Will PSA go to a limited submission system ?
habs007
Posts: 128 ✭✭✭
Does anyone thinks PSA will go to a limited sub ( 10 cards ? 25 cards ? ) per customer / per month ? when they start back up. I know there is a lot of high quantity subbers out there - but maybe to keep people happy and control the numbers they could have a que system for a while anyway like HGA does. Cause nothing will change if they just open up the floodgates again. PCSportcards will probably ship 500 k basketball cards alone.
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Raising their prices would make more sense.
I'm sure they're looking at all options. I'd be surprised if this were adopted, but I'm sure it's under consideration.
No. The HGA system is horrible...why would they adopt that? Pretty sure that company will do a cash grab and be gone fairly soon.
If anything opens up it will be the higher priced submissions.
If you are saying that you expect to be able to submit Express before any of the Value levels, I strongly agree with you.
isn't that exactly what they are doing now?
Maybe higher limited quantity instead of lower? Which would be easier to process for their side of things, a 5,000-card sub or 200 separate 25-card subs?
I don’t think so. business is business . They will try maintain, “category” no hurting income. Too many tiers involved in this business, not only hobby collectors , but auction house, card manufactures, cards holders suppliers etc etc
I'm sure there's a business model that is being worked out based on the # of employees and revenue that an employee can oversee in a year versus their salary.
If One card takes 2 hours of combined employee time and Someone making $75k can probably do 1000 cards per year... they should charge $75 just to break-even. If they have 500 graders, that makes 500k cards per year. They're probably at this level or more.
I'm sure the volume issue over the past year has actually hurt their profit margins because there's not a process to deal with more cards in a quick way. They're hitting a stride where they have profitable grading happening.
$75 minimum per card that is great way to do away with those pesky customers and give an even larger FU to the registry collectors who helped PSA get to the top.
$75K a year per grader? Seems rather high (great though if they make that), 2 hours per card seems very slow. If their process allows for a grader to only do 4-5 cards per day then that is an inefficient business model - even 3x that output per grader would still be pathetic.
Unless otherwise specified my posts represent only my opinion, not fact.
obviously in no way promoting higher grading fees, but if the demand is there at that pricing level, would you expect psa to just leave $50 per card on the table? i can't think of any business that would adopt that strategy. i've been using the same lawn guy for 12 years, was one of his first customers starting out. sure, he could cut my lawn for $50 and turn a slight profit but i would never expect him not to charge me $75 simply because i've been with him forever when he can go get $75 a cut from every other house in the neighborhood.
trust me, i get it. it sucks and stuff escalated and re-escalated extremely quickly. but it seems the market is dictating a price in that range. can't really fault them for charging fair-market-value.
eta: i just hope whatever the new floor charge is, that subs times are more in line w the pricing increase. this year out crap is for the birds and absolutely insane.
I think he means 2 hours from the time received until mailed. It only takes a min. or two to actually grade the card. Most is labeling, sorting, sending to correct grader, organizing the cards back toghther. etc.
Slots in Casino bring in far more revenue than the Tables even if the Tables attract the high rollers.
If PSA wants to be a service strictly for what in effect are hobby high rollers (or entities like 4Sharp and PWCC's) and discard everyone else then I'm sure someone else will fill in the void. Then when (not if) the bubble burst the exec's will still do anything they can to retain their beefy bonus' and use a sure fire tricks; layoffs and or re-organizations. After they do that its time to skedaddle to another firm. Like it or not that is how Corporate America truly works.
Or PSA can go another route ride the wave higher and encouraging submissions by reducing price after the backlog is manageable and hire staff to keep Service levels to reasonable amount of times. The additional business (aka volume) being what drives profit when the speculators are gone. Like it or not this is how a true empire can be made Ala Amazon
My guess they go the grab the fastest quickest buck route and the future be damned as based on their recent past they lack the acumen or desire to do any different. While I'm certainly no fan of Bezos, he knew how to build a modern day empire with intense customer satisfaction + loyalty. Something he did without gouging (at least yet...).
Unless otherwise specified my posts represent only my opinion, not fact.
or perhaps PSA will go to multiple grading platforms all with their own pricing tiers one for Vintage Cards, one lower priced for Club Members where those with less experience grading can get started, etc .
Unless otherwise specified my posts represent only my opinion, not fact.
sure. but you are comparing a publicly traded juggernaut to a privately owned business. not exactly apples and oranges there. simple question...would you personally work for 1/3 of what you could make? i'm sure the answer is "no", nor would i. it is pretty clear that the last 3 price increases were still significantly undervalued. prices kept rising and but demand rose even faster. mechanically speaking, we pretty much broke psa.
and i doubt very seriously knowing the new ownership group, that they are in it for the short term, quick money grab. and again, would you work for 1/3 of what you could be making? expecting them or anyone else to is just absurd. you're letting your heart and wallet speak instead of your head.
makes sense and as much as it leaves me obsolete , I doubt there will ever be a service to submit any sub $100 or mid tier cards again. the core of PSA's target business has changed significantly in the last 2 years. it is no longer about the old school collector, like the old school dealer before the old school collector, this is not what is going to drive the hobby going forward. like it or not
This would be fantastic; you could tie in memberships to this as well.
-Or perhaps if you’re actively building a set, you could get certain pricing contingent upon adding said card to a an active set registry maybe.
-What’s tough here, and the biggest dilemma by far is, how do you sort the flipper from the collector and charge accordingly.
-Something like this would not only provide a massive boost to set registries, but perhaps establish new (albeit friendly) rivalries amongst some of us on the boards!
Finally, if none of the above is something that one doesn’t want to do, then have a separate membership where your membership entitles you to more than just grading specials; I.e. faster turnaround times, etc. where the turnaround times of your cards is contingent on the membership level you’ve subscribed to. Turnaround times based on a membership level would see better not only for PSA but for the collector.
You could have a vintage, modern, ultra modern, or an all-of-the-above membership that would garner you faster turnaround times based on a membership, and not on the card level. Then have declared value pricing built into that membership.
If turnaround times were built into memberships and not into cards, people would get their cards back quicker I believe.
Regardless, whatever PSA decides I’m on board because, well, they’re the best in the biz. Just some late night ideas. Imho 🙂
So we get Poppage OR a Pop report...but not both.
Ok...
Todd has stated on more than one occasion that PSA is planning something for set collectors on the registry, something I hope to see come to fruition as the alternative is the effective discontinuation of set building via self submissions as I don't foresee many people submitting even gem mint common cards from 1970s sets at the price levels being bandied about.
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.
I understand that you are talking about the life of 1 card as it moves from stage to stage in the complete process, but lets just think about the 500 graders you mentioned. My belief (things I've read here and things I've heard) is that graders do not even take 1 minute per card, but let's overshoot and say 1 minute.
That would mean that in a grader's 2,000 hour work year, theoretically, they should be grading 120,000 cards. Let's even round down to 100,000 for water cooler and bathroom breaks. So if they have 500 graders like you guesstimate (I feel it is much lower than 500) then, again theoretically, they would be grading 50 million cards per year, which they most certainly are not.
Even if you wanted to get completely crazy and say 5 minutes per card the 500 graders you believe they have would still be grading 10 million cards per year.
Perhaps. You may very well be correct. Still my Trading Card holdings represent under 5% of my holdings in a one-of-a-kind Comic Book art (for me personally it's mostly 1970's) in which grading does not exist. My trading card interest is primarily low demand non-sports which given price increases is now dead. IMHO only a moron would spend $75 to have cards with resale values (in PSA9) of less than $10. Given I did it for love I was OK with paying $8-$18. There are a lot of registry collectors out there for low value Sports and Non-Sports. They don't now but will PSA want their money in the future? If they do will those folks already have exited the hobby or will someone like CGC and their fair prices fill the void for Comic related cards? To think at one time not long ago those type of registry folks were keeping the lights on at PSA, now they may be discarded like bad rubbish.
Again Perhaps you are correct; Still we don't know what the employee makes nor the caseload they average.
What I do know is this with rare exceptions you do not exponentially grow a business as Amazon did by alienating customers.
Lastly Amazon was private it's first 3 years. PSA's parent just from Public to Private. Private means greatly reduced Federal oversight, and logical to think there is good reason why they wanted that to be the case.
Unless otherwise specified my posts represent only my opinion, not fact.
I was thinking something similar to this to work for those of us in the Registry. Much of what I add to my collection is via sub as there is often not many graded and even fewer out there on the market. I know Todd has said they are thinking, so let's hope that it ends up being something like this.
Chris
I agree with those that propose breaking the business into differing segments. Vintage, modern and ultra-modern segments make sense. They can then adjust each segments pricing to get demand to where service levels are reasonable while keeping each customer base only somewhat dissatisfied until the hobby cools down.
While the hobby is this popular, I do not know any feasible way to make everyone happy in any segment. The registry built PSA - but ultra modern PSA 10s have propelled them further than their wildest dreams. Not sure they can price in a way that grading commons for the registry makes sense. If this proves true player sets and subsets on the registry will be active but company complete sets will fade away in popularity.
Speculation and the pursuit of those perfect 10s has proven to be a more powerful drug than the registry.
yes, but your post still puts the blame on psa. no one is holding a gun to all off these subbers heads and making them sub at $75 a pop. the demand is. and if you're not blaming them, then you're shaming them for cashing in on what the demand is. how dare they, right?
trust me, if you'd just add "and the service & timeframe has only gotten worse" then light the tiki torches and breakout the pitchforks. but i can't fault them for getting market price on their services. this is business, their right & america.
Agreed it's their choice to grab a quick buck. Executives will pad their bonus' until the worm (not if when) turns they will skedaddle. Now that it is a private firm the question is ownership just seeking to pocket a quick flip or an empire? The later requires thinking years into the future.
Just because they can do something does not mean it will end up being the most financially viable choice a few years from now. The less folks alienated while they ride high the better profit potential after the current "hot thing" chasers and speculators leave - something they always do by their very nature!
P.S. Here is the thing I agree with all you have said but what you have said is simply not sound long term business which is my point.
Unless otherwise specified my posts represent only my opinion, not fact.
"we'll see"
-the zen master
Boy, if I had to guess, I would say there are 50 or less graders, but I could be way off
https://www.cnn.com/videos/sports/2021/04/07/tom-brady-rookie-card-sold-mxp-vpx.hln
The media does not seem to know nor care if PSA or Beckett graded the card. Not the first or last time we'll see that. Who knows with the right opening and proper strategy to capitalize on the huge swaths of collectors PSA seems willing to throw out it's possible BGS will make a huge comeback.
Unless otherwise specified my posts represent only my opinion, not fact.