I wanted to write up some thoughts and feedback for how I think CGC can continue to grow and improve their TCG grading offering (specifically pokemon in mind) to stand out among the competition of BGS and PSA.
I started using CGC in Q4 last year and I love the service, standard of grading, and even the cases but I think there is a way to continue to improve in a market where companies like PSA and BGS don't 100% focus on the Pokémon card market. Both PSA and Becket are split in focus, they provide services for Baseball card collectors AND CCGs, which in my opinion has slowed down their innovation in the market and what has caused them to stay so stagnant the last 10 years.
CGC on the other hand is focused on CCGs and comics, two markets that are similar in taste and have a considerable amount of overlap. So I'm going to write where I think there is opportunity for CCG to differentiate because I want them to win in this market, as I believe they are headed in the right direction compared to the others.
Case Appeal
One of the biggest complaints I've seen from collectors is the label, personally I love it, but for all three companies the labels are basically static with the except of Becket's 10s and black labels. Collectors want their collection to be visually appealing and the static nature of the blue label limits your audience to only folks who enjoy a blue label in their collection. The color Blue has no significance and in some cases clashes with the color of the card. So my idea/feedback here is to give customers some label color options. In fact for Pokemon AND Magic there could be an opportunity for those colors to match the energy and mana of the game, as well as provide a neutral color for collectors who don't want the label to stand out or clash with their existing collection of PSA and BGS cards.
The idea of keeping my fire Pokemon together with a similar label, or just opting to only use red for my labels as I like the looks, is very appealing! But of course has some downside / risk when it comes to the secondary market as there is not another factor to consider when buying a CGC card of is it the color I want. The reward outweighs the risk to me and is a pretty major differentiator in my opinion.
Also it has to be said, please center the CGC 10 for such a prestigious label, there is no reason it should be off centered.
Imaging
The free imaging service is actually such a good feature, especially for people looking to sell their cards, it's a perfect image of the card they can use in their listing BUT there is one improvement I could see being incredibly valuable for sellers, buyers, AND collectors which is detailed info on where on the card damage was identified and resulted in the following grade. It blows my mind that there can be debate within PSA and BGS graded cards on if it truly deserved that grade and if it's strong or weak all because there are humans who make errors on the other side of the grading process. Meanwhile CGC has been and is continuing to do more in the computer processing space while using technology to assist in grading cards to have less errors then the competitors. What better way to highlight that then providing an overlay on your imaging of where the damage was identified. This could be through digitally marking on the image for your card where the damage is located or even just filling the area with red, as the technology advances this becomes more achievable but there are probable some small steps you all could make in this direction to show how dedicated you are to accurate grading and providing even more visibility then just the 4 grades to customers. Instead of guessing or debating if the grade is correct, and what led to the grade you would just know, when buying a card on ebay, or when selling it's very easy to disclose the damage of the graded card as this is just a part of the imaging service with CGC.
Population Reports
This is the only thing I think you all are behind on, but from reading forums sounds like its already on your radar!
These are just a few ideas, but I wanted to post it to get others thinking, what evolutions to the grading market would you want to see? Maybe folks at CGC will read this and get some ideas based on our feedback to help them continue to innovate and improve! Customer feedback is invaluable and I haven't seen a thread like this so leave your thoughts below!
