[coimbre 21]

I use all three for varying reasons and it all depends on your own collection, preferences, and goals. There is no 100% single right answer for everyone. One reason I use Beckett is that it's simply much easier for me because I can drop off and pick here in Dallas and get to know the staff but I also started with BVG to stake out a claim on a vacant 1966 Topps Venezuelan registry, rather than chase the #1 set on PSA. I fell into the same path with SGC when I purchased a sizable lot of 1972 O Pee Chees.

For modern relic or thicker cards, Beckett holds an advantage particularly when tying modern graded cards to a registry particularly player registries which scale out much larger than PSA. PSA's holders are also way too big and ineffective for storage on those thicker modern cards even for something of the thickness of a 2008 Topps Sterling base or parallel non-relic.

I personally think SGC has the best eye appeal and cost, and they support Pre-War cards very well, but some of the cards I have look to be too tightly wedged between the black holder. That's my only knock on them.

For resale value, I completely agree PSA is the better way to go but that's not a 100% iron clad rule but a good general one. They're the clear registry front-runner which drives their graded cards and also run a tighter ship although they could use some updating of their database structure.

Regardless and despite raw card purist criticisms, and I have many raw card only sets, eyeballing a raw card can't catch what a 10x loupe and a quality grader at BVG/BGS, PSA, or SGC should/can especially when buying a substantially priced card online