Is it a little concerning..
olb31
Posts: 3,352 ✭✭✭✭✭
that after hiring tons of graders, PSA still needs graders? does that mean the ones they hired didn't pan out? i don't think they are receiving a ton of new inventory. It appears they are still in January of 2021 on most stuff. They stopped receiving orders on March 31, 2021. Two months left to go.
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I’m not concerned
Well, there’s probably a vetting process, and not all pan out. The ones that do show promise are probably shadowed by a senior grader for a certain amount of time before they’re grading by themselves. They probably don’t grade as fast as the senior graders either, until they develop the experience and the efficency of however they grade. Perhaps training as well on how to properly handle cards while being graded.
Things like this is why people should maybe give them the benefit of the doubt. Based on how they’ve been opening lower level tiers it would appear the newer graders are perhaps becoming more efficient at grading at the standards PSA has set. Cut em some slack. They’ll get there.
i know right now for whatever reason, it's hard to find workers much less dependable, component workers. Following the posts over the past couple of years, PSA has been hiring graders. It's probably hard to retain people, due to how tedious the process can be each day.
I did find it interesting about the expansion. Newport Beach and now New Jersey. Then maybe a couple of more locations.
Like 15 years ago I considered trying to work for PSA. But, I didn't want to live in or commute to Orange County. Lucky for PSA there are more card collectors and dealers in California than anywhere else in the world.
I also wonder if PSA graders make enough money to afford to collect cards. Prices are real high. It would be an interesting situation if the people who were interested enough to work for PSA weren't able to afford the hobby due to working for PSA.
I've heard that people who work for grading companies aren't supposed to deal in the goods they grade due to conflict of interest. I believe I read a story about this on the CGC forums. So, the people who would be most interested or most qualified for the job would likely be ineligible. But, ya know, completely unregulated industry.
I find it curious - not concerning, just curious - that they’ve re-opened Regular with what is essentially a 90 day “door-to-door” guarantee (even if they don’t use that word) while still sitting on backlogs from January 2021 in 5 submission categories.
Sure, the old subs are lower tier than Regular so maybe PSA can rationalize that the old ones are lower priority. Maybe they’re down to 45-60 days and will get through the backlog, and maybe the submission throttling will ensure they can meet the 90 day guarantee. Seems risky to make that claim at the risk of further alienation of the customer base (“you’re guaranteeing 90 days on these new Regular subs when you’re almost at a year on my old subs that had a <100 day target turnaround?”).
I only have a couple tickets in queue, so it doesn’t effect me either way… just seems odd to me.
Jim
They need to stop accepting any cards until they're caught up. Not a good business practice to keep accepting more cards when you have a huge backlog. This applies to any business. Can you imagine your local cellphone repair shop taking in orders when they have a backlog of six months? No way would you put up with that, so why do they think it's okay to take a year to grade cards?
I'm a little concerned that you're concerned.
Arthur
Thanks for the kind words Reggie. It means alot to me.
At the Vegas show I went to, there were several new grading companies that are using technology to grade cards. I think that is where all of this will end up. You may still use humans for specialized or high dollar items but the robots will do the rest. There really isn't a good business case to use humans for lower dollar bulk cards, especially in this labor market.
SkyNet Grading Company is coming soon!
As AI gets better and better, I am sure that is the wave of the future for grading sportscards. would take out the human aspect and make everything more standard.
George Brett, Roger Clemens and Tommy Brady.
Seen instant replay lately?
Prefer robot menu to human when calling customer service?
Anybody ever had the machine FA me age a card during slabbing?
Can a human burst into flames and burn my card?
I’ll stick with human grading; if humans are training the machine, that’s all your getting - and with virtually no common sense.
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Instant replay is just video. Humans make the call.
It's very easy to make a computer program that takes a picture and spits out a number.
AI is an over used term. Automation is a much better word. Artificial intelligence is an interesting term. People fake being smart all the time and it's not look so kindly on. I've never met a intelligent machine. I have met machines that could fake being smart.
Artificial
adjective
1.
made or produced by human beings rather than occurring naturally, especially as a copy of something natural.
"her skin glowed in the artificial light"
2.
(of a person or their behavior) insincere or affected.
"an artificial smile"
The dude selling the AI is likely wearing an artificial smile.
If they make a card grading machine. They should put it in walmart. Like coinstar. Imagine the lines. Coinstar can tell the difference between a 1, 5, 10, 25 no problem.
I hope it could tell the difference between a 8.5 and a 9 because most collectors can’t.
I don't think most graders can either. You can't program a computer to do something that is subjective unless you just make it random it. Computers need very accurate instructions. It looks to me like stuff like that is a coin flip.
If CardGradingStar were in Walmart you could crack and resub real easy.
I worked in the automotive industry with a safety parts company. They made the parts that made sure you didn’t die in a crash. Needless to say, the quality of those parts needs to be near perfect every time. In the mfg line we used automated optical inspection on every part to make sure all of the bits were there and in the right place. The machine decided which parts were passed and rejected.
That was 1994. I almost certain the technology to do automated card grading exists and is better than humans. Someone just needs to program the “brain” correctly, that is the secret sauce.
Grading will never be 100% computer operated. They may be able to quickly provide the grader with info like height, width, depth, surface condition, centering, etc., but they'll never be able to discriminate print defects, corner damage (corner could be completely 90 degrees and sharp yet still have damage), gloss, print job, etc.
Which is fine with me. That's more than enough consistency for me to let people handle the rest of the grading process.
Arthur
In the car parts example the machine is looking at, nearly, exactly the same thing every time. Any time it sees something that isn't what it's expecting it triggers alarm process and rejects the part. That's a whole lot different than card grading.
Every card look different.
I don't know if putting a card on a platform and having a machine weigh it and tell you how tall and wide and thick it is would be useful. I'm sure this can be accomplished. This machine likely already exists. Used in labs or something. Probably real expensive. I'm sure it has it's limitations. What if the card isn't flat? What if none of those measurements are consistent. You still need humans to analyze the output.
Weight thickness height and width are not subjective.
ndleo: Figuring out exactly what you want the machine to do is the real problem. Nobody really has a process that works consistently that you can translate. Everybody just says Grading Machine. I've never seen a "The PSA Grading Process" description. Like, is there a page where I can follow a step by step process to grade my card before I send it in? Automation requires a process.
As I said, it's real easy to program a computer to take a picture and spit out a number. What if the number is only off by +/- 1 grade? What if the number is off by +/- 2 grades? Either is probably acceptable to the industry cause they get paid either way. I don't think the customers would really be interested in either one of those outcomes though. If they knew that was what was happening.
I'd be interested to see a machine that can analyze just 1986 Fleer Jordans. Give the machine 500 examples of "properly graded" (if that exists) Jordans RCs. Then put 20 raw in and see if the machine can actually grade those 20. You would need a human to grade them after the machine. So, would you really be saving time? It likely only saves time if you remove the human from the process.
I don't know how many graders look at any card now. If there are 3 graders giving opinions, I don't see the problem with the machine replacing one of them. If it works. Probably if you're at the price point where 3 graders are looking at your stuff, you don't really need a machines opinion.
I'm not sure a computer would make the final determination for PSA, but a computer's ability to study each card's scan at the pixel level and discern flaws in the expected patterns makes it a very useful tool for objective analysis, and at the very least should save time by helping to zero in on any flaws. So I suspect that this will lead to greater efficiency and ultimately allow a drop in prices, or at least for returns to happen faster.
I do wonder how the AI programming would work: would the system have to learn by "reading" a few PSA 10's of each card so that it knows what should and should not be there? If so, what about for cards that don't have a PSA 10? For example, there is no 1962 Topps Roger Maris #1 in PSA 10, and just six PSA 9, so does that affect their ability to evaluate the lower grades? (I'm just musing here. Only an expert in this area of computing -- and I happen to know two -- would be able to answer.)
(I think I'll buy one of those Christmas packs off eBay in the hope of finding a PSA 10 Maris, just so I can try to make their system crash...)
Like I said, there are already new grading companies working this technology. Granted they are all in the very early stages, but there were several start-ups taking a shot. This isn't going to be one of those dreams, we will probably see it as a serious option in the next 2 years.
I am in the same labor market as PSA in CA and there isn't a large supply of available quality workers. If this hobby grows like the smart money is betting on, they will need this type of technology.
Any technology that helps the grader find alterations should be used yesterday. As a collector of vintage, a card that grades higher or lower than I think does not concern me. I have eyes and can form my own opinion on a card’s grade. The number helps me look harder for at a card when it is lower to see and weigh flaws vs price. For me standardization is a nice to have - guaranteeing the authenticity and originality of a card is a must have.
Telling if a card has been altered is the main reason I buy graded cards. I am sure there are scores of altered cards in my collection that slipped through. In my opinion PSA never really addressed what has been done after the trimming scandal.
I will pay over comps for a really strong 7 and not even consider an 8 that has something that would bother me too much. Any card that belongs in an Altered holder that is graded makes me overpay by a huge multiple. Having 8s that I think should be 7s or vice versa has very little effect on my collection.
Those in the business of selling cards are severely effected by consistency. For collectors buying cards it is not that huge a deal.
Obviously this is just my opinion - everyone has their own concerns with grading.
I cannot imagine how AI in some capacity will not make things better - with the possible exception of AI helping so much that cards graded before AI are considered too risky to buy. If this happens they would need to be re-graded and make cards more expensive.
A machine can't do eye appeal, but it could measure technical aspects such as exact size of card, weight, centering stats, color density, warped percentage, etc,...
How do we know they are hiring all these graders? I mean seriously; how many graders are over there? Expansion....where are the new places?? We have been hearing this for awhile. A place that grades cards should be in the middle of the country with a reliable USPS. PSA can do all of this research ahead of time. I'll believe it all when I see it. I hope they can figure it out.
The entire thing is growing tiresome. I want to be loyal but at some point I need to see a hint of light at the end of the tunnel. Opening the $100 slot with close to a 90 day turnaround time is not a great start IMHO.
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This. You can’t tell me for years and years that you’re aggressively hiring graders yet continue to grade cards at the same pace. It doesn’t add up.
Maybe they have high turnover. It sounds like a really tedious job.
I'm sure the guys that started this business wanted to be looking at valuable Ruth cards and such. But, now they're looking at 20,000 of the same 2020 rookie card that somebody just cracked out of walmart last week.
Agreed. But then you have to pay them enough to make them stick around.
If advance keep at present rate it will easily be possible before this decade ends. The only question will be cost and willingness.
I for one welcome our computer overlords and look forward to serving them.
It's the singer not the song - Peter Townshend (1972)