geraldfordfan69

1 hour ago, Angel of Death said:

It's almost impossible to counterfeit an MtG card. Their MFG process has been relatively consistent since inception, and it's easy to discern a real from a fake.

The great thing about Magic is its inclusiveness. Constantly reprinting cards and keeping their products affordable is what keeps the game popular. So, no, I don't think that the grading of Modern cards will ever be large (and that's a good thing).

Eh I dunno if I agree with that. Magic has this reprint equity nonsense to where they save reprints only for their "premium" products while standard just gets jank in it. Your never going to see them reprinting format staples below rare or mythic rarity so its got this weird mix of it never being dirt cheap but not being too valuable. And counterfeits to the average joe are hard to determine. The chinese ones that have been coming out are getting better and better. You could probably get away playing with counterfeits at tournaments since the average player cant tell a difference from a far.

23 minutes ago, dikran1 said:

If you’re shuffling a mint Mox Diamond into your deck, then you’re a better man than I am 😊

I think utility vs collectibility is where the divide rests. People have no qualms grading ABU AQ AN L. But when 99% of standard cards are bulk why buy the next set if there’s no incentive? 
People crack cases of Pokémon and dance in the streets when something good pops out but Magic? Not so much... 

Again, just trying to understand the mindset. 

A few reasons I can think of.

1) Modern cards get printed into oblivion. The expeditions already had a psuedo reprint with Zendikar Rising. Masters sets/reprint sets are just going to keep coming and no non-reserved list card is safe.

2) Lots of quality control issues. Foiling in Magic are so cheap in terms of the materials that get used. Even with masterpieces and the cards from the Amonkhet block all have issues.

3) The obvious in that Magic is a game that is more heavily played. Pokemon has a tournament side to it too, but most people just dont seem to care for some weird reason even then it is a TCG.

Yugioh also has similar issues in that most of the modern cards arent worth much. They are trying to push a collector's market with these Starlight Rares, but the problem kind of similar to newer Pokemon is that most people just dont care about the new creatures. People only care about Yugioh's 1st 3 generations it seems like in that the most graded cards tend to be anything from Yugi or Kaibas deck, Elemental Heros, and a few of the dragons from the 5Ds. Everything else is kind of an afterthought. Pokemon kind of has that same problem in a way except that each generation has at least a small handful that stand out, but generally speaking its biggest sellers are always Charizards, Mewtwos, Eevee Evolutions, Pikachus, any sort of Legends / Mythical creatures and any female trainer card.

And the same could probably also be said about Magic. Too many forgettable planeswalkers/creatures and the ones that stand out like Jace or Liliana get printed into oblivion, come out of a pack with problems or people want to foil out their decks. 

9 minutes ago, Lapsaes said:

I was just curious if anyone has had any experience getting cards, (especially older ones) with printing lines graded here, and if your submissions ended up getting points taken off for the printing lines? And if so, how much do you think it cost on your grade?

I sent in a Moltres Articuno Zapdos GX from the elite trainer box (not old I know) that had some factory defects and it got like a 5. I personally think it shouldnt have been that low, but at the same time, I dont think it probably deserved anything higher than an 8. I just had it graded to dump to an auction house that requires all cards to be graded to be resold. I got a bunch of Champions Path Charizard V's that I refuse to send in since all of them have some issue and they are too cheap to where its not worth my time. Granite yes these are mostly newer cards, but anything that comes out of a pack with some issues is not graded well.

If a card has factory errors that are basically damage like print line errors or scratching or edge issues, I just would treat it like a damaged card. Yeah it sucks that maybe you got it out of a pack and it came that way, but sadly the cards that come perfect are the ones with premiums. I know with older cards they have that weird foiling on the side that looks like its damaged, but a lot of old cards just had quality control issues. How many points you would get knocked off is hard to say but it just depends too on its centering as well.

10 hours ago, Kylez450 said:

Psa turnaround for me was only 3 weeks for their $50 service. Their bulk service is the only service that takes forever. CGC is honestly taking longer on my orders than PSA in terms of service levels. 

Well apparently they arent since paul just told you that you bought cheaper services. Your also capped out at PSA with the value of what you can send in at $50.

Unless PSA is giving you a 10, no, its not worth it at all and with PSA and its always risky if your cards can get a 10 since they tend to half *** stuff. When it comes to resale values, only the 10s seem to be more valuable than other grades on average. If you got a 9 or lower, congrats, you just lost money in most cases. PSA is literally gambling at this point and I also find it hard to believe that it only took them 3 weeks since they are backed up all around.

Today I just sent CGC a walkthrough and dont think it will even take a week for only $69 due to the membership and trust that my card will be graded properly. I also live in Florida to where the shipping times are better. In some cases, maybe PSA is a better option. But 9/10, I just dont see the point in grading with them anymore. My experiences with them 2 years ago just werent good and that was when they had zero competition.

31 minutes ago, PokemanDude90 said:

Just my two cents here...

If the PSA price increase rumors are true.... then CGC Bulk is about to be 6 months+ almost overnight and I'm assuming the other Tiers will suffer as we have already seen. FANTASTIC! I can't wait to wait even longer for my bulk because no-subgrade unlimited Neo Chikoritas are getting slabbed in the thousands at $9/card at an average grade of 7.5. Okay enough salt.... 

I'm sure a lot of us are kicking ourselves for not sending in 10x the bulk when return times at CGC were basically a calendar month or less lol. The glory days.... 

 

 

CGC doesnt deal with sports cards. That is 80% of PSA's business and the sports market is even hotter than Pokemon.

Id expect CGC to be a 3 month waiting time, which is reasonable compared to PSA that is around a year now. Im expecting once the pandemic gets better that all this will calm down. The market will cool off once people go back to work and dont care about Pokemon as much.

22 minutes ago, ClaytonMurphy said:

Not really sure where half the price is coming from. If PSA is say $25 for 20 day and CGC is $25 plus $7 for sub grades. The only advantage is actual turnarounds...if they arent hitting those then why would you spend similar money to not receive similar returns. Unless like I'm saying quantity of return vs quality of singular sales.

I get it new company overloaded...but just turning into PSA with just extending times, taking money upfront, and leaving us to the message boards to debate. Thats my concern be different, make me want to sub to you even if the returns are say 80% or whatever they are compared. 

Not sure if your in the loop but PSA isnt even really an option anymore for a reasonable turnaround time. Its almost like a year turn around time, as in, if you sent PSA a bulk submission today, you might not see until next year. And you have to pay out the nose to see any decent turn around time.

If you want to grade anything at the moment, CGC is literally the only decent option unless you dont mind waiting an entire calendar year. Thats not even an exaggeration. Thats just how the pandemic has affected this industry.

4 hours ago, PaulS. said:

You do not need to start a petition, as it will not change anything. We are already working on adding YuGiOh. But as many commentators have pointed out, we need a new case for them. We also need an incredibly large and complicated database.

These things take time. We are going to do things the right way, not necessarily the quickest way.

 

Paul

I dont know how you dont lose your mind paul lol. You get the same question 100x and no matter how much logic or facts you tell people, they dont seem to listen. I feel you for since with my store, I get the same people that get told the same things over and over again, yet they dont seem to get things.

its a legit box only if you grade all the water energies

Hi there. I sent in a submission sometime last week and it arrived at CGC before the 16th. The submission got put into the system on the 17th and I was not charged for it yet. I was seeing which system I would be charged under. Am I charged the old fees but the payment is deferred until grading or will I be charged the new fees for after the 16th?

1 minute ago, William-James88 said:

lol, people re already complaining that the wait times are long with the limited service CGC already offers (that being magic and pokemon). If you add more it will only get longer. I am absolutely certain that CGC was to accept YuGiOh now, the wait time would also be 1 year. 

Maybe not a year since they dont do sports like PSA and BGS, but yeah, they are already so slammed with Pokemon that trying to add another game right now would be absolutely insane.

Im thinking once the pandemic comes to a close that things will cool off. The pricing of everything shot up like crazy when the pandemic happened since people were stuck in side all the time. Once its over, I see a small crash happening since alot of people will forget about cards and find other things to do.

Every day someone on here asks about Yugioh and the same responses are "yes, we will add it at some point", which yea, no kidding that they will add it, but they have too much volume at the moment to really expand as much as they would like.

They have mentioned a billion times that they will grade other cgcs including yugioh at some point. There is at least one thread a day asking for it. Same with the registry. They cant do it all at the snap of their fingers.

Im sure they dont need a petition to do it. They have been slammed with Pokemon as it is. When they get time, they will add other stuff, but they havent even been grading cards for a full year yet. I guess people wanna complain about even longer turnaround times with another game being added lol.

17 hours ago, alohaboyz said:

you have no clue.     Look at the bottom corners,  Now go find some on ebay.    LOL   

Its a freaking water energy. And its not even holo. I dont feel bad that you graded such a dumb card. If I was a grader, Id give you a 1 just for wasting my time.

13 minutes ago, Ron Churches said:

I think in a perfect world, all the graders would have shielded cards they already possess from getting bumped out to longer grading times. It definitely sucks to have the TAT listed go from 30 to 60 right when yours hit their mailbox. I got lucky on my last bulk submission to be right at the end of the timeframe when they jumped, so it didn't faze me. I'll be curious to see if they can stick to the timeframes they have committed to now. I could see bulk and economy getting a little further out, just so they can keep their higher tiers cruising. I doubt anyone would have predicted the demand the grading companies have faced; the meetings at PSA must be really rough these days as they see their market share get nibbled on and the 'easy 10' reputation starting to take hold. 

Even 60 days isnt that bad though. If anything, 30 sounds too good to be true for bulk since everywhere else is way longer. The only company (well more like 1 guy) that is faster is gma and gma is 40 days and their resale value is way lower than anywhere else.

It could be people submitting like crazy before the price changes that is backing things up. Its not sustainable the longer wait times. And since CGC cards only deals with 2 games and not sports or anything else, I dont see it getting any crazier.

And so far with various ebay listings, psa 10s still are worth alot and have premiums, but the wait time and risk to get 10s cancels itself out. People seem to buy the label and not the card sometimes. Its like how the jankiest bgs black label 10s are expensive even when the card is no different than a bgs 9.5

29 minutes ago, Ron Churches said:

I mean, his comment isn't reality. He won't be waiting until June. His wait is almost over.

If someones bulk was submitted in december, it will probably come back this month.

I dunno what is up with these forums but it just is a lightning rod for crazy people. I get its in the internet but some people are just nuts. In some of these peoples worlds, they expect turn around times to be 1 hour, to get all perfect 10s, and to get a credit of 1000 free grades. I really need to get off here

1 hour ago, Jadhu108 said:

suddenly the advantage over PSA goes poof...

Not sure if being sarcastic but PSA wait times are around 7-9 months. CGC is 2-3 months tops. Even quicker with standard or economy.

Hi there. Im sure your aware of the millions of complaints that you get about waiting times, but was curious to exactly what was going on. Was there a huge surge of orders due to the price increase? Or is the demand in general just very crazy?

Is the bad log pretty bad at the moment and if so how bad? And any insights to what is going on in terms of how it will stabilize or what is with the wait times? Ive had a order waiting almost 50 days now with no updates and while Im not freaking out like some people, I was just curious to what was going on with it and moving forward what to expect when sending stuff in since I seen estimated wait times change from 60-65 but was not sure if this permanent or just short term. Im not really in a rush to get anything back but was just trying to get some idea of where things are at if that information is even available to the public.

Appreciate your work and thanks again for what you do.

8 hours ago, Holku said:

I’m sure to some people it might be a complete waste of money, but I’m independently wealthy and don’t want to take the time to put cards in screwcases.  I’m fine with my cards having grades on them, but if they didn’t, I would be fine with that.  I like that they will have details about the card on the label.  If they offered labels with certain pokemon on them for a few extra bucks like they do for comics, I would probably spend money on that too.

I get that, but grading isnt really the service that you should have been looking for. You could have went to some shop that does trophies and they could have done something like that for you. Grading isnt really meant for what your trying to do and not sure if you were mislead from something you saw elsewhere, but yeah. Grading isnt really meant to enshrine your kids common cards. Hypothetically, yes you can grade anything you want, but when people do that, you end up with a jam packed system with graders having to slew through tons of stuff that while profitable to them, is something they kind of dread since it goes against the real value of grading. And some of these graders probably enjoy the part of the job to where they get to evaluate expensive stuff since they dont see it every day. When they get common stuff, Im sure they arent too happy to see it even though they get paid to do it.

I think those are actually stickers that came out of vending machines. 

10 minutes ago, Holku said:

I've sent in over 200 cards since December to be graded.  10% of them were my son's cards.  Baltoy, skitty, etc.  Cards that aren't worth anything to anyone but him.  Very sentimental, and even though many have bent corners, even bent in half, he says they were from pack openings at tournaments we were in, or vacations we went on, etc.  He wants them displayable and protected in something better than a toploader.  If cgc could skip the grading and just encapsulate with the non-graded label, he would be fine with that.  He is 19 now, but its his money and his memories.  The other 90% are cards i collected with him that I think look absolutely cool, from full art mega camerupt worth $2 to a $5 greninja break that was part of my deck in the north American national championship tournament in Ohio.  Are our 197 bulk, and 3 other tier cards slowing things down for everyone else?  You bet they are.  Should we not send them in for grading?  Of course we should if we want to.  Anyone willing to send their cards in, pay for it, and wait however long it takes deserves to be able to use CGC'S services.  When we sent the cards in starting December 11th, the TAT was 30 days.  Its since changed to 65.  It wouldn't have mattered to us if it had started at 90 days and changed to 120, because we aren't resellers or scalpers.  For people that are reselling, of course they want to profit, and they want their product for as cheap and fast as possible.  Fortunately for them, the increased TAT is probably doing them a favor, since values keep rising.  Unfortunately, that also means their money is tied up longer, which I'm sure is undesirable.

You didnt look into screw cases lol? You can buy them for like a few bucks and just put the cards in their yourself within a few minutes. You never needed to send your cards to a professional grading company and spend more money and time to upgrade from a toploader.

The whole point of grading to improve a card's value on the second market. That is literally it. If your a casual collector, just buy screw cases. Grading isnt meant to put commons in a slab. Grading is also more of a means of legitimizing a very rare card. Its so people know its not fake and getting a professional opinion on it's condition. If you dont ever plan to sell your cards, grading is a complete waste of money. It serves zero value if you do not ever cash in on the cards.

Sadly, I dont think people do enough research and just see some youtube video or something on social media that makes grading look attractive without thinking about the value of what it is really for verses other options. That is partially why the TATs are what they are. They see grading is popular and do it mindlessly without thinking what the true value behind it is.

1 hour ago, thehumantorch said:

Yes, there are bigger fish to fry in the universe, but it must be frustrating for people to submit cards and base their wait expectation on cgc’s estimates only to have that wait time increased repeatedly.  
 

And if this is your first time submitting and your cards have significant value and you don’t understand the process or the increased volume the grading companies are experiencing you might be very worried.

People keep trying to tell those people that all they can do is wait, but they just dont listen. Many experienced graders on here keep telling these people what is going on yet all they do is act like children about it. I just dont feel bad for these people.

If you dont understand the grading system yet were willing to dump 1000s of dollars into it, whos fault is that? You cant expect people to take you seriously when you invested a bunch of money into something and didnt take the time to educate yourself or listen to anyone. I have no sympathy for people acting emotional when they are told numerous times what is going on. Just none. If these were actual children, I might be understanding, but these are grown men freaking out over the time it takes to get their Pokemon cards like their life depends on it. Its more sad than anything.

45 minutes ago, Dom Fonce said:

Idk. I think everyone has a right to react to slow TAT as they see fit, especially when the TATs were changed after many of us had already submitted. So, no, it's my money and my cards, and I can be upset about the slow TATs if I want to. So can anyone else.

No offense but if your legit mad about when your Pokemon cards come back from grading (especially when your not a reseller), you have some bigger issues on your hands. It takes alot for me to get legit upset. Issues involving TATs with Pokemon cards is probably bottom 5 things on this planet that bother me. And I need the cards back asap to send to an auction house for resale to pay bills. Mind you, I have more at stake than people who grade them just to store them in a closet and Im not losing my mind over it.

23 minutes ago, Dom Fonce said:

The reason for my post is because flippers in forums were sh*tting on people who weren't sending in Base Set Charizards and Black Lotuses to get graded, as if someone sending in cheaper cards were in their way.

First off, its not called flipping. Its called being a reseller. The TCG business model involves resellers since the companies themselves do not sell directly. People need to stop with these backwards labels since they make no sense and seem like a way to look down upon what someone does to make money. Its like people using the world "scalper" in a negative matter. Like, who cares how people make money? Its a legal honest way of doing it. They arent breaking laws or hurting people, so who cares. These people need to stop treating resellers like they are sex traffickers' or drug lords or someone whos actually a terrible human being. I tell people outside this world all the time that I sell Pokemon for a living and they think its great. They dont go on rants about flippers or scalpers since most regular people dont really care.

Second, its just makes no sense to send in cards under a certain dollar amount. I dont care if its for your collection, its not worth putting a slab. Anyone is free to do whatever they want since its a free country (at least where I live), but at the same time you cant sit and complain about TATs. Cant have your cake and eat it.

8 minutes ago, Mephisto said:

The difference is CGC is the gold standard for comic grading and has been since day one. Cards... not so much.

CGC has been grading cards for not even a year yet their resale values are on the same level as BGS. For a company that got into a market not that long ago, its impressive. Alot of people dont seem to know what they really expect. Was there some realistic expectation that CGC was going to overtake PSA overnight? Since you would have to be in a dream world to think that.

But yeah, these people arent going anywhere. They will complain, submit, complain some more, submit, rinse, repeat. And they are in the minority of people since you have like 1000s of people submitting who never say anything. Lots of people are normal in that they make a submission and just wait for it to return without ranting on the internet. Many people are living in reality and know that its a business with scarce resources and its a waiting game. It is what it is and no amount of whining is going to magically speed things up.

3 minutes ago, ShiningCollectibles said:

My view is just one of those that see's the consumers are the ones with money. In most businesses you learn the consumer is right but in you mind the consumer is never right. In your mind it is "OKAY" to lie to the consumer. I don't think a business would be able to make a lot with that logic.

In your world, things just happen and thats that. You dont have the ability to think beyond that. At your desk job they just tell you to do your work and dont go beyond that. Its not shocking that you dont have critical thinking skills.

2 minutes ago, Angel of Death said:

Brutal.

Truth lol. I have a graduate school certificate that set me back 60-70k. Part of it was done online and was pretty easy to do considering the program accepted almost anyone. Biggest waste of money ever. Degrees outside of the ones required for professional fields are pretty pointless.