PSA 10 vs BGS 9

OSClabs

Hi all,

I recently got back into collecting and I am new to the boards.

I have noticed that BGS 9 - 9.5 graded cards are getting much more "value" at the auctions compared to PSA 9-10 graded cards. What's happening?

Thank you in advance for your opinions and help.

-Danny

jrdolan

What's happening? A very effective marketing / brainwashing campaign by Beckett, helped along by a cozy network of market manipulators and strategic "reporting" in Beckett Magazine.

To be sure, it's not all just Beckett soldiers masturbating each other. There are many, many legitimate collectors caught up in the BGS 9.5 frenzy, and it is those people who will lose millions when they try to sell their 9.5's in a few years.

Already, Beckett is taking the next step, shifting its strategy by pouring more 9.5's and 10's into the market. Whereas once these grades were deliberately few, in order to drive the kind of prices that Beckett could gush about in its pages, now the business model is volume -- the sheep have been fattened and are ready for slaughter. Very good business move for Beckett, its advertisers and its dealers. Not so good for collectors, in the long run.

Just my thoughts, of course. Any resemblance between the above scenario and reality is strictly coincidental. But I can say, after having too many BGS cards (cracked out and submitted raw) rejected as trimmed by PSA, that the notion of BGS 9 being better than PSA 9 or 10 is almost funny. Almost.

OSClabs

Thanks JR.

I was very active on Ebay a few months ago. I was shopping online this morning and it appears that this has has been a recent "blitz" regarding the BGS pricing. I was at my local card shop in Birmingham, AL yesterday and several customers were discussing this issue. Matter of fact, the owner of the shop was somewhat pro PSA but the customers were raving about their latest success moving their BGS 9.5 cards on Ebay for higher $ sales. I have spent thousands grading my collection. Although I intend to keep most of my cards, I always look forward to selling my duplicates to expand my collection.

joestalin

At first I thought JR was just another blind PSA customer, but he is right on the money. BGS has sold themselves short in the past
few years. back in 99 and 2000 they were just darn tough. If you had a BGS 9 you had a nice card..probably 30% of those cards
could of been PSA 10's.

The story is different now, 9.5's make customers happy and I guess that is all beckett cares about. Its too bad for the guys like me
sitting on undergraded cards now...I guess it is time to resubmit!

JS

jrdolan

PSA is my grader of choice, but I'm not blind. I have plenty of complaints with PSA.

But BGS ... now we're talking Payola all over again, in terms of a market being influenced irresistably and not even knowing it. In my overworked imagination, of course. I'm sure it could never happen in real life (ahem!) But ...

The BGS cards that turn out to be trimmed or sheet-cuts, that is stone cold reality. A BGS 9.5 card that may be trimmed selling for 5x as much as PSA 10? That is pure marketing and mass hypnosis, almost admirable in its effectiveness. Now BGS 9.5's and 10's are being issued with regularity, as joestalin notes, because that is the smart business decision. It means a cliff's edge waits ahead for those who invested heavily in BGS 9.5's.

gradeddream

bgs controls the market especially on modern cards. there cards will always have value because of this.

i buy alot of psa cards (modern) & resend them to bgs.

for every story you can tell me about bgs & trimmed cards, i can tell you a story about psa.

it comes down to what you collect:

vintage = psa
modern = bgs

thats it!

helionaut

In answer to the original poster's question, if there was one, BGS 9.5s do sell for more than PSA 10s in most cases. I don't recall a BGS 9 selling for more than a PSA 10, though. BGS 9 vs. PSA 9 seems to be pretty equal. But if you look at the actual composition of the market for the different graders, the answer is pretty obvious. The BGS market is that of the modern, shiny rookie card, and those cards lend themselves to high grades because a plastic and metal or stiff white cardstock card will be cut and hold up better than a coarse cardboard one, which is mostly what PSA handles. The people who read Beckett, or at least those that read it for valid pricing information and hobby news, are generally younger and less experienced collectors who haven't seen the huge ups and downs the hobby has and those are the cards they collect for the most part. They are also the kind of people who are much more likely to spend $100 on a shiny new rookie card of someone who won't touch a MLB field until 2009, if ever, than $100 on an EX 60s Mantle card. The prices on their cards I think are naturally slanted because you go with what you know, and those readers haven't gotten to these boards yet. I also think not having a $100 cover charge to submit cards draws a lot more people away from PSA and into BGS.

BGS reports some anecdotal graded card sales, and they almost always match up a PSA sale with a slightly higher BGS sale, though God knows if either transaction actually took place. There is a bit of self-fulfilling prophecy to their pricing, though ever since BGS cards hit the market in spring 1999, prices on their top grades have matched or exceeded PSA, and that isn't wholly the influence of the magazine. And while JRDolan's reaction makes valid points, there are many people on the BGS boards who would have the same reaction to PSA. The magazine also fails entirely to report on the authentication problems in their service, so the "hobby's most reliable and relied upon source" can't always hadnle the scrutiny. I wouldn't go so far as to say the people who buy BGS cards are "masturbating," but I would say that enough doubt has been cast on their service for me not to buy any. I do use their service in grading my shiny new rookie card investment material because, as a simple fact, the prices realized are generally higher, which is obvious from watching ebay. But since my goal with the cards I submit to BGS is maximizing realized prices and not building a collection, the why is not a concern of mine.

CDsNuts

Since this is a collector forum and not a money-making forum, the most important thing when it comes to grading is this: No matter what slab your card is in, it's still the same card. Personally, I don't have my collection graded because I like the way they look in the thick screwdowns. When I have something I want to sell and it makes sense to grade it, I send it in. Since this whole phenomenon with BGS has taken over, I might send my next batch over there, but I may just stick with PSA because Im comfortable with their service (for the most part). I'm also not convinced that some of the PSA 10s I've received would cross over to BGS 9.5. To their credit, I haven't seen many questionable 9.5 and 10 grades except for sheet-cut cards which is another issue altogether. Take a look at these two cards:

Rollie Fingers- Look at the black print dot in the top middle.

Denny Martinez- Look at T/B centering.


Honestly, I thought I was getting a 9 on both these cards (Not that I'm complaining), and I think that the two issues mentioned would bring a subgrade down low enough where the cards wouldn't fetch a BGS 9.5, therefore would be worth considerably less in a BGS slab. So maybe it's gotten to the point where if you have a card you truly feel is flawless, you're better off sending it to BGS because it will bring more in their slab, but anything short of flawless you should send to PSA because you may get a break on the grade. Does that make any sense?

Lee

notowellint

I'm a Garbage Pail Kids collector and I've personally never seen a GPK card on ebay graded by anyone other than PSA. Any thoughts on why this may be?

RedHeart54

Just don't buy ANY O-Pee-Chee card- hockey or baseball- in BGS. They are trimmed or sheet-cut.

joestalin

<< <i>Just don't buy ANY O-Pee-Chee card- hockey or baseball- in BGS. They are trimmed or sheet-cut. >>



so you know for a fact that every single one is cut from a sheet or trimmed??

..this is what Im talking about, blanket statments because you thought you saw one on ebay that looked a bit odd. If you want
to bring facts into this, then you might want to add this:

PSA and BGS have graded multiple copies of the Pujols bowman chrome rookie card. All of the graded cards were numbered 5/500 on the
back.

With that said, who is to say anything these companies grade is real? If PSA can't detect altered ink on a card, who says they can
tell when a card is snipped 1/100th of an inch??

JS

softparade

Lee, that Martinez is def. questionable. Although centering would not look AS bad if the card was not slid all the way down in the holder when scanning. The Fingers is a nice card. PSA does alow for minor print defects on 10's such as the one you speak of if the mark does not affect the overall eye appeal of the card. Now of course eye appeal is different to everybody who views the card. Non-the-less, that is a quality Fingers and I am enjoying watching your auctions..

Dan

OSClabs

Maybe PSA should adapt their grading system, especially with modern cards, similar to that of Beckett or GAI (8.0, 8.5, 92, 98, etc). Their competitors basically took their business/market and made it better. I don't think PSA customers would be upset if they would activate a new policy for modern. One thing is for sure, after looking at auctions this weekend, I have picked some good deals on PSA 9 & 10. It's like the stock market.

By the way, what is the difference between BCCG and BGS? Please rate the "current" top 5 grading companies, in your opinion. Thanks!

ldferg

i have an issue with beckett selling becket graded cards...does anyone else think this is a conflict of interest?

EagleEyeKid

Here we go again. I luv this topic because it makes the veins pop out on people's foreheads. I'll tell you what though. I'm beginning to send my modern stuff to BGS because of the higher prices they fetch. I personally don't buy graded slabs from anyone (been 4 years), but I do sell them. With the 9.5 craze, I recently split up my 51 cards (29 to BGS, and 22 to PSA). The only thing that convinced me whom to send to came down to the "surface" criteria of the card.

JS, I have to agree with Redheart54 about the O-Pee-Chee sheet cuts. All the hockey 9.5 or 10s OPCs were started by Jason Martin of Martin SportsCards. He is the biggest submitter to BGS for OPC cards. He buys and sells sheets and even states that in the Beckett advertisement. He also admits this himself (email him and ask him next time you see a 9.5 OPC Patrick Roy). I don't have a problem with this. If collectors want to spend their $ on this stuff, that's fine. Heck, if I had it; I'd sell it too. I'm not about to invest anything in BGS. My motive is to send them in, and flip them over for $. I won't keep anything. Nothing is worth keeping (modern wise), and if I did keep anything, it's in a PSA holder.