PSA customer update..
olb31
Posts: 3,352 ✭✭✭✭✭
I read through it. And I appreciate the transparency. Sometime soon PSA will unveil some new changes for grading and their costs, procedures, etc. Things I would like to see and things that should help PSA with the overflow of submissions:
1) Minimum orders for bulk (500 cards or more) - limits the number of customers PSA has to deal with that may have questions, but still provides a decent cash flow (500 for $10 each, $5,000 order)
2) For registry people - have cheaper submission with only commons (50 for $400). Only slab if the card grades a certain number.
a) 1972 and up psa 8 and higher
b) 1951 to 1972 psa 7 and higher
This can be loosened up if need be. But commons with grades lower are worthless and have no resale value. The cost of the slab would be more than the card is worth. Plus it could speed up the "registry" orders by not slabbing. Could save several minutes to 15 or more minutes depending on how many don't fit requirements. Doesn't sound like much, but if a grader grades 10 of these orders per day and they save 6 minutes per order that could save them one hour per day and could quite possibly help grade 11 orders instead of 10. It would add up over time. I have some of these and outside of donating them to Goodwill, they just take up space, Zero chance of selling them.
3) Limit the number of options of grading. 1) Bulk, 2) registry 3) High dollar cards. This just an example it could more. Just don't give the customer 10 or 15 options of grading. Helps simplify for the customer and for PSA.
4) Break up the orders based on years. Each order will need to have certain years included. the years should be determined on the average quantity PSA receives. So if you only collect new cards, you can submit your order to those graders. 2016-2021, 200 cards at $25 apiece, 1998 - 2015 250 cards at $20 each, and the rest would fall under #1 above but be 1997 and older (500 for each order). Obviously this is just a guess on my behalf. PSA would have he details on the years that are most sent in and break this up accordingly. I was just showing an option.
5) Simplifying options, upping minimum order amounts, seems to assist with customer service staffing, provides PSA with a nice revenue stream without flooding the post office and PSA offices with tons of packages. Some decisions will not fit everyones pocket book or desire, but can be modified as appropriate as time goes on.
Comments
nope.
I hope at some point again I can send in a 100 card lot of sports and non-sports, mixed years above 1970, which includes a smorgasbord of the best from the non-elite boxes that I rip. It was quite fun getting USPS boxes back of PSA graded cards. with all sorts of stuff, back like that. I don't see it happening again. It wasn't a business then. it was hobby fun.
I like the set registry proposal.
Collecting 1970s Topps baseball wax, rack and cello packs, as well as PCGS graded Half Cents, Large Cents, Two Cent pieces and Three Cent Silver pieces.
how about 1 card for $100 each?
of course. until very recently, thats always been an option. and will likely remain one.
I'd like to respond but first I'd like to know if you use a bulk submitter or have over 500 cards generally to send?
Secondly do you have registry sets?
I ask this because the general rule of thumb i go by is that the best ideas are the ones generated that do not benefit the idea creator.
couple of counter points...
telling people they cant participate in the registry unless they build a set above a psa 7 is nonsense. imo, the registry is what help propel psa to being the premier tpg. a lot of your proposals are geared towards the money line of thought vs the collecting line of thought. im not saying they dont make sense on paper or in theory though.
i have a ton of cards that were subbed that i knew would come back as 3s or 4s, but they mean something to me in one way or another. the grade was not the primary objective. what about the guys that want to get their childhood or dads cards graded? they cant because they are beaters? they cant participate in the registry? they cant get slabbed for simple collecting ocd conformity?
in regards to the qty proposals, 95% of the collector base doesnt want or perhaps even afford to submit 500 cards at a time. conversely and if they did, they wouldnt all be from 2016-2021 cards or whatever 5 year span you mentioned. i have stuff as early as the 1800s all the way thru 2021 bowman. even w psa’s existing breakdown, it takes a while to compile the 10 card minimum to fill out a sub. i usually end up throwing a card i really wouldnt grade under normal circumstances just to get the sub ball rolling. it would be even more frustrating having to fill up 50 knowing that if they dont “at least get a 7” that ive wasted $400. have you seen whats been popping w grades lately? new 7s seem to be the old 8s and 9s. no way jose. it would take years to compile 50 cards that i felt could actually get a 7 these days.
i do like where your head is at in regards to speeding things up. and it makes a lot of sense from that standpoint. from a collecting standpoint it just feels very constrictive for existing registrants and extremely cost prohibitive towards any new entrants that would be interested in subbing & building sets.
commons from the 50's lower than 7 have no resale value , hmmmmmmm. so this is implying the only registry sets out there with any value are graded 7.0 or higher . hmmmmm
Todd has suggested that future specials would be offered with registry set collectors in mind so I do hope that will still be the case. For the set registry to remain a viable pursuit for self-submitters, the cost of submitting has to at least be a tenable one. It is pretty difficult to justify spending $20 to grade a card that is worth $10 in a PSA 9 holder, as many from the 1970s are.
Collecting 1970s Topps baseball wax, rack and cello packs, as well as PCGS graded Half Cents, Large Cents, Two Cent pieces and Three Cent Silver pieces.
yes. and getting hit w a returned raw card because it didnt 7 would be even more difficult to swallow. imagine getting 42 sixes and only 8 sevens for $400 on your first sub back? would you want to ever try completing the set after only getting to add 8 cards outta a 700 card set?
^ and after waiting over a year to finally get them back?
btw: i also think enforcing ANY type of grade minimum would cause an even bigger pandemic of cards being trimmed and/or altered.
i sold a psa 8 1957 for $30. baseball. it costs at least $10 per card to grade, probably higher now. 1956 and back you could do psa 6, maybe but barely. value wise
as far as my suggestions, this is just to get started when grading starts back up. not necessarily forever. i don't think it would be smart to start back where they left off.
to mcvillage, i do have one registry set that i am missing one card on. i occasionally look for these cards, but not often. but the registry is the main difference between psa and the others, imo. i think psa should do what they can to keep it going strong.
bulk 500 - psa completely overwhelmed their post office with orders. it takes more people to handle more orders from start to finish this includes customer service. waste of psa's time to grade 10 cards at a time at $20 each. each order should be more substantial $$$ wise. i just picked a number but it should be substantial to assist psa with time constraints. they just finished logging in the orders may 18 and haven't been taking new orders for 2 months.
500 is too many.
You'd cut out most people and drive people to bulk submitters...which i don't think is a good idea for several reasons.
Maybe 250 is reasonable. 500...no casual collector has 500 cards in any reasonable amount of time to send in.
No, I'd prefer a lower submission rate for set registry collectors so submitting pack fresh cards would remain a viable option.
Not having the cards holdered would be tough, sure, but let's face it, is getting a PSA 7 1978 common that you can sell for 2 bucks any better? Those cards should not be submitted in the first place.
Collecting 1970s Topps baseball wax, rack and cello packs, as well as PCGS graded Half Cents, Large Cents, Two Cent pieces and Three Cent Silver pieces.
again, who said anything about selling? and i certainly would never suggest that someone could not or should not sub their card. even if its only worth $2 in the eyes of someone else.
apparently there is a wrong way to collect?
so you sold 1 psa 8 57 common for $30 so that must be the going rate for all commons and there must be no demand for anything below.
some people actually collect sets on a budget so even when the economics aren't there for most , they are for the individual. they would be happy to get their card in a holder to complete their set regardless of the grade, they have no interest in paying hundreds for a psa 7 or 8 when they could pay 20 for a psa 5 or 6
You are misunderstanding my point, Bob, and creating an argument where there is none. Of course there is no "wrong way to collect." Bottom line, I'd like to see a reasonable submission rate for set registry collectors, which is something Todd has already alluded to in previous posts. For those collectors who submit common cards from the 1970s or 1980s, the current submission rates, even before the moratorium, are simply cost prohibitive for those cards.
Collecting 1970s Topps baseball wax, rack and cello packs, as well as PCGS graded Half Cents, Large Cents, Two Cent pieces and Three Cent Silver pieces.
Whatever you say, Bob, LOL.
Collecting 1970s Topps baseball wax, rack and cello packs, as well as PCGS graded Half Cents, Large Cents, Two Cent pieces and Three Cent Silver pieces.
no, tim. im not trying to argue w you. rather just shocked to see you say that certain cards shouldnt be subbed. especially knowing actual collectors sub for personal joy and many times the monetary incentives take a back seat.
again, said it many times that i respect the hell outta you. sorry for ruffling your feathers.
No worries, Bob, it's all good. My intention was certainly not to suggest that certain cards should not be submitted for personal reasons. Collecting is ultimately a very personal pursuit. That said, I think all of us would prefer to minimize his/her losses (from a strictly cost per card basis) when submitting to PSA and the unfortunate reality is that many common cards from the 1970s and 1980s, even in high grade, are not worth the cost of submitting them. For those collectors for whom that is not a drawback, more power to them.
Collecting 1970s Topps baseball wax, rack and cello packs, as well as PCGS graded Half Cents, Large Cents, Two Cent pieces and Three Cent Silver pieces.
100%. i just think it would be a shame to prevent someone from doing what most wouldnt or deem stupid. there are collectors out there that want a particular card in every grade from a 1 to 10. obviously there are people that want to rip an ‘88 fleer basketball box and grade every card outta that box. others that might rip through a ton of vintage 75 packs solely to land a personally pack pulled pete lacock and couldnt care less if it ends up only grading out a 4oc or 5st.
like i said early in the thread, yes, from a speed or profit standpoint, the grading or slabbing nothing less than a 7 sounds good on paper.
eta: not to mention, creating such a rule would only ramp up trimming operations and incentives.
I guess I don't understand the minimum grade requirement. I mean surely the graders are not the ones doing the encapsulation. I can't imagine that as a possibility.
I admit this is mere conjecture on my part, but I've always assumed that the backlog is in Grading. That every other part of the operation is comparatively low-skilled and can be scaled up or down relatively easily. If that's the case, then none of this is likely to have much of an effect on throughput.
I do understand the argument for fewer orders generating more revenue each, but I think it's clear that that isn't the vision PSA has for itself in the near future, at least. Over the course of the past year we've seen "Bulk" go from a minimum of 50 (100 to get the lowest rate) to 20 to 10 (I'm pretty sure) and a name change to "Value" because, let's face it, a ten card bulk submission sounds ridiculous.
If I had to guess a common sense approach to reopening all levels and not overwhelming the system, I'd set a limit on cards per level per day. I mean does PSA even accept submissions that aren't generated online? So if there is capacity to grade 11,000 cards per day, make it so Bulk or Value or whatever submissions can't be completed if 7000 cards have already been completed at that level for that day. If there is still a need to divide that tier, then either divide or aggregate that number. Similarly for higher levels. Easy to tweak and no public announcement of the numbers need be made, and SuperExpress and higher could remain unlimited like now. Sure this would mean that Bulk orders would cut off at 12:02 the first few weeks or months after reopening, but your cards would need to be out of your possession for a much shorter length of time.
I do not know about all of you but I am going to be really ticked that I bought 50-60 1994 Topps Sam Mills looking for 1 at a shot at a 10 for my Basic Topps set if I cannot sub it eventually. I would also like to think it will be graded fairly and accurately. Once they can get that down, I may sub again. Even if I have to wait a year.
I love this idea. There would be pushback from those who are not internet savvy, and you'd have to find some way to avoid the big bulk submitters (4SC, PCS, etc) dominating that daily limit. But in general it makes a ton of sense to determine true capacity and then limit intake to match and NOT EXCEED.
I'm going to go in the other direction on this... How about they leave grades, quantities, and tiers as they were and just add staff, improve systems, and charge a little more than they used to?
I get that they want to get cut in on the $ value creation - but if you really think about it, their costs go down as they scale up - so margin improves. Bump up all of the old pricing 50% and their margin improves further.
I don't think that their product has a "Warren Buffet Moat" around it as much as some might think. They are clearly the big dog for grading companies, but if they decide to do any of the extreme things being bandied about, I am not sure that many won't jump ship, and that a competitor won't look to slide into the old, more comfortable zone to grab that share.
Bosox1976
For the first few weeks or months?
Forever....it's not like there are 500,000 cards out there to be graded as a finite amount..people were finding tens of thousands of cards they wanted graded every day. There are likely 5 million cards in piles for PSA right now just waiting. If they limit it like that some people that are less internet savvy would never be able to get in. In a way you'd be slicing the overall input by way of cutting out some people entirely and giving all the availability of capacity to a few.
I think the better move would be to slice the availability in a different way by making the price to grade such that the customer's automatically self select to whatever that daily capacity is. If 200,000 cards come in a day at $20 and your capacity is to grade 25,000 then raise it to $40, if 75,000 come in at $40 then let's try $60. Of course you'd have to start at the higher price and lower it or you will get all 5 million cards the first day.
I assume the practice of penalizing high grades with upcharges will remain
I admit, I simply don't understand this practice at all. Grade the card. The public decides the value and it changes regularly. Good for the submitter if they have a good eye and grade a great card. I just simply don't understand it. If someone finds a 1971 Claude Raymond and it grades MINT it's worth a ton; but to many it is still a 1971 common. They shouldn't be charged $300 or something like that. Plus not everyone sells everything,,,some collect. Rant over. LOL.
Costs don't always go down when scaling up... eventually they'd add enough staff they'd have purchase more real estate or remodel existing space. That's more than just adding salaries and really eats into margins.
There is inherent risk when grading higher dollar cards (potential to damage it during the process, costs related to guarantee being invoked for them, etc)... and it should cost more to decrease turn times. So I get the tiers and upcharges.
I appreciated listening to the interview Nat Turner gave that was posted recently- he is a collector and is hands on, and gives off a more relatable vibe than Joe Orlando ever has.
I was quite interested in his response to grading tiers, in which he referenced the greater risk and storage considerations in grading higher valued cards, but almost entirely focused on justification of the higher cost due to an insurance premium style approach to all submissions that covers the PSA grade guarantee in case PSA has to buy the card back if the grade is wrong.
I have a hard time accepting this as gospel. I have had a recent experience trying to get PSA to honor their grade guarantee. PSA administrative staff are quite helpful, and cards are reviewed more quickly than if sent in for grading. The "head grader" supposedly looks and the cards in question, and then the PSA administrative staff tell me my altered card in my PSA holder is not actually altered. They reholder the card and send it back, as if that solved my problem.
Without a fairer and more interactive adjudication of their grade guarantee, I find it hard to believe that PSA uses funds from tiered grading to put into some war chest waiting for the inevitability that they got it wrong.
I guess I would be happier with a more direct response, being that this is the business model they use and pricing tiers and PSA decided subjective upcharges are the terms of engagement for the submitter.
-Nathanael
when psa was a public company the financials were obviously public. i dont remember the actual figure, but there was an amount that was in reserves/war chest for the buy-back guarantee. with what was being outed thru pwcc, needless to say the amount was no where near what it should have been to cover what had been unearthed or still being uncovered at that time. as a collector/stockholder at the time, i saw a real issue that most wallstreet analysts probably didnt. the reserves looked really good on paper compared to what had been paid out previously. but had the avalanche not been thrown on pwcc to take back the cards it could have gotten ugly. for the record, i do fully support that pwcc take the brunt for 99% percent of the cards bought and subbed thru them since it was crystal clear moser was knowingly buying, subbing & reconsigning altered cards thru them. no different than someone burning their house down and trying to collect insurance. its fraud. those cards should have and were thought to had been turned over. but i dont want to steer the thread in that direction or cause todd any extra work in editing.
Interesting information, blurry. I would have imagined there could be an insurer that would take some of that risk from PSA, but card grade guarantees aren't exactly mainstream.
Agreed wholeheartedly with your post, and also don't want to steer the thread into a place it can't go. The grade guarantee is so important to me, and improvements to it would go a long way in knowing I will never get cheated.
100%. but similar to malpractice insurance, it's a must to obtain however you never want claims brought against it. if and when there's a payout the premiums are going to absolutely skyrocket IF they decide to even renew said policy. as we can all probably attest, whether it's health, car, property, life, heck even shipping, insurance is quite expensive and a pain to collect on.
Certainly worth a discussion. 500 is just a number. the correct number would probably be lower and the 250 could be the correct number. but 10 or 20 is way too low. way too many submissions.
250 is still too many for certain levels as well. image trying to get 250 submittable t206s? people would flock to group submitters. most are credible. there are horror stories there too.
I can't believe people send their stuff to group submitters. I barely even trust that the reputable company, PSA, is taking care of my cards and not pulling any funny stuff...but I'm supposed to send all my $25,000 in cards to Jimmy over in Omaha and just trust that he is never going to switch out a card in his garage with absolutely no cameras or anyone else to stop him. Breakers have like 5 live cameras going at once to calm people's fears. How many live cameras are watching your cards in Jimmy's garage from time he receives til the time he sends and back again?
like i've said a few times, things can change up as time goes on. but i doubt psa receives hardly any t206 cards. so why would psa worry about catering to a couple of t206 cards when most people are sending in 1972 and up.
they want to make money, probably not so worried that you have 3 t206 cards to grade.
psa’s first graded card was a t206. theres a t206 registry. new owners are collectors. of course they care. have publicly stated so. and yes, they are there to make money. excluding entire segments of collectors and pushing them into a competitors hands certainly is not a way to do it. exact same reasons your slab nothing but 7s and up is not realistic. i completely understand your line of thinking and it seems your main emphasis is on speeding things up. i think a lot would agree and put accuracy first and foremost well ahead of speed. the true answer is there isnt a simple answer to fix it. but the last thing i would want is to sacrifice services or segments of collectors simply for speed.
and while you are knocking a few of my t206s, do you think your precious 72s generate nearly the same revenue that newest ultra modern release does? by your suggested method, they don't care about yours either. they're there to make money, right? 😉
What is the alternative? Returning those cards ungraded? If you send a $500 card on a tier that is reserved to cards under $100, you've violated the ToS. Currently PSA waives this violation in all but the most egregious cases, and when it is too big to ignore PSA offers you the opportunity to pretend you sent in your card at the least expensive appropriate level. This seems very generous to me.
What if you added faster grading on as a fee instead of per card? If you’re not in a hurry to have a sub back, say 50 cards, charge 10-12$/card within a declared value range. If you want them back faster, make faster grading an add-on for the sub, not individual card. Want a 30 day instead of a 60 day turnaround for a 50 card sub? Charge 500$ (for math purposes). An extra 10$/card. Just using these numbers to illustrate my point.
Another potential option would maybe be to add an incentive to CC memberships where you can get a discounted rate on grading based on the tier of your membership.
are you serious? you think they should just ignore anything pre-1972? but you probably hit the nail on the head, they are going to make the most money off the new crop of investors, I repeat INVESTORS so who cares about the guy who has 50 or 100 or 200 50's topps cards when they can get the guy with 1000 2021 cards who is willing to pay $100 a pop or more. The sad truth is that PSA was supported from inception until February 2020 mostly by collectors. Covid hit and everyone was bored and turned PSA into the modern casino
I equate this to my contractor who remodeled my condo, he has an hourly rate and he rarely increases it. He always has more work than he can do. I said , why don't you increase your rate as you will still be 100% busy? He said before the financial crisis everyone else was increasing their rates to absurdity because there was so much work and they could. The financial crisis hit and then no one would give them an hour of work and all the regular customers told them to f off because they felt they were getting taken advantage of before the crash. All those contractors eventually left the trade. My contractor never missed a day of work for the entire crisis and has still been fully booked everyday since. This is the dilema PSA is in right now.