Right. I got a laugh out of it myself after they gave me my money back. I would rather have had that card in a nice slab, but really just question the professionalism of SGC anymore. Though arguably the worst, this is by far not the first issue like this I have had with them. They have been known to seal up other crap like lint and errant dust on the regular. PSA does it too, with some kind of tiny transparent plastic squares that somehow infest their grading rooms. I will admit I was not expecting pubic hair (assuming that is really what it was...) that was a first, LOL.

They offered you more than me and I wasn't seeking anything except for them taking responsibility for putting a crease in a card that I subbed that wasn't previously creased. Brent blew me off, so I emailed Peter and 2 weeks later no response. I just ask that they let the grader know to be more careful and acknowledge that a mistake was made. So after 20+ years, I may finally be done with SGC...or until somebody more mature than Peter is steering the ship

I have seen their YouTube videos of the "behind the scenes" footage. I am really pulling for them. They proclaimed themselves to be underdogs, and I know that to be true. That being said....

This was uncalled for. A simple quality control would have caught that. You are right, the people grading and handling these cards know less about them that you and I.

I must have missed this. Can you give me the cliff notes version?? I think we all have stories about graders. I could tell you some things about PSA that you wouldn't believe.

Peter has never acknowledged anything I've ever sent him. I get it, I'm a small fry vintage guy who makes a few submissions a year - they are trying to be taken seriously on the larger stage with PSA. But I can't have much respect for a leader who just totally blows off how his organization came to do good business in the first place as a way to move forward. If SGC places all their eggs in the basket of getting bigger and more trusted with modern, I would highly question their future. Not what most typical "niche" players seek to do.

Considering that they are supposed to be 'preserving' items, slabs should of course be free of anything else sealed up into them, but.... I mean, I can't even figure out the logistics here of how that gets in. The grader is scratching his ball 'fro while he examines Mantle's? This sounds like a grading incident I'd make up as a rhetorical joke, not a real thing

Considering the leading TPG's "preservationists" is laughable at best. There is far too much $$$ involved. If you really had museum expert caliber people seeing to the care of your cards at PSA and SGC, there would be a lot more use of Mylar, discussion of preservation materials than there would be simply minting of cheap plastic slabs for profit. The HOF in Cooperstown looks at all of this kind of paranoia among collectors with amusement and disdain, if I had to guess. If someone donates cards to them (and doesn't just loan them a collection) - the first thing they do is bust the slabs and throw them in the trash.

Oh I agree, it’s a load of BS, but all of them claim to be preserving items as part of their business. They’re really there to fuel the $$$ stream and nothing else, but they lay much claim to preservation, to objective expert analysis, and more. As such, they shouldn’t be allowing any contaminants to get into slabs they’re sending out to customers at all, but I understand how dust and plastic and other non-pubic things get in there.

And yet the sheep will continue to line up to give them their money.

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For SGC at least, one less sheep now after yesterday! LOL.

Agreed. The preservation argument is marketing BS as it's finest. As if any collector who has been doing this for more than five minutes can't protect their cards just as well in One Touches or toploaders or Card Savers or album pages... You kind of have to try to be rough on some of those things anymore to damage them, and certainly people who know what they are doing aren't going to. It's been common knowledge that "baseball cards are worth something" from a household / pop culture perspective for multiple generations now. I'm not really worried about "preserving" my cards when I sub to SGC. I fall prey to the trend like everyone else and want to see what that flip will say...

I've even had more cards sent to me damaged in slabs than I have in top loaders. Loose fitting PSA slabs letting odd sized items smack around, SGC's black insert damaging the border of a card, etc.

I'm a blasphemer though, I use to keep my cards mostly in binder sheets but had to move on from that (I collect print defects and variants alongside my base sets, and it's a pain to move all the cards 1 slot every time I discover a new one...) to penny sleeves and top loaders. That took up too much space, so now 95% of my vintage cards are completely unsleeved and actually handled. All of my Topps/Bowman are pocket free and lined up in 1,600 count shoeboxes. Most of my T cards are naked too. I mostly worry about N cards preservation wise, they have not aged so well as the T cards and post-war vintage and fade.

What the Hell SGC I am out
 

Cards that move in their slabs (“rattlers”) used to bother me to no end. If the card moved constantly, I would bust the slab. Pretty soon, I was busting most of the ones I bought. Many cards in One Touches did the same thing. The thing about the movement is that while it can be annoying (especially the ones that do it egregiously) I’ve never seen it actually damage a card. I think the physics of most slabs is just such that it would be really difficult to do major edge damage to a card with normal handling. I wouldn’t suggest using a slab as an air hockey puck…

SGC’s jagged edge inserts - they used to be a lot more common than you see now - to me seem more problematic. SGC cards don’t move in the slab nearly as often as you see with PSA, but the potential for something really bad to happen there to me seemed a lot worse.

All of this in the name of grading. Sometimes it’s silly. A card in a toploader and penny sleeve generally won’t move. A card in a card saver won’t move. But oh, get your collection “preserved” with grading…


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I had a T220 Silver McAuliffe in, I think it was a 5, PSA holder. It was put into a PSA holder for a different size card, a T220 is a bit smaller than the modern standard size. So it smacked around, and during shipping, the top left corner got dinged up because the card, whenever it bounced around, was angled and it’s corner was smacking the internal bumper. I compared to the auction scan and sure enough, that corner ding wasn’t there when it was listed.

SGC I had a T card get a nasty gouge from. It was one of those cards that slipped behind the black gasket, but in so doing, only part of the left edge slid under the gasket. About half way down, the card got smushed in and indented by the black gasket.

And I don’t even keep graded cards, I crack ‘em. These may not be issues with the newest slabs, but I’ve never had a card get damaged in a top loader and penny sleeve. A penny sleeve allows some movement but it’s a soft cushion, unlike the SGC gasket.

Yeah, when I say cards that “move” are generally ok, I’m talking about ones slabbed in proper holders with the proper recessed dimensions on the rails. All of that goes out the window when they run out of the correct size, and that lazy streak kicks in and they just use whatever they have. Oddball and small sizes of course are always at more risk of having this happen. I’d chew PSA up one side and down the other, and make sure I got paid out if they ever damaged a card due to using the wrong slab.

SGC and the issue from awhile back of cards slipping behind the gasket was scary. Though they have worked to improve the gasket over the last 20+ years, I’m still just not a huge fan of the design. SGC slabs seem to work more like a picture frame with a mat, with the card sandwiched in there. If they do it right it works most of the time, but just doesn’t seem like the best design to me. PSA’s slab has more of a real enclosure, but the cards generally seem to move more within them. I guess everything is a trade off. Beckett had a good idea with the internal sleeve, but it seems to be poorly implemented in most cases because of the shoddy grade of plastic they use.


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Has SGC gotten better with gasket sizing? I had an oversized T206 that came in an SGC slab, and the gasket was the same size as the normal T206 one. The edges were a little smushed in, possible they were before and it was just a really tight but not harmful fit in the slab, but it seemed likeliest the card was damaged by the gasket because it wasn't really the correct size.

Beckett slabs, in my completely arbitrary opinion, are the least good looking. They are so thick and the card seems to be buried in the slab, losing something in the presentation. I think PSA and SGC at least look nicely presented. Beckett is annoying to crack open too.

I don't know that SGC has gotten better with the gaskets as much as they have just gotten different. My oldest slab that I still have from a submission I did myself was my childhood '56 Ted Williams that I sent to them back in 2006. The gasket in that one appears to be more almost like black cardboard than the shiny, plastic-like ones of today. (If you don't know, you probably haven't busted as many of their slabs as I have...) But the corner cutouts and overall angles on that one seem more blunted, less angular. I like it better.

As for fit, I've always thought it was tight. I don't do too much prewar, but even for like oversized pre-'57 vintage - in many cases you can't see much of a gap at all between the gasket and the card, and I wondered for some how they get them in there consistently. For all that I have busted however, even if tight - the cards have come out no worse for the wear.

Beckett is blah / yuck. Some laud their slab as the "most secure" but in reality that thicker plastic is brittle, and will crack / shard up easily if you set to work cracking one. I will agree they are the most difficult to bust, but not because of the strength of the plastic - it's because of the "shoebox lid" design (one half of the slab basically fits into the other like a shoebox) and figuring that out that most people have a hard time with it. The Beckett sleeve in the slab, assuming you get that far - is the worst. It's reminiscent of a mid-80's album page in thickness. I've never understood why they don't just use a regular, thin UP penny sleeve in those slabs, it would do the same job and look a hell of a lot better.

Read my thread about the SGC group sub. I labeled the Ryan a Milton Bradley variation. The original submitter did as well. Whoever entered it in, missed it. Sometimes they simply have to realize that the submitters know more than the employee there does.