Comic grading company CBCS is shutting down and will no longer be accepting comics for grading as of April 17th. Apparently, this news is, "Hot off the presses," as people are getting emails, but I have not seen an official release to comic news outlets. Many are not surprised (and predicted this) as the parent company of CBCS is Beckett, and Beckett was bought out by the company known as Collectors...who also own PSA. If you haven't connected the dots yet, PSA moved into comic book grading somewhat recently. Hence, I guess Collectors looked at CBCS versus PSA, and the conclusion was made to shutter CBCS and avoid redundancy, considering how PSA may be newer at comic grading, but is the big name in card grading.
All of this makes me think that Beckett's card grading service probably has its days numbered as well and results in CGC and PSA being the two big names in comic grading, as of today (PGX still exists, but isn't especially popular). CBCS was often considered the second-place underdog to CGC, but it had some hardcore fans, and it is always good to have a degree of competition in the marketplace. With all these mergers and acquisitions, however, more and more power gets consolidated in fewer hands (this applies to lots of industries, honestly). There will undoubtedly be more discussion and thoughts on this as the news spreads.
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