Gold Card Auctions Drops PSA Grading, Backs SGC

The backlash against trading card grading service PSA continues, with collectors and resellers growing tired of their high prices for their services and slow turnaround times. That seems to be good thing for their competitor, SGC (Sportscard Guaranty).

The latest defector from the PSA camp is Gold Card Auctions, who just announced on social media that they are “sick” of PSA and will now use SGC to grade their sports cards.

“We are officially sick of overpaying for PSA grades and are moving over to SGC and recommend you do the same,” Gold Card said in a Faceook post. “SGC lowest options are $15 while PSA lowest options are $50 (BGS is somewhere in the middle and the middle is a bad place to be). We are sick of overpaying to get cards graded and then they take months (sometimes/more than often even over a year) to arrive!
Let’s get the SGC grading movement going!”

In fairness to PSA, they do have “economy” grading options as low as $10, if you grade 20 or more cards (with other factors included). SGC’s $15 rate is a good deal, but applies to cards valued at less than $500. SGC has also recently had issues in getting cards graded and returned to collectors by their advertised timeline, which has been the main gripe against PSA, which is running months behind in returning cards.

Responses to Gold Card Auctions’ post were varied, but many questioned the logic of using a grading service whose cards do not hold their value. Collectors prefer cards graded by PSA, and are often willing to pay more for them.

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Speaking generally, vintage cards graded by SGC tend to hold the same value as those graded by PSA or BGS. That’s not the case, however, with modern cards graded by SGC. They generally sell for far less than a modern card graded from PSA. PSA also offers bar codes and QR codes on their labels and a more sophisticated grading breakdown. Even though SGC offers lower prices and a generally quicker turnaround, resellers don’t have much incentive to send their cards to them, when a PSA slab can offer higher prices down the line.

With so much dissatisfaction with PSA, however, collectors may begin to give more consideration to cards graded by SGC or BGS. That may not happen anytime soon, unfortunately, for SGC supporters hoping to see better value equity.

Here’s the post by Gold Card Auctions.

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