Above is a link to a thread on a card forum that discusses speculation that a certain submitter has an inside contact at BGS and has been quietly getting amazingly consistent black label grades.
The thread is over 1,500 posts long despite only being a few days old so I apologise if the thread has reached a conclusion that vastly differs from what the title implies.
If this is true, it’s a very stark reminder that you should pay for the card not the label.
Mods/Admins - wasn’t sure where to post this, maybe Sour Grapes? Sorry if this was the wrong section. Please move if need be.
Wow - this was a thorough and clearly laid out report - in my mind it’s hard to not be suspicious. This could potentially be an easy solve IF BGS can tie back the grader to the card (I think it’s more likely than not that the grader signs off on the card or something) and if BGS is actually willing to conduct such an internal investigation.
Ouch, but this has crossed my mind before. I mean, of all the employees at these grading companies, there must be a grader that enjoys cards himself or knows someone and will grade occasionally in favor of a higher grade. Not to mention the black labels are sooooo hard to discern from quad 9.5 at times. It’s just crazy to think this has not come up sooner. If the cards are clean enough and can be argued for the black label, then nothing can come of it. I actually love the looks of the BGS case with 4 sub grades, but sometimes I have no idea what truly separates a 9.5 from a 10.
For the record, I do not own any BGS, just PSA for reasons it is easier to submit my cards and popularity.
So I read the accused response on page 9 of the forum website. Very convincing response from the accused, but still very suspicious.
Biggest argument is that the accused simply has an incredible eye and submits so many cards that getting black labels in inevitable, BUT aren’t there others that do the same and don’t have equal results? @garyis2000, what is your experience with black labels? You grade your submissions very harshly, but have you ever had even close to similar success?
His other argument was that he grades “easy” cards, but who knows if that really means anything. Definitely a fascinating read and I don’t want to look to into it, but still very interesting.
The reason it looks like I’m getting X number of black labels “in a row” is because in every list of grades I’ve ever received BGS has always grouped black labels together. They do this because that’s the way the grades are fed into their label matrix for printing. Black labels are printed together, gold labels together, silver labels together, etc.
That makes sense, we don’t know how big and how many other cards were in his submission, apparently he’s giving a forum member access to his grading account to view the data.
Admittedly I know very little about the grading process for Beckett, but I do know that the sequence number for cards at PSA is very important (i.e. the order you submit cards in is the order they come back graded in). It strikes me as odd that cards are taken out of whatever sequence they have and put in a different order to suit the slabbing process.
I’d love to hear from a seasoned BGS submitter if this is a thing or not. Again, I’m not pretending I know anything about how BGS operates.
This wouldn’t be the first time that BGS is having their integrity questioned about higher grades also.
It shows further in the thread that BGS lists serials consecutively not grouped by each label, there is a picture of 8 or so consecutive serials with mixture of black label and pristine.
I think the longer we trek into collecting the more things like this become as issue. Old case the better as Gary said but newer labels will always appeal more to the general population of collectors. When it’s all said and done nothing will come of it regardless.
Hard to believe his explanation. I know many very large submitters of newish product and getting a black label, or any 10, is very rare. His results, well, I can’t buy that they’re legit. I just can’t see it.
There is also links to some of his cards with black labels and pristine with noticeable edge wear and other condition issues, hard to make a case for it just being a coincidence or him having the chosen black label eyes.
