BGS Turnaround Time: Up to One Year

[Dpeck100]

I can't speak to the proper way to submit at the National for a quick turn around but I do think it is just additional evidence things are not going well from an operational standpoint with them.

I would be so pissed off if I sent in cards to a company and they charged me upfront and we are now past 12 months and they still have my cards.

If they were to go BK you would have very little chance of getting the grading fees back and I would honestly be petrified about getting the cards. To a lot of us that submit cards for grading many of them you can't easily replace and in some cases ever so it isn't just a monetary issue.

[swarmee]

True, the taking the funds for a year and "holding cards hostage" thing is crazy. Surprised there hasn't been a class action lawsuit yet. It's not like all these major submitters aren't either on here, blowout, or CU.
COMC stopped submitting to BGS months ago.

[ajjohnsonsoxfan]

Have been tracking and buying some modern cards recently and was surprised at the premium BGS gets vs. PSA. In some cases it's 2x for a BGS 10 vs. a PSA 10. And if you have a BGS black label (which is all 4 sub grades with a 10) it's even more. It's my impression that BGS has a huge market share advantage over PSA in modern cards. If BGS implodes that would be really bad for modern and really bad for the health of the hobby in general.

btw for you vintage guys, I learned this terminology recently...(many of you might already know this but thought I would share in case you were like me with your head in the sand on all things shiny)

BGS 9.5 are called "Gems" and BGS 10's are "Dimes"
BGS grades on 4 sub grades for Centering, Corners, Edges and Surface
A minimum Gem is 3 9.5 sub grades and 1 9 sub.
Cards with "9" centers are worth the least and many shun them.
BGS 9.5 with 9.5 for all sub grades is called "A Quad or True Gem" and get a premium
BGS 9.5 with all 9.5 sub grades and either 1 or 2 10 sub grades is called "true gem plus or monster subs"
As you can imagine subs matter in particular on low pop and rare cards

[Peter_Spaeth]

BGS 9.5 is the equivalent of PSA 10; BGS 10 and Black Label are very rare and essentially gimmicks IMO. PSA 10s as far as I can tell substantially outsell even quad 9.5s on cards like Trout rookies and probably everything else. Look it up.

[swarmee]

Originally Posted by Peter_Spaeth

BGS 9.5 is the equivalent of PSA 10; BGS 10 and Black Label are very rare and essentially gimmicks IMO. PSA 10s as far as I can tell substantially outsell even quad 9.5s on cards like Trout rookies and probably everything else. Look it up.

Exactly; probably 1% of cards submitted get a BGS 10, so if that's the reason you're submitting to them, you're buying lottery tickets. Most people who submit can't even tell the difference between a "true gem" and a pristine card, and BGS doesn't publish their distinctions. If there are millions of 50/50 centered cards nowadays, why aren't there more BGS 10 centering subgrades?
PSA is half the price and outsells them on the 10/9.5 for the vast majority of items.

And yes, some people pay others to clean their shiny modern cards for them, mostly taking off dust and fingerprints, since those can lead to lower grades on chrome cards.

[AGuinness]

Originally Posted by swarmee

And yes, some people pay others to clean their shiny modern cards for them, mostly taking off dust and fingerprints, since those can lead to lower grades on chrome cards.

I still can't wrap my head around this... graders would actual detract for a bit of dust on a card? And collectors would pay for somebody else to remove it? Submitting to a grader carries risk, but that it offset by insurance (through USPS or the submission fee), but sending to a FOURTH party seems to incur even more risk without an offset.

Depending on how it works, the year wait could be beneficial - if somebody submitted an auto-refractor-thingy of Juan Soto (just an example, not even sure there was one last year) last November, they probably got in on a lower tier of the fees. Of course, they missed out on potentially cashing in during the mean time. And anybody who submitted cards of Robbie Cano or some others probably missed out on some decent money by not getting their slabs back quickly.

The whole thing is crazy. I would never ever send my cards away knowing I wouldn't get them back for a year, much less a few months.