What are all the beefs people have with GMA other than no ROI? Not interested in using GMA whatsoever. Just curious
What’s the point of a grade if it isn’t consistent or recognized?
How do you figure GMA can handle the difficult pokémon submissions that require expertise when there isn’t even a mention of anything pokémon on their site? How much is actually going into handling and grading the cards when they are $3.50 each regardless of the card?
Choose their custom option and give your whole collection 11s. 
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yea…I would never use GMA but I see people relate the mess at PSA and BGS to GMA. Which made me curious about what else has happened at GMA. I’m already aware of everything you have just stated minus the fact about the customer option. They seem to deny that they let customers choose grades and they claim that some of the graders that work at PSA also work for them and mind you I’m using the word claim.
lol yea that’s hilarious
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Had some GMA 10 cards, they were about PSA 6-7 lol. Case itself is really cheap and card inside can be loose.
GMA isn’t a grading company.
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They’re pretty much the worst grading company. Anything and everything you’d want from a grading company (authentication, reliability and validity in grades, financial guarantee, market share) isn’t present at all. I’ve seen GMA grade those fake Chinese Pokemon cards and that’s all I needed to know about them.
There are other lesser-known grading companies (SGC, KSA) that have at least some kind of reputability, but I frankly consider any GMA graded card to be ungraded with some really painful clamshell packaging I need to remove.
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Surprised it’s still a company.
I’ve heard of KSA, I didn’t know they had any reputability.
It mostly comes from hockey cards, being Canada-based they have some ability to work with the market there. I don’t even know if they do Pokemon, but if they did I’d put some credence in their condition rating. Not as much as PSA or Beckett, but it’s not GMA.
Yea that’s atrocious. I called gma once a few years back before I knew the popular opinion and facts were that they were garbage and they said they hire graders from PSA and denied the whole “pick your grade” thing they got going on. I was more wondering if people have against better judgement used them and been screwed by them. But yea you do wonder how they’re still afloat as a company, it doesn’t really make sense. Must get used by a lot of sports collectors.
That makes sense.Wish there were more reputable grading companies, but at the same time I think our market might prosper from there being the limited two or three big ones
It doesn’t cost them a lot to buy cheap slabs from china and print a label. They essentially don’t provide anything else so can charge $3.50 per card. Not to hate on the little guy but it’s probably just him slabbing the cards in his basement or garage. GMA is scammy itself and will mostly appeal to Scumpagprattes who are looking to pull one over on uninformed buyers.
They show a “GMA office” full of people who are doing non-card related things in a big city:
Actual address(very residential):
Weird that an office inside his house would have skyscrapers painted on the windows. lol
Take a look around:
goo.gl/maps/EvHkB2WEQ1L3aHT79
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@rattlebear, where did you find that photo on their site? Google image search shows that they ripped the photo from “Network office solutions” on Facebook lol.
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Added by Alan Karpuch, the owner of GMA.
www.crunchbase.com/person/alan-karpuch#section-overview
www.google.com/maps/contrib/115083094916214556743/photos/@28.1725948,-82.5655027,16.5z/data=!4m3!8m2!3m1!1e1
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Didn’t realize that the word for tall buildings that sc the sky is censored and tried to edit my post. Thought I had a mild stroke while typing the original. lol
edit: oh, it’s because of the r word thought maybe 9-11 hahah
Yea I was already not going to ever use GMA but this is good to know.
How is GMA still around people ask? They grade other languages apart from English and Japanese. Similar to PCA it will have some popularity in those communities that collect the other languages.
PSA simply isn’t an option for those people cause they don’t grade other languages outside of base set, for beckett you end up with a full term pregnancy for your cards pretty much, and i don’t think any other ones have much of a big enough name to be well known in Europe. They are also pretty cheap.
For quite some people, local companies like GMA and PCA might be the only real option.
Not defending them of course. But PSA’s different language policy already rules them out completely for lots of European players and collectors that collect their own language over importing English product for themselves.
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scratch that i’m an idiot and had GMA confused with MGA XD nevermind
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