r/CGCCards

Let me get this out of the way first so nobody thinks this is a CGC shill post. About 80% of my collection is PSA slabs. The rest is a mix of CGC, BGS, TAG and raw. I’ve been grading cards for over 10 years, and I’ve sent 800+ cards through PSA. I’m generally happy with the service. If I had to put a number on it, I’d say 95-98% of my PSA cards came back with grades I felt were accurate. They’re the market leader for a reason and I’m not here to pretend otherwise.

But here’s the thing. PSA needs real competition, and right now they don’t have it.

Monopolies get comfortable. That’s not a knock on PSA specifically, it’s just how businesses work. When one company controls the market, there’s no pressure to lower prices, speed up turnaround times, improve grading consistency, or invest in new tech. Every price hike, every turnaround delay, every questionable policy change gets absorbed by the hobby because we have nowhere else to go that carries the same market weight. Competition is what forces companies to actually earn our business instead of just collecting it. We’ve all seen what happens to turnaround times and pricing when demand spikes and there’s no alternative pulling customers away.

Look at the numbers. Last month PSA graded over 2 million cards. CGC did 857k. TAG did 57k. (I’m leaving BGS and SGC out of this since they’re under the Collectors umbrella.)

I actually like TAG a lot and I hope they keep growing. But at 57k cards a month, they’re not threatening PSA’s position anytime soon. CGC is different. They have the corporate backing and the funding (for better or worse), decades of grading infrastructure from the comic side, and they’re already operating at serious volume. They’re the only company positioned to actually push PSA. If CGC got from 857k to 1m-1.5m cards a month, PSA would have to respond. That’s the whole point.

But that only happens if collectors make it happen. That means sending submissions to CGC. That means buying CGC slabs on the secondary market instead of automatically passing on them. Secondary market demand is what makes a grading company viable long term, so every time we treat CGC slabs as second-class, we’re reinforcing the monopoly we all complain about.

A real competitor to PSA would be good for everyone in this hobby, including PSA collectors. Better turnaround times because they’re fighting for your submission. Pricing that has to stay honest. Faster innovation in grading tech and authentication. Better customer service because losing you actually costs them something. Even PSA slabs benefit, because PSA at its best is PSA with someone breathing down its neck.

Nobody’s asking you to abandon PSA. I’m not abandoning them either. But if you’ve got a stack of cards waiting to be submitted, maybe send some of them to CGC. The hobby will be better for it.

Usually when I open my CGC account i cant track my submissions but now they have all disapperared. I know they just had an update so might be related to that. Does anyone else experience this? quite frightening to be frank

If you get a card online that you already know you want graded would you still want it shipped to you first so you can inspect it yourself or would you rather have it go straight toward grading if that was an option?I feel like seeing the card in hand first makes sense but it also adds another round of shipping and handling before it eventually ends up at CGC anyway. Curious which way people here would prefer?