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CGC Grading Collectible/Trading Cards...?
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136 posts in this topic

3 hours ago, Red84 said:

The card grading market is full.

No one who is knowledgeable about cards is going to get a card graded by CGC when PSA is and has been the trusted market leader for decades. 2c

 

Cgc is a known brand. If they wanted to they could become the #1 option in card grading. From what I seen from cgc they will probably have their card grading services priced the same or more than the established card graders and will just be happy with a little extra income from customers of their other products sending cards in. Their ownership or upper management isn't aggressive or have much of a vision for growing. They could have put voldy out of business years ago. Just now they want to do card grading? After all these years now not 5 10 20 years ago? I see them going with this option and they won't be a major player in card grading industry. 

However if they come out and blow everyone away on their price. Offer big time card dealers a huge discount they can have a impact and even take over. Yes they won't make much $ the first few years. But to even break even would be a huge win in the long run. Get some popular signers to have exclusive with cgc. People dont like change. They find a brand or site or whatever and stick with it. If you are going to offer the same thing as established companies you need to do it cheaper or better or both.

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50 minutes ago, Myowncollector said:

Cgc is a known brand. If they wanted to they could become the #1 option in card grading. 

CGC is a known brand in comics. 
Unless CGC is going to charge 50% of PSA, BGS and SGC I see no reason why a card dealer would get their cards graded by a company that their customers are not familiar with. 

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52 minutes ago, Myowncollector said:

Cgc is a known brand. If they wanted to they could become the #1 option in card grading.

PSA is a better known brand. So is Beckett. Way better. Without knowing the numbers internally, I think it's still pretty safe to guess that PSA does a much higher volume and dollar amount than CGC. The only way CGC could make any noticeable impact on these two would be to do it cheaper, faster, with higher quality, more accuracy and significantly higher resale value. In other words, no chance.  It's simply not viable in the long term unless you plan on running your business into the ground at light speed. Beckett was a game-changer when they came in. They had the name-recognition in the card hobby, a higher-quality case and a more sophisticated grading scale.... they still couldn't and can't knock PSA off the top. I can only see CGC doing this to capture a small niche of the market. Just like with comics and other collectibles, there are small nuances and secrets to grading/authentication, so I wouldn't really trust CGC with cards any more than I would trust PSA to grade comics.

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25 minutes ago, Martin Sinescu said:

PSA is a better known brand. So is Beckett. Way better. Without knowing the numbers internally, I think it's still pretty safe to guess that PSA does a much higher volume and dollar amount than CGC. The only way CGC could make any noticeable impact on these two would be to do it cheaper, faster, with higher quality, more accuracy and significantly higher resale value. In other words, no chance.  It's simply not viable in the long term unless you plan on running your business into the ground at light speed. Beckett was a game-changer when they came in. They had the name-recognition in the card hobby, a higher-quality case and a more sophisticated grading scale.... they still couldn't and can't knock PSA off the top. I can only see CGC doing this to capture a small niche of the market. Just like with comics and other collectibles, there are small nuances and secrets to grading/authentication, so I wouldn't really trust CGC with cards any more than I would trust PSA to grade comics.

I remember when BGS first came out. I tried them as a kid because it was much easier to submit to them than PSA.

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Looks exciting. No doubt CGC has put a ton of thought into this business expansion and will bring a compelling product to the market. One big improvement they can provide are grader notes (hopefully available for free lookup by all based on serial number).

It looks like they are targeting MTG. The thing about MTG is that people are scared to death of fakes, it takes some experience to distinguish fake cards from real one and folks who haven't handled the old cards their whole life are easily fooled. Reputable consignors are able to get 20%+ premium on ungraded cards on Ebay because they screen out the fakes. If CGC can launch a quick turnaround / low cost MTG grading / authenticity verification (maybe like $5 for cards < $200) then I think they will be able to take a large market share.

Edit: Looking at the video closer, they are 100% pivoting into gaming cards. They first tease a beta MTG card that starts with "D" (based on the white border tick, I think it's Dragon Whelp, though it could also be  Dwarven Demolition Team) followed by a newer blue MTG card and a "Stage 1" yellow border Pokemon card behind it.

So gaming cards it is! Great!

Last edit: I think the third card in the trio frame is Vesuvan Doppelganger. And I notice subgrades also (such as "center" or "centering").

Edited by Coolio McCool
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2 hours ago, Red84 said:

CGC is a known brand in comics. 
Unless CGC is going to charge 50% of PSA, BGS and SGC I see no reason why a card dealer would get their cards graded by a company that their customers are not familiar with. 

That is exactly what I said. They have to do it for less. A lot less. If they dont which they won't it's going to be a flop. 

A lot of people who collect cards also collect comics coins or know someone who does. Even if they never heard of cgc word would get out that there is a new grading company that does it for half the price. People can easily do a search and see how long cgc has been around. See the huge price sale numbers of their products and all the auction houses that trust

They will charge too much and this venture will fail, but hypothetically it would be possible for them to succeed.

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2 hours ago, Red84 said:

Maybe they will grade POGS next!!! :banana:

They should grade everything. Games,toys,action figures,stamps,tshirts, anything people collect. The have the infrastructure in place. They should be the one shop place for grading and sealing anything people collect. Maybe voldy or PSA should. Or one of you guys start something up. I think there are missed opportunities.

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I'm just glad there will be another slew of companies that you can't talk positively about on the boards.  

Edited by Transplant
Clarifying
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Would be interesting to see how the public will view CGC as a third party grader of trading cards. I think it's a smart business move because there are a lot of cards out there that still need grading whether sports or non-sports cards. Being into cards myself, that hobby is booming, probably more so than comics. You have your typical collectors, hobby shops/sellers, gaming collectors like Pokemon and Yugioh, box breakers who make tons of profit with their business, etc.  I just hope that it will be a different branch set apart from CGC grading strictly comics, wouldn't want TAT's to be even longer if the same graders are also grading cards.  

Yea PSA and BGS are the big and well-known grading companies that do business with cards (sports and non-sports).  But, for the last maybe 5 years or so, there have been a lot of card manipulation where both grading companies would grade the card as all original where in fact, the side(s) may be trimmed to achieve a higher grade or a jersey was replaced by a more attractive patch on the card window to achieve a higher sale price.  All of which have no qualified labeling or any type of labeling to say that the card is no longer original.  

If CGC can truly figure this one big problem out, I think they can be the new leaders in card grading.

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23 minutes ago, Lest 2 Art said:

Why is the card grading scale so much different than the comic grading scale? 

Why does 8.5 have a "+" next to the word "Mint" but 9.0 does not? Typically a "+" denotes a better grade, not a worse grade!

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14 minutes ago, Timely said:

Why does 8.5 have a "+" next to the word "Mint" but 9.0 does not? Typically a "+" denotes a better grade, not a worse grade!

There is a divide by pi that they didn’t show.

Edited by batman_fan
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