General Forum

I watch a lot of people's youtube channels and am seeing a lot of talk about HGA grading. How long have they been around? Are people going to start looking elsewhere because of the bottleneck at PSA? I will say that the slabs are kind of sweet with the label being color coordinated with the card.

I think they popped up before the end of last year. I've seen a lot of people speak highly of them due to the turn around times. They only accept a handful (2,000?) of submissions per week, but I've heard it's getting harder and harder to get into the queue. Also, they seem to grade pretty hard, but as their name states, they apply a "hybrid" approach by taking a high quality scan of the card and letting a computer generate a grade, then someone manually reviews that. You can read more here https://hybridgrading.com/

I kind of like that they have a queue. I hate being in limbo not knowing how long til cards are delivered.

They are a newer company, currently they are working out of a store front in a strip mall. But as a start up, that isn't bad. I dig their labels too and they use a software to grade the cards so it isn't left to a single person to determine a grade. A few people have issue with them because whowver runs their social media can be very vocal, which I don't have a problem with. Also you will always have your negative people complaining about a new company but I am considering sending cards to them.

Being that they use software, I wonder how effective it is on bogus cards. I sent two Mantle Bazooka cards from the 60s to SGC and they both came back as counterfeit. I am considering submitting a few cards to HGA. Might be cool to get on the ground floor of something that has potential.

You can pick either the card's colors or the player's uniform colors for colors on the label. I think they also have a less colorful option. 

I think that is a nice touch!

Just for curiosity about those two Mantle cards, did SGC explain why they think the cards are counterfeit?

No, they gave no reasoning at all just rejected them both.

I heard good things about hga, the one compliant i heard is the cards move a little in the slab. I'm thinking about giving them a try with some mid level stuff