GAI was very legitimate at the beginning. After all, their principals, Steve Rocchi and Mike Baker had been with PSA from the early days and left to form their own company.
Mike Baker was PSA's most knowledgeable grader during his time there who probably set up the standards they used for grading so he took his expertise to GAI. Any of the "1st Graded" flips on a particular card is very likely to have been accurately graded based on the standards at that time around 2005 or so.
However, even those would not likely cross over at the same grade today with PSA or SGC.
By the same token, they are very unlikely to be trimmed or tampered with as I'm sure Baker himself probably looked at each card with this designation.
I know of no way to tell when they lost their way on card grading but there was certainly a year or two that they were legitimate. They were the corporate sponsor of the National one year shortly after the company was formed.
On autograph authentication, it was when Mike Guiterrez left the company that they lost their way. Basically all autographs submitted after his time are suspect although there are good examples out there as well.
On pack grading, it was when their expert Mark Murphy aka "The Baseball Card Kid" left. There are serial numbers that can be referenced on the packs to determine when they were graded and packs graded by Murphy will normally cross over at possibly a grade lower.
The advise given about cracking it out and resubmitting raw to me is not the way to go unless you have had very good success submitting cards and getting high grades back. Those usually go to the auction houses and high volume dealers who submit thousands of cards per year.
I would rather have a GAI graded 8 than a PSA 5 no matter the card. It may only bring PSA 7 money in an GAI 8 holder but it will bring well above 5 money.
Just my opinion of course.
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