What Is CSG Grading?

CSG (Certified Sports Guaranty)was a third-party sports card grading company launched in February 2021 by Certified Collectibles Group (CCG) — the same parent company behind CGC comic book grading, CGC stamps, and NGC coin grading. CSG graded cards on a 1 (Poor) to 10 (Gem Mint) scale with half-point increments, sealed in its own holder. In July 2023, CCG folded CSG into its non-sport trading card brand to form CGC Cards. CSG no longer accepts new submissions under its own name — but a card already graded and slabbed by CSG keeps its grade and authenticity guarantee, honored today by CGC Cards.

• Two label eras.Cards graded in 2021 shipped in CSG's original green label, topped by a nonstandard Pristine 10 grade. In March 2022, CSG replaced it with a black, silver, and gold label and renamed its standard top grade to Gem Mint 10— matching the terminology PSA, BGS, and SGC already used — while adding a rare Perfect 10 tier reserved for cards judged flawless under magnification. Both label eras are legitimate; neither is worth more than the other purely for being older.
• Same scale collectors already know.Whichever label a card carries, the numeric grade reads the same way as PSA/BGS/SGC/CGC — centering, corners, edges, and surface drive the number. See How to Grade Sports Cards for what each of those four factors actually measures.
• Still authenticated, still tracked.A CSG cert number looks up through CGC Cards' systems today — the 2023 merger changed the brand name and label, not the underlying authenticity guarantee or grading record.
• Thinner resale market than the big three. CSG only operated independently for about two years, so far fewer cards carry its label than PSA, BGS, or SGC holders. Buyers unfamiliar with the brand sometimes price a CSG-graded card below an equivalent PSA or BGS grade purely on name recognition.

1. Sell it as-is first.Check sold comps for that exact card in a CSG holder before assuming you need to do anything — see How Much Are My Sports Cards Worth? for pulling real comps instead of guessing at a discount.
2. Crossover only if the math works.Cracking a CSG slab and resubmitting to PSA or BGS costs a fee and card-out risk with no guarantee of the same or better grade — only worth it if the resale gap for that specific card clearly covers the cost. See What Is a Grading Crossover? before sending anything in.
3. Submitting a new card today goes to CGC Cards. The CSG name and green/black-silver-gold labels are retired for new business — see What Is CGC Card Grading? for where that submission actually goes now.

Against PSA, BGS, and SGC, CSG never built the same submission volume or resale depth in its roughly two years as a standalone brand — those three still hold the deepest buyer pools for cards worth grading at all. Its direct successor, CGC Cards, inherited CSG's submission pipeline plus CGC's existing strength grading Pokémon, Magic, and other non-sport trading cards — a broader cross-hobby footprint than CSG had on its own.

Confirm the exact card with Identify & Research — free-path first (on-device OCR, catalog match, and fingerprints). For where CSG submissions go today, see What Is CGC Card Grading?. For the established major graders, see PSA vs BGS vs SGC vs CSG: Which Grading Company Should You Use?. For what a grade actually measures, see How to Grade Sports Cards, and for the submission process and fee math, see How to Submit Cards for Grading, or open the full guides library.