Is the Registry going to die?
mgiobbe
Posts: 12 ✭✭
It seems to me that if grading fees are going to stay this high, there will a lot fewer submissions to satisfy registry sets. Thoughts?
MG
4
Comments
Assuming current grading prices remain, yes, the registry will die. I believe it was a proper business decision to raise prices when demand far outstripped supply, but at some point, presumably, they will get caught up with their grading backlog and prices should come back down until supply/demand reach a new equilibrium. As long as people are lining up to get graded their pink chrome refractor numbered eyesores of players nobody will remember 10 years from now, though, the grading of actual baseball cards will get put on hold.
Written perfectly. Vintage could be in trouble as far as the registry is concerned. Who's grading commons from the 50's-70's at $20+ ??
I enjoyed collecting Yankee team sets. Even at $10-15 on common cards after 1980 are a break even at PSA 9 and a loss at PSA 8. Now Even in PSA 10 a common from 2018 is not worth the grading fee. So, If I cannot complete a team set then I will not work (or buy) any of the cards in those sets. At $50 you can add just about every vintage football, BK, and HK common of most years going back. Odiously I am not referring to very low population commons or vintage sets from the 1950's and before. For me the registry is dead. I will still collect vintage and individual cards.
The flippers and card profiteers have snubbed out the true collector that is for fun only.
It is what it is, and I am not blaming PSA for a business decision many feels are warranted.
1948-76 Topps FB Sets
FB & BB HOF Player sets
1948-1993 NY Yankee Team Sets
1 1 0102512180 Baseball Cards 1951 Bowman 218 Ed Lopat
2 1 0102520730 Baseball Cards 1952 Bowman 73 Jerry Coleman
3 1 0102522410 Baseball Cards 1952 Bowman 241 Mel Parnell
4 1 0101520570 Baseball Cards 1952 Topps 57 Ed Lopat
5 1 0101531370 Baseball Cards 1953 Topps 137 John Rutherford
6 1 0102540810 Baseball Cards 1954 Bowman 81 Jerry Coleman 1.000/.975 Field Avg.
7 1 0102542240 Baseball Cards 1954 Bowman 224 William Bruton
8 1 0101551580 Baseball Cards 1955 Topps 158 Tom Carroll
9 1 0101551990 Baseball Cards 1955 Topps 199 Bert Hamric
10 1 0101561900 Baseball Cards 1956 Topps 190 Carl Furillo
11 1 0101630020 Baseball Cards 1963 Topps 2 AL Batting Leaders
12 1 0101635500 Baseball Cards 1963 Topps 550 Duke Snider
13 1 EG55000009 Football Cards 2017 Panini Crown Royale 84 Patrick Mahomes II
14 1 A563010030 Hockey Cards 2001 Russian Ice Young Lions 3 Alexander Ovechkin Young Lions
15 1 A561010150 Hockey Cards 2001 Russian Ice Dynamo Moscow HC 15 Alexander Ovechkin Dynamo Moscow HC
16 1 9214390450 Multi-Sport Cards 1939 W.A. & A.C. Churchman Kings of Speed 45 Jesse Owens
17 1 5165003430 Football Cards 2000 Quantum Leaf 343 Tom Brady
18 2 9415010010 Golf Cards 2001 Upper Deck Golf 1 Tiger Woods
19 1 0101612600 Baseball Cards 1961 Topps 260 Don Drysdale
My name is Marc and I’ve been collecting almost 50 years now. I just sent the above submission in and if some of these don’t at least 7.5 or better, then I just threw $50 in the trash per card. A few are going in to my PC. I’m actually waiting for my Christian Okoye Master and regular sets to be added including autos. I got to know him while at APU where my mom at the time worked in the sports dept. I have pretty much every card of his and some 60 auto’s. I hope someday PSA gets back down to the $10-15 dollar range. Otherwise they’ll just stay raw.
I just don't see how any new collectors of graded cards will begin collecting sets. just way too expensive for the regular collector. It's a shame on the one side as the number of collectors will dwindle away. On the other hand, those long time collectors have seen their vintage collections rise in value as submissions have basically stopped And a new type of collector has been coming in buying up vintage cards for their portfolios.
It won’t die if they will just put different prices for different years of cards. Let’s say 1800’s - 1950’s at one price and then 1960’s - 1980’s at another price. Tier it all out and things will be fine. I’m a football collector and everything after 1989 dies off for set collectors. Not sure how it is with the other sports but kinda figure it’s the same. All I can say is they better do something fast before it’s to late.
Great idea Davin,
Hopefully this doesn't fall on deaf ears. This entire industry changed when people started paying ridiculous amounts for brand new graded cards. I think we've all seen those "collectors" at shows opening packs and immediately dropping off 1000s to be graded. I would usually be behind them in line with my 15 vintage cards hoping for an 8 and praying for a 9. I have finished many sets, but have been discouraged to start others because of the prices for commons. I agree 100 percent a tier system would be great and might show loyalty to the customers who have been around for many years.
Munnyman I think it’s the only way to go to keep the registry alive. I love the fact that I have a bunch of high ranked Steelers sets but it also sucks when I know that I will hold onto them only because I know nobody is going to have anything graded right now because of price. I still want the competition. To me a tier pricing situation should work unless I’m overlooking something. A few months ago PSA sent out a survey and I suggested that. Hopefully they read it and will think about it.
My total amateur opinion here:
I am pretty certain that PSA will not abandon the Set Registry or it’s collectors. There’s just no way. You could make a strong argument that the Registry is as important to the PSA brand as the grading of baseball cards is to PSA. There are several companies in the marketplace that grade cards and in all honesty? Some have better slabs, some have better turnaround times and some can even match the quality of grading done by PSA.
However, no other company has the Registry and the public forum it creates for collectors to share, show off and sell is unlike anything any other company offers. It is a major part of what has given PSA it’s legitimate and decided advantage over its competitors and I’d guess by summer next year, the commens will be comin’ in again…
😉
Curious about the rare, mysterious and beautiful 1951 Wheaties Premium Photos?
https://forums.collectors.com/discussion/987963/1951-wheaties-premium-photos-set-registry#latest
I hope you are right. Could be decided by new ownership but It would be foolish (IMO) to discontinue the Registry. But , wow how the hobby??? has changed lately.
not a hobby anymore, and not even for the set collectors. A new breed of investors are adding vintage high grade cards to their portfolios. Can you blame them after what we've seen in prices rising in the past year and a half.
Perfectly written!!!
Sad but true. Been building a high end set for 15 years and got to the point where I can no longer upgrade any more of the cards. A rookie Fisk what was about $10-15K for years now approaches $75K. Have several others and I can't complete because you can't find the commons. Unfortunately, I don't see it changing in the near future.
I totally agree with 51 WP
The set collectors made PSA #1. It would be a shame to allow that to die.
"don't bite the hand that feeds you."
1948-76 Topps FB Sets
FB & BB HOF Player sets
1948-1993 NY Yankee Team Sets
It mostly died for me 3 or 4 years ago as card prices and grading wait times rose. I sold most of my registry sets in 2019 and 2020. I have one complete one and one 75 percent complete remaining (1970s). The incomplete one requires about 50 commons, which I doubt I'll ever acquire even if grading prices come down below $20. I've long shifted my focus to other ways to enjoy the hobby. Life's too short to wait around for lower prices.
No way will the registry die. It may not grow if there are not set registry friendly submission rates. There are plenty of graded cards and sets circulating in the market to keep the registry alive even if nothing new gets graded. It certainly makes it harder to build a new set but you can wait and buy one when it comes up for sale. Based on public comments from Nat Turner, PSA will have set registry friendly specials in the future. Timing for them is the only question.
My guess is the registry that made PSA #1 is dead. I would expect a new version will arise somewhere on the internet. The PSA requirement will be dropped and other legitimate grading companies will be allowed and people will continue to build sets because we collectors like to show off what we built.
I currently have six low-grade T205s and 24 low-grade T207s I need to send in for grading, plus 12 more for crossover from SGC and Beckett. The T205s will finish my master set (- the half-dozen rarities), and the T207s will put me within 48 cards of set completion. None of them will grade above a 3 (most are 1s and 2s). At $50 a pop for grading it isn't anywhere near worth the cost, as I paid market value for the cards to begin with, and grading won't add anything near $50 in value to any of them.
So, they all stay raw until prices come back down to a reasonable level
Steve
Unfortunately, they may stay raw for quite some time. Yes, they say they have cut down on the backlog, but at those prices, they'll continue to have more than enough submissions to keep them in the black. Welcome to the new world we now live in Post-COVID!
I think that if PSA management doesn't start to listen to and realize collectors who send in cards to get graded are their cash cow, then I think it will collapse, or become a shadow of what it once was. Those who collect sets requiring commons that they have raw and need to complete their sets will not be sending in very many at the $50 range, when they can maybe buy a lower graded card for short money. Surely, by now they've gotten a handle on their inventory of gradings in their pipeline.
I think somebody at PSA needs to review their business plan and perhaps not be so profit driven as to kill the golden goose.
My Collector's Club membership, like everyone else's, has been suspended since they closed off most submission levels over a year ago. It won't resume until the return of value submissions and quarterly specials, so pricing has to get better eventually. Remaining at $50 a card can only keep them busy for so long. They've stated the backlog will be completed by fall so expect to see reduced submission rates by then if not earlier.
If PSA does not lower the pricing for commons soon, there is little doubt in my mind the set registry will suffer a quick death. PSA will have to lower their pricing to help collectors building vintage sets. I used to submit a decent volume of cards monthly, and have not made one submission in over 2 1/2 years. I used to build sets, but not anymore. I have also let my membership expire,that I held for over 25 years. It's a supply and demand thing right now. Eventually PSA will figure out collectors building sets by grading commons is the true backbone of the company.
I'm completely with you Paul. I too have been a member for many, many years and submitted 100s of cards over that span. Many of those cards held a value of less than 2 bucks, but were necessary for sets and the registry. I absolutely love set building and have done such since I was a kid. I think you are right, the registry will certainly die if PSA doesn't recognize who the real supporters are. I think one way to "reward" or recognize the true collectors is have a price scale based on longevity with the company or if the submitted cards are for a registry set already started. I'm so tired of seeing these direct from the pack submissions (2021 or 2022) from new submitters who are only looking to immediately sell the card. Those individuals should be charged the current 50-100 bucks per card, but us old school collectors who have proven we're not in it for the quick buck, shouldn't be put out to pasture. I know I'm preaching to the choir, but sadly it's only the choir that's listening.
In addition to the above two comments, not only is the high price for grading stopping most people from sending cards in to build sets but it's also inflating the cost of cards already graded on the secondary market. I understand that if you spent $50 to have a $30 card graded that you aren't going to want to sell it for less than what it cost to grade. The issue is cards that were graded years ago are also piggybacking on the high pricing making in not feasible to fill sets. I would imagine cards are taking much longer to sell as result as well. My last two submissions to PSA right before they eliminated value pricing came back with such low grades (vintage) that I've turned to ebay and other sources to fill sets and my purchases have drastically reduced in the last year.
NFL HOF Set
https://www.psacard.com/psasetregistry/publishedset/398345
I think PSA is no longer for collectors. It's for investors.
Definitely. There is a real scarcity of high grade vintage commons at the moment. There was a 1973 graded set break ending last night. There was another one about a week ago, but before that the eBay pickings had been extremely thin for over a year. There is tremendous pent up demand. I targeted five or six cards I really wanted. I bid over a hundred bucks apiece for four different PSA 9 commons that would typically go for $15-20 in 2019. I was outbid on every one of them. My set collecting has pretty much ground to a halt in the last year. It makes me sad because it is my main collecting enjoyment, and I just don’t get anything out of collecting lower grade sets anymore.
PSA could solve all of this by immediately adding a Vintage Commons level that would include all pre-1981 cards. $10 bucks a card for cards valued under $250 (upcharge on cards that accidentally went over that based on assigned grade). There's no way on earth that this addition would overwhelm their grading staff, and it would send a clear message to registry participants that the registry is alive and well.
Edited to add:
$20 for cards from $250 to $1000 as well.
bobsbbcards SGC Registry Sets
Another factor to consider. In most of my Facebook groups a huge number of collectors have switched to grading with SGC. The longer PSA waits to drop rates dramatically the more collectors they will lose.
Late 60's and early to mid 70's non-sports
The REGISTRY is a computer screen with sets and names of participants. It doesn't ever have to go away. The question is: Will newly graded vintage cards be added to those sets?? Let's say for instance that there is a tier for vintage cards at $20 for semi stars and commons in the 1960's....how many people are going to submit cards from 1960-1969 at $20 a card?? I can't see sending in late 60's commons for more than $10 a card....and that is a serious stretch. The cards are not worth $10 in many cases to include PSA 8. Everyone just be patient. When you get back your cards from early 2021 in late 2028 you can submit a few more cards. LOL.
The PSA registry isn’t going anywhere. It is built for collectors and no other TPG can touch them.
Just getting very difficult to collect and build sets when you can't find commons. Very frustrating at times.
The registry will not die. It's too much fun. But I don't think there will be much grading activity for mid 50's and later vintage commons until the grading price comes down to at least PSA 7 value.
I do miss the PSA luncheon. If you also miss it, give us a hell yeah
hell yeah
bobsbbcards SGC Registry Sets
I've actually made great progress on my sets over the past year. I was able to complete my 1966 baseball set and even upgraded the last card I needed within weeks of obtaining the first copy. I won a marginal 8 just to complete the set, then a stronger 8 appeared a month or so later and I was able to pick that one up as an upgrade. I also just completed my 1959 set in one fell swoop as I picked up a complete master set. I now have 60% of the set as duplicates which I'll be eBaying over the next few months.
There are still a lot of graded cards out there. You may need to be open to more channels to buy them (eBay, auction houses, etc) but they are being bought and sold. I have several thousand graded cards for sale in my inventory that I've been listing on eBay since the pandemic began. There are others out there in the same boat as I am. Certainly the available inventory for sale out there isn't what it was pre-pandemic but it's not barren either.
That may be, but at these prices inventory is and forever will be frozen in time. Not a big problem for people today collecting 1959 or 1966 (or 1969 and 1972, as I do), but what about the people in the future who want to collect 1987 or 1993, or 2002? Sure, the registry will live on for people who have a connection to the old Topps sets, but as we leave the field there will be a reduced market for the common cards we leave behind, and there will be no cards at all to buy from the sets that the next generation has a connection to. The registry exists as it does because for a long time we could get cards graded for $5 or so. Take that away and the registry, as we know it, dies.
Love this thread. Over the past 5 years I have been able to put together #1 1980 Topps Set. Over this time, the prices have increased so much on these cards. There's no way I could afford to put together this set in today's market. It was a fun journey, but I am now considering selling this set. I have considered consigning to auction house as (1) they may be able to market the #1 set and might be able to receive a premium price from a deep pocket buyer, and (2) I would really only need to ship/insure the package. I checked out the MySlabs "Showcase" and have considered listing there as well. If anyone has experience selling a complete set, I would love to get your take
Lol - sorry probably should have started my own thread with my "selling" question.
There actually weren't many opportunities to grade cards at $5 or less. The economics of building 1980s and newer sets were always tenuous. Anything less than a PSA 10 won't even yield back a $5 grading fee in most cases.
I don't know that much about pricing on your 1980 set, but I just sold my 1972 Topps set, #2 on the registry with a GPA of 10.03, and was underwhelmed at the proceeds. Just before that, two other complete sets sold at crazy high $$$$, but them Crypto and the stock market took a dive and a lot of that "funny money" being fueled into collectibles was no longer there (my opinion). The person who bought my set turned it around almost immediately, but listed the cards individually. He made a handsome profit this way, but the prices for many HOF and low pop cards which would typically bring very big dollars were down. Just relating what happened to me just about a month ago. A lot of uncertainty out there right now, so know what to know which way the sale would go. Good Luck.
Nah, it'll survive. Not without taking punishment. It's in the "cut me Mick" stage now.
Very helpful info Joe. Your comments mirror my thinking. With the climate such as it is, I do not want to leave the sales price in the hands of an auction. If I sell at this time, I would probably piece them out. Maybe reach out to current registry members with pricing on cards they need.
“Actual baseball cards”
Ok boomer
Always buying Bobby Cox inserts. PM me.
Maybe. But the BGS does fairly well with subs of ultra-modern, for whatever reason. I don’t think BGS is so far behind that they couldn’t catch up or surpass PSA. PSA offering $30 “value” subs will open the door for others.
Always buying Bobby Cox inserts. PM me.
I'm old enough to remember when baseball cards didn't look like something H.R. Pufnstuf threw up.
I'm a vintage collector but I'd have to argue that 1972 and 1975 give modern a run for their money for your description.
If a 6 year old girl got a hold of some 72s or 75s, colored the borders with her lil' Princess Nail Polish to match the dress of her favorite Barbie doll, then dusted it with glitter she shook off her magic wand, then you'd almost have a modern "card". But the only way to get the "Prizm" effect, I'm afraid, is to run it through the digestive tract of ol' Mr. Pufnstuf. Anyway, I'm pretty sure this is how Panini makes their cards; not sure how they get around the child labor laws, though.
I think its more than just the high price of grading that will hurt the registry, it's also the inconsistency of the grades coming out these days. If you look at cards (mostly vintage) graded today they will rival cards graded a couple grades higher in the past. If you want to have the top rated set you are competing against sets that were graded years ago with grades almost impossible to get today. I have many newly graded PSA 7 cards that look better than PSA 8 cards graded in the past.
NFL HOF Set
https://www.psacard.com/psasetregistry/publishedset/398345
It's almost like they are on a "no 9 or 10" policy. For the slight flaws that may have still gotten 8's or 7's in years past, you'll see 4's to 6's. For the high end cards that should be 9 and possibly 10 all day long, it's the 8 and occasional 7. I've never cracked so many 7's and 8's to set aside for resubmission. Crazy times.
Used to working on HOF SS Baseballs--Now just '67 Sox Stickers and anything Boston related.
I actually don’t feel like vintage cards are being graded more harshly than they used to. The recently graded PSA 9s I see on eBay seem to have more corner wear than they used to. It seems to be more modern cards that are being hammered.