Posted By:
MarkToo many questions for my feeble mind to remember - I'll generalize.
Grading companies are a blight but one that is here to stay.
They do perform a service as I have purchased some fakes and trimmed raw cards on eBay. Graded cards significantly lower the chances of getting robbed (I know all of them have made mistakes, but the clear majority of graded cards are real and unaltered).
Resale is better on graded cards.
I buy graded C55s and Diamond Star baseball. There are way way more PSA graded versions of those two sets than the other companies.
For the reason above I like PSA despite all the bad things I've read about them on these boards. In addition the CU boards are way more populated than SGC and I never look at GAI so I don't know about them. The PSA set registry has thousands of sets and many many registrants. Not so at the other two. Surfing through any eBay vintage category you see a clear majority of graded cards are from PSA. Finally once you pick a grading company you are an investor. You want them to succeed to insure the value of what you've invested in having your cards graded by them.