The burst of the Pokemon card scene has seen many people begin collecting within this amazing hobby once more - I was one of them, discovering graded cards, flipped the hobby upside down for me; in a good way!
PSA, CGC, Beckett's are all giants - but there is one thing that's in common; they're all in the USA!
Collectors in the UK have longed for a company in the UK, which saw several companies and ambitious entrepreneurs take a deep dive into it (definitely not without any risk!). I myself took a deep interest too - PCG grading (Pocket Card Grading) was one company I noticed were in this for the passion, just like myself and the other collectors.
So I got in touch with the guys at PCG to find out more - to receive an amazing offer I could not turn down.
Prototype slabs were offered to me in exchange for feedback, and genuine opinion - so here's mine;
So I'd like to start with the communication and their approach.
The guys delayed it but for a good reason, which formally impressed me as I strongly believe a product should be quality, and not in a rushed mess. I humbly told them that I think this is acceptable, and most of my questions which I may have asked through social media contacts were answered very swiftly by the team.
I was shown two cards which I would receive in a graded state in their own product - two Pokemon which were indeed close to my heart, showing a very good research and detail identification, also customer engagement skill from the guys (well done!)
I noticed that they were running a lot of questions and polls to their audience on Instagram, trying to find out which label is possibly the best when it comes to design and how they can improve it - there was no rushing into things and that's what I think I loved the most from that perspective.
The slabs arrived about a week later!
Packaged neatly in a box which would clearly be displayed as "FRAGILE" which was the most respectful and cautious thing you could do to someone's products. Bubble wrap covered a very nicely presented little sheet, with their logo on the top of a sticker holding it together.
It was a really nice touch - but it matters the most when we get to the graded cards themselves.
Now please note that those are prototypes and will not be perfect, I will have some negatives and positives alike for those, but regardless, I am very chuffed to have these as part of my collection.
My two cards that came were Typhlosion 20/162 from the set XY Breakthrough, and Mega Gardevoir EX from the radiant collection of the Generations set.
You can see the actual slab designs and photos that I took of the ones I received to the left side of the writing.
Both got a reasonable five - I wasn't going to expect anything too high as they were freebies, but the fact that they were my top two favourite pokemon, was just simple enough.
Moving onto the design - I really liked the colour scheme of the slab's label, the bronze was exclusive to this sort of rating (8 and below I believe) and has a nice display of their logo in the background, with a very nice bold font making the text easily readable.
Feedback makes perfect.
What I didn't fully like about the label was how slightly misaligned they were - though I think this will definitely be better when the final product comes out. In my belief, a nice holographic touch could be added to those labels to make them look even better; but this is all down to my preferences and opinion.
I am a thorough enjoyer of CGC's crystal clear optics slab, so I'm not fully keen on the smoked out the plastic around the card's display area, but it is something other companies such as PSA do - however I think that maybe an innovation could be made here if the plastic slab itself looked different to help build its own reputation, only a suggestion.
There is a very neat addition at the back (shown below) which is a QR code that would take you to their website and provide you with necessary information about the card and how they actually marked down where the small misfits in the card were found - covering the grading process for you, and helping you find out the sub-grades too!
Above you can see 1) the QR code which helps you access the actual website, 2) the website itself, detailing what card it is and even giving your sub-grades for the card you have just scanned, and 3) a very in-depth, and interesting analysis on how they graded it, pointing out the flaws of your card and how the actual grading process went.
This hit a very good spot with me - I personally loved how they did this, showing how your card was graded, giving you better insight.
My final thoughts...
You should definitely give PCG a try - they are very fan-orientated and look to be promoting their company with great giveaways and much more.
I'm excited to see what the future holds for this company, and how it will grow together, and eventually, very ambitiously, become a top name in the card grading industry.