Is This A Good Idea?

ElvisP

Should PSA have 2 different divisions? One would be for vintage cards pre-1980 and one for 1980 and up. I would think that a vast majority are modern cards. I know people send in hundreds and thousands of cards at one time which severely clogs the system, many if not most times the grading costs more than the card is worth. By having a dedicated section for vintage cards people with the more valuable cards would not have to wait the same 5-6 months that modern collectors wait. I know this is a huge generalization and there are of course many exceptions. I admit I do not collect modern so I am prejudice but is it fair to make vintage collectors wait as long as modern collectors when modern collectors are the ones clogging the system with these huge submissions. Thoughts?

PROMETHIUS88

Move valuable cards(over $100) have to be submitted as regular sub which doesn't take as long. And if we are talking under $100 value cards in bulk, honestly, what's the difference between a 1978 Topps common that is worth $10 and a 2018 card that is worth $10? Truth is, it's probably more important to get the 100 current day cards back more quickly than it is 100 say 70's commons back as the market changes faster on the newer stuff. By the time you get the cards back in 3-5 months the player might have fallen off the charts. Ohtani cards dropped significantly by the end of the year and the difference in values between when they submitted them and when they got them back probably wasn't a positive one.

burghman

I also recall hearing somewhere that the massive influx of non-sports cards - Pokémon, for example - is a larger contributor to recent wait times. If they haven’t already done so, I would think a split between sports and non-sports would be more appropriate.

yoda99

I hate Pokemon. Why do people buy that crap? ANYTHING else is better.

dontippet

So if 80% of submissions are non-sport, and 20% are sports, if they broke up into two divisions, they would probably put 80% of graders to non-sport and 20% to sport. That wouldn't solve anything. If you split up 50/50, then the non-sport division would be even more backed up.

I agree that dividing it up may be a good idea, but to improve turnaround times, they would also have to increase their number of employees.

krisd3279

The only part of the system that should be different based on the type of card or object should be the graders themselves. I would think the rest of the system as far as logging, intake, encapsulation, shipping is exactly the same. It seems like things would be most efficient as a single system. As far as the graders are concerned I would hope different types of items are being routed to appropriate expert graders so everyone gets the best and most timely evaluation. I think splitting the whole system into multiple would introduce a lot of inefficiencies.

daltex

What about when someone wants to submit both his 1978 Greg Minton and their Pokemon card?

PROMETHIUS88

@daltex said:
What about when someone wants to submit both his 1978 Greg Minton and their Pokemon card?

The 1978 Topps Greg Minton card needs a special grader all to itself. One guy that is employed to grade only that card.