In 2009, a group of certified Pokemon card experts in Japan came together to help private collectors, enthusiasts and resellers, grade Pokemon cards. Total of, eight ex-grading company employees came together and started this project. At the early stage, PCG was a private grade company and open to existing club members, only. At this time, PCG, also known as Pokemon Card Grading, was re-grading and authenticating the existing grades on Pokemon card by PSA, CGC, BGS and other smaller companies, respectively as they started their process.
What this means, is that, a club member, who sent in a number of their Pokemon cards to be graded to a respective company, have received them back with grades on them. Out of that, grades on some of the cards are not appropriate, according to the card owner and that they should’ve been graded higher. This is where PCG’s exclusive services came into play, the cards which were suspected to achieve a possible higher grade, were submitted to one of the certified Pokemon card graders. The grader would thoroughly go over the grading process, with those cards and determine if a higher grade can be achieved by resubmitting them.
If errors were found in the grading process and the cards indeed deserved a higher grade, the certified PCG member would recommend the card owner to resubmit the specific cards for a regrading process, accompanying with a letter of certification, describing how the grades should change. Otherwise, requesting a letter of declarations, from the grading company, pin-pointing the specific flaws and how the grading was completed.
Within a year, thousands of cards were resubmitted (free of cost), with hundreds of happy club members with higher and deserved grades on their cards. Every day, hundreds of cards get graded and vast majority of those cards are graded before their deserving grades, because companies tend to play it safe and follow and high and low-grade ratio, when it comes to mass grading cards. This is something our company fought against for years, until PCG went global and transferred HQ to New York.
When PCG went public, they changed the grading process forever. By involving innovative technology to help achieve the most accurate grade in the world for any Pokemon card. The goal is to avoid human-error and reduce it to the minimum. Before PCG, it was almost impossible to grade cards on a 100% accuracy level, 100% of the time. Some cards always faced the false judgement.
At PCG, we use a multi-platform 3rd Scanner to inspect cards to their nearest threads. But that is just the tip of the iceberg, combining the vast amount of rendered data, to a evaluate and come to a preliminary four-factor grade consultation is harder part. This process is so complex, that PCG designed their own AI to steer clear of any human processing errors. This is another reason; our grading process is the fastest in the industry.
Finally, the graded results are reevaluated by certified Pokemon cards experts, who are responsible to make sure the grade was appropriate, with no flaws. The entire goal of these layers of verification is to make sure that the Pokemon card owners are never neglected or overlooked with a grade that seemed okay at that time. Because, at PCG, if it is okay, it is not good enough. Perfection is what we demand, and that is exactly what we deliver with ever grade printed.