Scottish Punk

Ah, thank you. I missed it scrolling through.

Did this 75th anniversary team set go away? I can't seem to find it. I only see Olympic sets under Teams sets and don't see it under rookie sets either.

I would be curious to see how you CGCs grade with PSA. I have had success going from PSA to SGC with direct crosses. The exception would be a grade down from really old PSA slabs. I think everybody agrees that PSA tightened up the grading once they went to the lighthouse type slabs. My small sample size bears that out. As stated, I usually get a grade lower in vintage with SGC compared CGC. Modern seems to be pretty close. I just look at that has most cards can be graded a 9, 9.5, or 10 any given day. I do agree, and my biggest beef with SGC, is their case is pretty flimsy from a security standpoint. I have cracked one open with bare hands before. I have see a water test online and SGC cases leak immediately. The others all fared way better and protected the card. I don't expect my cards to be submersed in water anytime, but if there is a disaster and all my vintage is ruined is not a comforting thought. I just really hate PSA, their business practices and their really ugly cases, lol.

I feel you Dr. I was shocked when i saw those numbers. CGC is going backwards in the sports card market. SGC is eating their lunch for a clear number two to PSA. CGC has really bungled everything from the get go in regards to rolling out the sports cards side. Created its own entity, really ugly labels, yanked subgrades away, messed with vintage grading standards, changed grading scale. Each of these moves, even it was for the better, eroded goodwill and confidence in the brand. For the life of me, I don't know why they didn't just keep the same blue labels as every other vertical in their portfolio. That is their brand identity. Keep subgrades as well. If I had a bunch of Marvel graded cards, I would want them to match the comic slabs. I agree with you that they need to get a big marketing push for sports cards if they are indeed serious about staying around in the market. By merging the sports card brand into CGC, it seems to be an after thought now. If you look at instagram posts, it is overwhelmingly posts with Pokemon. Social media, youtube has a ton of SGC reveals and people talking them up. Almost nothing with CGC (outside of pokemon). I don't know an easy fix. More specials and promotions is a great start. SGC does well with their bowman/topps release ones. Talking up the slab is great. Maybe they have some automated processes that curtail fraud/trimming which would be a competitive advantage? As far as grading, you are correct modern gem rate numbers are not good. I disagree with the removal of 9.5. I don't want to see a billion weak 10's like PSA slabs that look just like 9's since they are coin flip. They should align closely to SGC I would think. The other problem I have with their grading is that the vintage grading is closing to BVG (weak soft) than PSA/SGC. Small sample size, but just about every card from the 70's on back that a cracked out in either direction SGC/CGC, the CGC gets a full grade bump. That does not inspire confidence. Grading softly on vintage and harshly on modern, the worst of both worlds. lol. I have been close to switching to CGC from SGC. Keep waiting for the market to get better. Events - no subs, label change, combine with CGC, gemrate data. Seems like a big event keeps happening and the market needs to reset.

No confusion, just a curiosity. Not having UV protection seems to be the norm across all the major graders. Might be something which can be a nice feature in the future especially on autographed cards. Don't know if would lessen the beautiful clarity CGC slabs have now though. Thanks for the reply.

The title kind of says it. Does anybody know if CGC slabs use UV protection at all in their slabs. I think Beckett did (does?) and PSA/SGC does not. One Touch Magnetics of course have some UV protection as well.

IMO, the 9.5 is a double-edged sword. It is good that it gives you some wiggle room between a 9 and a 10 and theoretically makes the 10 grade better. Now, you stated correctly, it does drive down the gem rate. I am more of a collector than a flipper/reseller so I am perfectly fine with a 9.5 or even a 9. Those are all "mint" cards for me. If you remove 9.5 like PSA, than you will get the thousands of cards that are PSA 10 which don't look gem. It really comes down to, do you want less gem 10's or more "soft" gem 10's. PSA has a ton of label collectors, so they get away with it. I guess if you are looking at it from a CSG registry perspective, more 10's may drive that market a bit more. CSG did the right thing (even though they took a hit on their reputation) and went from the BGS scale and moved into the SGC scale. When CSG first started out, 10's were much more rare like they are in Beckett.

Couple of thoughts, this is something I have thinking about as well. I have a 50 card sub that is sitting on my desk. I have been flopping back in forth on where to send these - SGC or CSG. For PSA, let's be real nobody is catching up to them anytime soon and that's ok. SGC and CSG (even BGS) need to think about who wants to be in that strong number tow slot. PSA is still doing 1 million cards a month and their backlog has been cleared for what 3-4 months now. The "hidden" backlog of those waiting to submit might start to ebb though. As far as my decision between SGC and CSG, this is how I see them now. SGC - better graders, holder needs updating, tux looks great for vintage less so for chrome/prism, needs a registry, great service, auto grades don't look as good CSG - great holders, registry is ok but getting better, took a step back with the changing grading standards, did improve label greatly, grades vintage poorly, upcharging for autos and thick cards is a turn off. My two biggest fears with CSG and holding me back from going all in are the fact they grade vintage more like BVG than SGC/PSA, this means they won't be taken seriously in the long run for vintage, and the other mentioned - they will find their niche as the "cheap" grader (even if that perception is wrong in reality). As mentioned, I would also like to see them jump into more non-sports - hopefully in the CSG holder, but I would guess they would go into a CGC holder. That would pull me away from CSG if that were to be the case. I don't want them to go down the Beckett route and have a rainbow of colors on their flips and services. I don't want to see a CVG case for example.

Another question. Apologize if it as been answered previously answered in the thread. I just received my reholder sub. The labels are a big step up.. Anyways, will CSG remove the old certification numbers from their database? I did notice that the reholders got new cert numbers. One example - 1012205011 and 1024354001 are the same card. 1012205032 and 1024354002 are the same card I will go through and delete the old ones out of my personal inventory and re-register the new labeled ones. The first one above shows only 2 graded in that grade and those are the two, so really pop 1 for now.

Perfect, thanks guys for the replies. Will get this around this week.

Can I send in an order for re-holders and a bulk submission in the same box? Separate paper work of course. I am going to send in any 9.5's that I received from my first order and would like to do another bulk to get try out the new grading scale.

My take with the subs. They slow the process down in two ways. One is just simply the transcribing of the data entry throughout the process. The other and more time consuming part which is the grading. I think people are mistaken in that they grade the same way with our without subs. WIth subs, they are grading the four parts individually and than coming up with the grade as you describe. I think the current way and without subs is that they look for flaws and just kind of deduct from gem from there. You don't need to be as precise with his component. Card looks great outside of soft corner and slightly off center. Give it a 9. Don't need to worry about scoring 10,9.5,9,9 or whatever. Way back when I first started grading, I loved Beckett and their subs. I come to realize the subs just aren't worth the hassle. Instead of one subjective grade, now you get 4. Also, it makes really focus in on the one sub that is bad instead of just seeing a "9" (if one sub is 8.5 for example). This causes you want to upgrade or resend in a perfectly great card to try to get a bump on one sub. The only thing the subs are good for is to give you an idea on what the issue was that kept it gem. Like realizing CSG blasted me on surface for a lot of Chrome/Prizm that kept cards to a 9.

From what it looks like, and the board can correct me if I am wrong, is that the Mint+ is essentially a new grade. What this means in actual grading will be interesting going forward. Since they have this new buffer between what is now a 9 and 10, will they hand out more 9.5s. I I have a couple 9's with subs 9.5,9.5,9,8.5. Surface being 8.5. May take those out and check for prints/smudges and try them again. Also, have one with 10,9.5,9,9. That seems like a shoe in for 9.5. Since CSG isn't doing subs, I bet you will start seeing a lot of the "stronger" 9's become 9.5s especially since they aren't automatically making it a 9 because the sub grades tell them so. We shall see how the market reacts to all this. I am a collector, so 9's on modern cards are perfectly fine with me, those are Mint cards anyways.

I had the same thing. I printed the invoice and returned the top portion in the mail. Seems sloppy, they have my credit card from the membership.

Yeah, my bulk order finally change to Grading/Encapsulation/Imaging. Shipping Received first week of May, "Received" in system 8/14, now 11/16 in G/E/I. Looks like 3 months per step so far. Should I expect another 3 months before getting cards back? That puts in the February range. This turnaround time isn't very good. I see they upped the bulk now to 187 days. With the holidays coming up, you are looking at 10 months (at least) to get a bulk order back if sent today.