r/CGCCards

Looking for some opinions from people who've graded with companies other than PSA.

I've got around 30 Pokémon cards I'd like to send in. I'm not really interested in using PSA, and I'm currently looking at Degree, cgc and AGS, but I'm open to other options.

For those of you who've used either, how was your experience? Turnaround time, grading consistency, slab quality, customer service, and resale value?

Are there any other grading companies I should seriously consider? I'm collecting more than investing, but I also don't want to use a company that isn't well respected in the hobby long term.

I'd love to hear your experiences. Thanks!

Based off everyone’s posts, it’s very much looking like the 65 day Economy estimates are off by days already.

Last time this happened they raised the TAT after a holiday. It’s likely gonna be the case again considering some employees likely took vacation time apart from the holiday itself.

The big question is, how much.

Hey everyone. This has been my first time sending cards to CGC and things seem to have gone well so far. However, since Monday my submission to CGC Germany has been marked as Completed, but I have not received an invoice (it is not in my spam either).

Is it normal to have to wait for the invoice even though the submission is completed, or should I contact CGC?

Hello everyone!

Moving forward, instead of having 1 megathread that is constantly updated with turnaround times, I feel like it will be much more organized to do this month by month. This thread will be for people to post their turnaround times so we can get a realistic estimate on current wait times rather than CGC's estimated times they are advertising.

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Rules of this thread:

1. The parent comment (you are starting a comment thread and not responding to someone) MUST be a post regarding your completed/shipped submission following the template mentioned in step 3. You may respond to parent comments with whatever you like, but the parent comment must follow the template otherwise it will be deleted.
2. Only post submissions that have been marked as shipped/completed in the month of July 2026.
3. Here is the template that must be followed for all parent comments:

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• Number of Cards Submitted:
• Tier Submitted:
• Received Date:
• Scheduled For Grading Date:
• Quality Control Date:
• Shipped Date:

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Example:

• Number of Cards Submitted: 11
• Tier Submitted: Economy
• Received Date: 3/11/2026
• Scheduled For Grading Date: 5/27/2026
• Quality Control Date: 6/1/2026
• Shipped Date: 6/3/2026

I see a lot of posts about grading and wanted to make a post on how I pregrade and what you should or should not be doing, as well as answer any questions as I have graded well over a thousand cards between PSA and CGC the past 4 years and now plan on grading over a thousand this year alone.

Yes, most of my cards are for resell. Yes, my strategy is to grade niche stuff that no one thinks of to grade. Part of that means getting the best deal possible on grading and sending to the best companies that offer quick turn around times. Unfortunately, no one fits that description presently. So to answer any and all turn around time questions we keep seeing pop up:

1. No one knows when or what is going on with turn around times.

I do know that CGC is actively trying to get more personnel and pushing a 2nd shift now to fulfill grading obligations.

With that out of the way, pregrading is the single most important thing you can do before sending cards out. Simply put, if your naked eye does catches something with the card, don't send it if you want a 10. The proper way to pregrade is to be ready to sleeve a card after carefully holding it on the edges and not setting it down on any surface, even if cleaned. One tiny grain of sand scratches a pristine 10 down to a 9 from surface damage. Point number two:

2. Stop laying your cards down on surfaces.

Another important thing I do when pregrading is I never look at a card twice outside of a sleeve. My goal is to examine it myself exactly one time. The more you take a card out of the sleeve, the more likely you are to chip off textured lettering or damages corners/edges just from the card sliding in and out. It happened to me on one of my favorite cards and I just keep it raw. Point number three:

3. Check a card once.

The age old question: Should I send this in for grading? In order to answer that, is it for resell, collection, or sentimental? If its a sentimental card, you have options to get it authenticated only which will preserve it and not display a grade if you believe it will come back with a low grade. The same can be said for collection purposes. If your reselling a card, or plan to, do all of the above steps when pregrading to check edges, surfacing (not laying them down at all), corners, and if to the naked eye they look centered, send it in.

I am not an expert at this, but my gem mint rate with PSA is insanely high even on vintage. I rarely get lower than a 9, even when I do, with any service. I just wanted to try and help those who are new and want to grade, no matter the purpose. Please feel free to ask any and all questions.