Crossing over from BGS to PSA

Munnyman

Happy New Year everyone! I hope everyone has a happy, healthy and great 2022.

As PSA starts to catch up with orders and prices begin to go down (saying with great optimism), I was looking at having some cards crossed over from BGS. I know this topic has been broached numerous times in the past, especially the great "crack open" or "slab submit" debate. I am guilty of trying this with SGC, but never BGS. My attempts with SGC were negative as I left them slabbed and my SGC 98 came back ungraded, as I listed PSA 10 as my minimum grade. I would love to hear, before I waste any more money, people's experiences with BGS crossovers. For example, if 3 sub groups are 9.5 and one is a 9, does that hurt the chances of a PSA 10 cross? Should I only submit if all sub groups are 9.5s and 10s? Has anyone been able to crack the code? Is one sub group more important than others to PSA? I know many people believe that cracking open is the safest bet, but that just seems like such a risk if it comes back lower. Any help would be greatly appreciated before I commit to such a large endeavor as I'd be sending quite a few cards. Thanks in advance. John

1959

Very, very rarely ,will PSA ever grade up. N0 matter the other company If you send in a BGS 9.5 you will not get a 10.

JRR300

My experience has been that if you send the card to them slabbed, it will be graded lower. Numerous collectors told me this but I didn't listen.

BillsGridironGreats

What they have said - BGS 9.5 is a PSA 9 or 8.5 every time. SGC is the only one I have crossed grade to grade.

Munnyman

Thank you all very much. I think I will pass then and search for PSA 10s.

DMasci

I decided to do this very thing but decided I would crack all the cards out myself (see youtube on how) and submitted as raw. I have received one order back and one is still there being graded. From my experience this was not a good thing to do for card value. I sent in 20 cards, zero cards came back with a higher grade, 7 came back with the same grade and the rest came back lower. All were cards of NFL HOFers. There were a few notable cards that the value really took a dive. 1981 Montana was BGS 8.5 and came back PSA 7, same with 86 Rice BGS 8.5 down to PSA 7. I also had a 2nd year Montana that was 9.5 with all 4 subs at least 9.5 that came back PSA 8. Anything that had a .5 grade came back at least the half point lower with a couple 1.5 lower.

If you have cards that their value would drop significantly with a 1 or 1.5 point drop I would not send them in.

RSehlke

Of the BGS 9.5 cards I've submitted for cross-over grading, none have come back above an 8. Additionally, one of the cards was damaged during the process -- it resulted in getting paid the declared value of the card. I wouldn't do it again ...

Munnyman

Holy smokes! That's brutal. Thank you so much for those stories. That really solidified my decision. Sorry for the painful lessons.

DMasci

@RSehlke said:
Of the BGS 9.5 cards I've submitted for cross-over grading, none have come back above an 8. Additionally, one of the cards was damaged during the process -- it resulted in getting paid the declared value of the card. I wouldn't do it again ...

It was a tough lesson to learn. I made the decision to sell off all my Beckett cards and switch over to PSA about 18 months ago so my timing wasn't the greatest :-) That said, I have close to 400 PSA graded cards 99% HOF FB and although a PSA 8 shows more value than a BGS 8.5 a PSA 7 sure doesn't. Thankfully I discovered this before cracking out my Jim Brown cards.