours. I am serious and the cult-like groupthink on here won’t change common sense business strategy.

My suggestion: shut down Bulk and Economy until everything received before the credit card change is done. People have paid, get them their cards. Then, open the floodgates with a new pricing model that isn’t going to literally destroy your company because it’s too cheap like PSA did. 

Honestly guys, maybe we all just go back to the other guy for grading. After all, they have graded the most Pokemon cards so they carry the most value right haha.

Who needs sub-grades right? You want a bunch of 10's don't you? CGC is so tough!! Ugh. So tough. And CGC's blue labels are just so polarizing for some reason ugh. Let's go back guys.

*PLEASE GO BACK ALL OF YOU I WANT MY CARDS RETURNED SOONER*

Standard Submission

9 cards w/ subs

Received: 02/16

I can't remember when it went into Scheduled for Grading 

Grading/Quality Control: 03/19

Still in Grading/Quality control hopefully it gets done today/tomorrow. 

26 minutes ago, SilentMonkee said:

You don't need the slab to have UV protection, make your display cases to be UV protected, then you can put anything in it.  All my display cases at home are UV protected. 

Black one is from Ikea, just replace the glass door with acrylic plastic with UV protection, white one is custom built-in with UV protected acrylic doors as well.

Wow this is sick man. Well done!

Question.... are the lights on the inside of the display case(s)? 

I want to display all my baller CGC ex holos in a display case on the wall (early EX era, I’m an elitist yes) but I recently learned of UV light and how bad it is for trading cards (someone tell Collectibles Guru all his cards bake in the sun for his pics lol).

Anyway, do CGC cases protect against the TCG kryptonite known as UV light? If they do not, does anyone have a good recommendation for a wall display case that does protect against UV light? I don’t want to have to keep my babies locked away in darkness forever.... what kind of existence is that? 

1 hour ago, The Nameless One said:

I'm in a mode today, Sunday is a good day for content.

Tarot and the hastening of karma

I practice tarot, particularly Crowley's Thoth. I could write 50 pages on the spot about Thoth so how to TL;DR this? I guess the easy way to understand me is that I'm attracted to "chance". Chance, in tarot, is God itself. Shuffle the deck, cut it, flip a coin, roll some dice, the more chance involved the more potent the reading, the more divine. Every single draw is a miracle of chance, just like the chance of being born, and every unrevealed card is pregnant, giving birth to revelation upon reveal. The idea is that you can, via a complex system of art imprinted on cardboard meaning certain things which adhere to several complex, religious structures which formulate to reveal the concepts of Thelema and the law: do what thou wilt. Your mind is a portal to a complex multiverse, so what is holding one back from exploring it? And what in the gods' green earth has this to do with CGC? 

Tarot aims to unlock these pathways through divine chance. The law of attraction is tested in this instance, the intimacy of chance is intoxicating. People lust after chance. How exactly does one perform magic with such a concept? How does one "exploit" chance? Language. It's entirely subjective, the trick is making it sound objective. Business 101. Alan Moore: "The true working magicians are those in the advertisement industry"

How, exactly, through the test of time and the evolving state of symbolism does a freaking shiny rainbow chonky pikachu send me on this journey? It's a MIRACLE. That card is a freaking miracle, pulling that card will send you so close to the divine that it will take a crane to get you off cloud 9. What a potent business model, like, there would be no joy in dropping 400 on a copy of that card, you NEED to open that for yourself, you need to chase that miracle. That trap cost me a cool chunk of change, my position is unfortunately not as stable as I would like. Fortunately, when I have no packs to crack, tarot provides my mind with the same satisfaction, for a much more "economic" price. We're going to have all of these Poke-addicts weening off packs and what do? Learn tarot haha

So, hastening karma, what does that mean? How does that unlock pathways to the expanse of the brain? Tarot cards, and what they communicate, hasten the approach to your problems. It's like finding yourself speeding down a hill and seeing the headlights and doing everything in your power to react properly so you come out alive. So, in one quick moment which feels like an eternity, you meet your problem and I use language, to the best of my ability, to communicate a perspective on what this could mean to you and how to overcome this sensation drawn out by the cards. Shells get cracked open and the resulting chick opens their eyes and the entire universe is formed. It's amazing how long some entities spend in their respective eggs. So, I'm going to work on a reading for this particular situation...

alright on a separate thread or sub-section of this forum I’ll have to pick your brain on Crowley and black magick one day. All of that occult stuff is fascinating but a little difficult for me to fully grasp haha. 

54 minutes ago, The Nameless One said:

Return Business

Whew, pardon my carrying on but... sorry, when exactly do they process your package? That particular area doesn't have an "ETA", no legal small print whatsoever, a mystery box - nothing but "please have faith that we are doing our best in these trying times!". Realistically, looking at the board data, I'm going to be paying for "standard" and still receive the old "economy" service in terms of TAT. Yo, that's an extra $515 for your company to offer me nothing in the way of relief. People are going to pump and dump the grading industry, aren't they?* There is no significant return business after this, you will be left with an additional 80k sqft space and a bunch of employees wondering what the hell they are doing, this is all too little too late and the only people who are happy about it are the stock investors. All of that for ONE moment of grabbing the bull of capitalism and going for a ride. Your boss saw an opportunity and instead of doing the right thing they, *looks at the data*, handled this so incredibly poorly that, you know what, I simply don't believe in an influx of business. I actually don't think Pokemon is as crazy as youtubers are making it out to be, I think this hype is all artificial - everyone's doing the Nintendo thing and artificially manipulating demand for their service. Hype it up, lock em in, and then pad your earnings. Business Goblinism 101. I have 150 cards where I need some bulk service and I'm not grading anything until this all cools off in a year or two. Looking at how stupid things are, I guess the strategy is pay for one "Walk-Through" card and put it on top of the bulk so your order gets processed faster, but how stupid is it that CGC's system is so easily abused like that? I bet everyone is just sending in one Walk-Through, getting the quick service for processing their package, and further clogging up the system. The reality is I'd much prefer grading with Beckett, despite the TATs, because you get the sub-grades along with relative to PSA value. CGC needs to step back for a second and think "hmm, maybe we haven't earned this yet" and start worrying that when the dust settles, no one even thinks of CGC for a second. I'm worried that all of my CGC slabs by the end of this will be rendered into a costly joke, that's how bad this service is, it's a small investment nightmare through and through. What exactly is being done to ensure the customer willing to pay $2000 on your service comes back with yet another 2000+ transaction? Yo, I have business for you, I want to give you money, so, come on, I hate being slapped around like this. Where is the incentive? Where is the "5% off your next purchase", where is the "$50 grading credit"? There is literally nothing to make us feel good about doing any of this, I've just been dumped on this entire time

*So, here people are spending thousands on grading junk slabs looking for a return in a hot market and basically running into a wall covered in poisonous dart frogs. In six months they get their ill considered grading options back and flounder about on Ebay trying to sell a badgermon for 20 bucks, and that's it, that's the stimulus money, that's the big shot they have at making a little more out of a LOT less. These are desperate times and we're being exploited. It makes me sick, the United States is a circus run by clowns and it's coming time to pay the piper

 

“So, here people are spending thousands on grading junk slabs looking for a return in a hot market and basically running into a wall covered in poisonous dart frogs”

This. Our nice little setup with CGC was ruined by an onslaught of junk slabs being sent in because $9/card is a cheat code (for now) and this is honestly the root of many customers’ frustrations including mine. I urge you all to go to EBay and search “CGC Pokemon” and sort by “Newly Listed” and just look at the cards people are sending in. Look at the recently sold as well. No subgrades, low tier junk.

So my bulk received on 12/23 is going to sit there ungraded for probably 2 more months, while people that are gaming the system get their junk slabs to make their $8 on eBay after fees. This is in part because subgrades mean little on the secondary market, which I think is surprising to everyone including CGC. $7/card for subgrades insinuates additional value but as we see, no one cares and it’s free trendies at $9/card so hammer it! Send in your entire collection for Bulk grading! 

These junk slabs also hurt CGC long term when in the future, the only thing people see on EBay are CGC 6.5 unlimited Neo Chikoritas, which goes back to my recent post on bulk being too cheap but you know what, at this point this is just complaining and there’s nothing I can do. PSA got new ownership and went “oh duh, we are hurting ourselves with bulk this cheap. That’s changing now.” It’s so obvious to me but I’m the canary in the coal mine I suppose. Just wanna say you hit the nail on the head with the looming poisonous dart frog analogy, and junk slabs fire me up boy I tell you what lol.