Grading is too subjective for any kind of, “Honesty.” We all have our own biases and opinions that impact how we’d grade a comic. It sounds pessimistic, I know.
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A 9.0 is Very Fine/Near Mint. That grade doesn’t allow anything color breaking. Yet I own several and have seen many more that are riddled with color breaking spine tics and creases that haved earned that grade.
I’m not talking a faint color breaking spine tic. I’m talking dozens of color breaking tics and creases getting the 9.0 Very Fine/Near Mint designation. They’re lowering the bar intentionally quickly over the last decade.
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Or are we disregarding decades of standards for a Fortune 500?
I like Jim. He’s very knowledgeable on comic history than just about any YouTuber out there. I particularly enjoy his top 10 graded books by year series that’s ongoing.
He makes a very interesting speculation point about CGC increasing prices and laying off employees to “force” a backlog which would entice potential buyers of CGC being a good investment opportunity. It’s comparable to store exclusives being used intentionally destroyed create false scarcity to justify larger profits.
It doesn’t make much sense if you have backlogs to lay off people…at least in the surface…backlog = inefficiency moving books from in to out…and so much of that process is manual (people…logging in data, handling, shipping, grading, etc.). But I don’t know how the people laid off were part of that critical path.
Fast forward to the 9:00 mark and check out the slabs by year. If anything it shows how submissions are changing, and the trend likely to continue…so less this year than last…maybe that’s part of the layoff rationale long term.
Anyway…thought it was interesting. Passing along.
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Makes sense for prep for a sale.
I’ve seen it in my own large corporation when we get prepared for sale.
It’s all about setting a stage for potential buyers and it appears CGC is intentionally creating a “portrait”
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Who would buy CGC tho? PSA? They’re getting into the game with their own comic grading. CBCS is owned by Beckett. It’s messy for sure.
An investor, along the scale of Blackrock.
PSA would be on the short list…removing competition while getting instant credibility.
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Need more grading companies for healthy competition, not joining them to become even more sucky…
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Cliffs notes version?
Cliffs notes:
CGC has been authenticating counterfeit high value Pokemon cards with some cards worth tens of thousands of dollars. They’re putting out a list to have cards returned for “review”. This is eeriely similar to the cgc swapgate scandal earlier last year.
Current printing technology leaves a digital footprint where it will have certain characteristics that will tell us about the printing technique used including the year it was printed. The cards in question were printed in 2024 when the original cards should’ve been printed in 1998.
Ryan spends most of the video talking about cgc’s policies and the company as a whole, he’s not a TCG and sports card guy.
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Oh, that CGC.
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Banana Slabs, Counterfeit Cards, and Overzealous Moderation: How an industry leader became a laughingstock in under a year
Title of my next book.
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That’s all good….
But what if someone used the exact negatives, paper and printer used to create the original book…???
Things keep going from bad to worse for CGC.
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Last night, however, the collecting community was hit by a magnitude 9.0 earthquake.
One of the buyers of the cards, PFM, used an obscure forensic technique to reveal many of the cards were actually printed in the summer of 2024. This includes cards that CGC authenticated as coming directly from Akabane’s collection.
Most printers imbue hidden watermarks on their pages that contain information like the printer’s serial number and the date its pages were printed. This is so governments and law enforcement can track the origins of documents.
For example, the prototype Nidoqueen has an imperceptible dot code matrix that shows it was printed on June 29th, 2024. Many other collectors have also posted scans of their cards, discovering that theirs too were printed in 2024.
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I want a copy
So unbelievably, of all the scandals that has rocked cgc this year this one actually dwarfs all the others combined 
Not only does involve TCG’s specifically Pokemon cards that are multitudes more popular than the comic book hobby and affects collectors globally, the world now knows what all of us here know about cgc. That their “grading and authentication” is a complete sham.
The world now knows that cgc’s “authentication” can’t be trusted and this puts an end to cgc’s TCG and card grading division. It’s the end for them on that department. Comicbook collectors on the other hand have this toxic irrational OCD loyalty to the company that can’t be fully dissipated but it’s getting slowly eroded day by day, scandal by scandal.
This is a massive story on the TCG side of things. It’s getting worldwide press because of the popularity of Pokemon cards. A massive 9.0 magnitude earthquake is an understatement. This is cgc swapgate x1000.
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Interesting, I don’t follow Pokémon much so it’s fascinating to hear how much this could impact CGC.
… and yet there is Matt Nelson at the top, still.
I’m not sure why this guy is still there after these last few years. It is a mystery.
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