Message from PSA president
mexpo75
Posts: 1,310 ✭✭✭
It was nice to see the president address the wait times on cards. Hopefully things will continue to improve.
PackManInNC
1
mexpo75
Posts: 1,310 ✭✭✭
mexpo75
Posts: 1,310 ✭✭✭
mexpo75
Posts: 1,310 ✭✭✭
Comments
I hope they speed it up
Doesn't sound encouraging in the least bit. Their "big move" to a new building only increased their capabilities by 25%?? The growth in the sports card market alone has probably exceeded that every year for the past 3 or 4 years. Then you add in the surge in non-sports cards and PSA now expanding to accept submissions in Japan? How are things supposed to ever get better?
The interesting part of the presidents message is how tough it is to add quality graders to their staff. Steve nailed it on the head, does anyone who collects cards or posts on this board want them to hire unqualified people (graders, sealers, shippers, etc...) to handle their collectibles? I didn’t think so. Also keep in mind if they are hiring new staff, especially graders, that existing staff will be taken off their tasks to train these individuals. We choose to deal with PSA for several reasons, but probably the biggest of them is that they are and always will be the hobby leader. Your cards are worth more in PSA slabs, hence the ever growing amount of submissions they’re receiving. Steve is being transparent about their volume of submissions and turnaround times; we should all appreciate his honesty.
For brand new cards, you can hire a monkey to throw them in random 9 or 10 slabs.
Beckett has that market cornered.
Arthur
The funny thing is how inaccurate this is. For the big rookie 2018 MLB stuff there's actually a rather large disparity between PSA 10 and BGS 9.5 prices. If you read the Blowout forums it's pretty common for people to send stuff into PSA and then take everything that came back a 9 and send it to Becket for the 9.5. In some cases, like the really higher end stuff, a PSA 10 can pull 50%, 70% and even 100% more than a BGS 9.5.
I don't think that's due to random acts of monkeys.
Arthur
I think, no wait, I KNOW I would watch a TV show called ‘Random Acts of Monkeys.’
Curious about the rare, mysterious and beautiful 1951 Wheaties Premium Photos?
https://forums.collectors.com/discussion/987963/1951-wheaties-premium-photos-set-registry#latest
The point is that the cards are brand new, and should be damn near perfect. Let the monkeys grade those, and free up the highly-trained graders to grade cards that are less likely to be 9 or 10.
I'm glad PSA isn't sacrificing quality to expand capacity. The card doctors are always waiting for an opportunity to exploit weaknesses in the system. I'm just shocked at the 165% increase in submissions. I'm wondering where it's coming from. I don't think it's vintage as I'm not seeing glut of new vintage material hitting the market. I guess it's Pokemon and modern that is driving the growth.
Good take and I agree. Pokémon is huge— my daughter has collected them for years and shows me all the time YouTube videos on them (there are a ton). I really think we cannot under estimate the Pokémon market.
There's a first issue unopened wax box being auctioned in the upcoming Clean Sweep auction. Starting bid = $35,000!!!
The more graders the less chance the "grader of death" will grade your cards. Then again I guess there could be multiple "graders of death".
I would like to think that in 2019 they could hire someone that could grade cards as I listed on my submission sheet.
Or have someone that could follow up on the automatic e-mail reply of 'We are currently experiencing a high volume of emails and our response time is currently delayed.'
What a disappointment.
Only a 9+ day backlog on answering emails.
What a disappointment.