Pokemon TCG YouTuber banned by CGC for revealing “embarrassing” quality control

A Pokemon TCG YouTuber landed in some hot water with grading company CGC. After manually cutting cards to test CGC’s credibility, and receiving a near-flawless grade, CGC is now threatening legal action.

Pokemon TCG collection is a pretty serious business for some and the verification of cards by trusted graders is integral to its ecosystem. TCG cards in general can go for millions of dollars and even ex-NFL players can try to scam people with them.

Within the Pokemon TCG collector community, a niche group is interested in factory errors that can increase the value of seemingly worthless cards by up to ten times. Errors like misprints or miscuts where a machine misaligned the card and removes a portion are highly sought after and need to be graded for authenticity.

Pokemon TCG YouTuber Shiny Vert tested the quality control at major grader CGC by sending them some manually cut cards which they certified as factory errors. After posting the results to his YouTube channel, CGC banned him from future grading and sent “threatening” legal documents.

CGC bans Pokemon TCG YouTuber for their “mess up”

In a follow-up video, Shiny Vert detailed his banning and the subsequent threats of legal action for what he says is CGC’s “mess up”. “Y’all say you check the cards and do whatever to test them,” Shiny Vert clarified. “Y’all graded these as error cards, not me.”

“You put your logo on it, you put your label on it, you put them in cases, and sent it back to me,” he continued. He then read through a strongly worded email detailing his ban and his responsibilities as someone with a graded Pokemon TCG card containing “clerical errors”.

“They’re basically threatening me with legal stuff to get me to shut up,” Shiny Vert explained. According to Shiny Vert, his intention was never to profit from the cards he sent, only to see how seriously CGC took their Pokemon TCG grading.

He considered the cards he sent to be “very obviously altered”, and thought the tampering should be clear to anybody who grades Pokemon TCG cards professionally. “This was a shocking truth to me to find out they do not grade their cards properly,” Shiny Vert went on. “They should be embarrassed.”

Shiny Vert also raised questions about how many people may currently be impacted by substandard grading on the part of CGC. “I would highly recommend that you be extremely careful with this company,” he said.

He called CGC “the worst f**king company” he’s ever seen and reiterated what he sees as the problem. “I put a spotlight on something that shouldn’t be happening and they banned me.”