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It is priority pricing. I agree with your assessment, this is going to hurt registry collectors. People will still send in PSA lottery cards (Marvel cards and pokeman come to mind). I hope that the pricing comes down, however if you have a supply of 9 months backlog and it is not stopping, I would also keep raising the price. It will also open the door to a new company if the quality of the new card is good. CGC who does comics introduced a new card grading system. Right now it does mostly pokemon cards, but I would be willing to try other cards. I do hope the prices level lower but with the modern cards blowing everything away, i just don't see it.
I actually made up a Value submission last week but held off on shipping because there was one more card I decided to add at the last minute. Looks like I won't be adding - or shipping - any cards now.There can't be any way this works out well for PSA - I would bet this dramatic (double!) increase in pricing not only reduces their submission volume by more than half but also drives many, many of their customers to the competition.On the value level, no one is going to pay $20 to have, for example, a 1972 hockey, football or baseball card graded when PSA 8 commons regularly sell for that or less. And I can't see many people wanting to pay $100 for a regular submission unless they are confident the card is going to sell for a minimum of $500. SMH.
Actually it completely makes sense. they can't possibly be making any money on $5 grading. They can get rid of huge overhead in number of graders, go for higher margin on fewer slabs and try to make it look like PSA grading is really premium grading as opposed to now where it is just a massive saturation of cards. Folks who want the "best collection" are still going to spend the money, watch and see. I am sure PSA would rather make $100 grading one card than $100 grading 20 cards(plus 20 times the labor cost)
Um, well the 1% are called such for a reason; and the other 99% of us find this not economical so no, I don't see too many of us sending cards in even though we want the "best collection".
Sardonic tone noted, don't shoot the messenger, I am giving you a business case for what PSA is doing. you know I am not a fan of PSA and qualifiers and half point grades and the fact they are really grading eye appeal and not true centering.... Not for nothing but the average wacky pack collector with average spending is not trying to PSA grade his entire collection.....so 1% varies by discussion. That collector who is a few cards away from being #1 is going to spend the money, watch and see. PSA getting $300 from that person for 3 cards is more lucrative to them than getting $300 to grade 60 cards, paying for that much extra labor, and saturating the PSA graded card market. Now the guy who spent $300 knows the chances his cards stay #1 is higher as the saturation of graded cards comes to a halt...PSA needs to flush out the backlog of cards they are on the hook to grade and move to a new model.
I understand the point you are trying to make, but just to clarify PSA had been charging $12 to grade a common card (from the Wacky era), not $5. The price has now nearly doubled to $20 (though they have lowered the minimum cards submitted under that tier from 20 to 10).I read online that PSA currently has a backlog of an estimated 9 MILLION cards to grade, with one customer alone submitting more than 400,000 cards. They have hired 125+ new graders to deal with the massive backlog but the pace of submissions has increased exponentially over the last few months and shows no sign of abating. So it sounds like the price increase is intended by PSA as a sort of firebreak to try to slow the firestorm of cards being submitted. Now they will just have to wait to see when the conflagration is finally stopped if it isn't actually their largest customer base they have extinguished instead.
Maybe if everyone actually stops grading their cards
If this happened, wouldn't the world come to an end - not with a bang but a whimper. Would we now have junk PSA? I guess I just don't understand the entire PSA craze, just like I don't understand the need for more than one earring in each ear or tattoos all over someone's body. If this is the end of the world as we know it, I'll feel fine.Just so you know, that was sarcasm - all but the I'll feel fine.
There is not much to understand. If you care about having a card in extremely nice condition, PSA offers the most efficient way to obtain that. If you don’t care, it is of no use to you.
That part I understand. What I don't understand is why it's so crazy now that there is a 9 million card backlog. I would be willing to bet that the number of collectors who really care is miniscule compared to just the number of cards that are waiting to be graded. This was supposed to be a hobby - something that you do in your spare time to have fun. It's become a very ugly business. It hasn't affected Wacky Packages as much because we are in a niche market. The sports card world has gotten crazy with PSA fever. I just sold a couple of unopened boxes of 1989 Low Number Upper Deck Baseball to a friend. He opened every pack to get one Ken Griffey, Jr. rookie to slab. He doesn't care about any of the other 1,079 cards in the box. That's what I don't understand. Maybe I'm just too old school.
I wonder how many really nice raw cards that turn up won't get graded now, even if they are tough to find in high grade condition.
Well, I know it won't bankrupt PSA, but I had nine nice NM/NM+ 15th series cards I was ready to grade (as part of a 20 card Value submission) that I now won't be. At $12 a card I was willing to risk my grading being off and having one or all come back PSA 7, but not at $20 per card (plus shipping).
PSA has been hijacked by a horde of speculators who see unopened packs of sports cards as a lottery ticket, not as something to collect. And, honestly, the card companies have become accomplices (I believe Panini sells their current football packs - with four cards inside - for $125 per pack!). These gamblers buy packs to rip, ship and flip them as soon as they return from PSA. This is as big a bubble as tulip mania, and IMO much more dangerous for the hobby than the bubble in the 1990s. Kids caught up in the frenzy are going to get burned and will swear off cards, leaving just the old school guys once again.
I think a lot of people are submitting mass quantities of brand new cards, like Topps Now stuff, to get a Gem Mint 10 grade. That I just don't get. It's new, was never in a pack, and was shipped in a sleeve! Why not just keep it that way?
How is PSA more efficient when your eye is far more discerning than PSA graders?
Even getting the older stuff slabbed doesn't always make sense unless it's super rare and you want to authenticate it. Is the joke on a Wacky Package funnier because the sticker is well centered and has no dinged corners or has been graded a 9 or 10? Do we collect for the enjoyment of what's in the product or do we collect as an investment? I do the former. Earlier in life I did the latter, but now I just keep what I like and don't worry about anything else.
Liking items to be in nice condition does not necessarily mean one is collecting for investment.
Agreed!
but...you don't need PSA to define nice condition....so investment value is of course part of it. My keeper collection is super nice and meets my eye appeal. Why on earth would I need to have them all slabbed by PSA? the ONLY reason I would do that is resale investment value. PSA is not any smarter about what I like than me..... and we can see PSA is grading eye appeal, not true card centering.
Speaking of...
so of course I buy another collection(series 1-15) and the white backs in series 2, 14 and 15 are as nice and white and pristine as any I have ever seen. I can almost smell gum these seem so fresh. These cards clearly stayed with one owner and stored away. The only issue is some have the rubber band feel along the edge like at first the owner rubber banded them before sticking the sets in plastic bags by set. PSA candidates that will never see the light of day with PSA.....