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A Million graded a month ?
habs007
Posts: 135 ✭✭✭
PSA is basically grading a million TCG cards a month , crazy number . My question is - are these old cards or new product or 50 - 50 or what ? What the heck is going on here ? And when does this market crash because there is no way it can go on . Or is there ?
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Where did you come up with number? In any case Gamestop has become a PSA official submitter of cards submitter doing the paperwork and submitting of TCG and sports cards along with buying and selling of them. No membership is needed or minimum amount submitted.
This has increased greatly amount of cards graded by PSA
Maybe I should have them sub my vintage!
I think it has to be higher to much higher on the newer stuff. It's new stuff that creates backlogs.... Just like when PSA used to charge more for "modern" sports cards of the past 2-3 years....
Here's the breakdown by sport.
https://gemrate.com/
All Pokemon, all the time. A monopolistic takeover.
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I dont see why it cant continue or grow. I am probably not the ideal customer but I still put 60 TCG in the mail for submission yesterday.
I suppose looking at the economic angle of it you just need a supply of cards where the perceived graded value is higher than the fee to get it graded. Think you have that in spades now and not sure its going anywhere.
I think you look at the younger generation of card collectors, and think that group is growing exponentially month to month, they appreciate Pokemon and Charizard and Umbreon the same way a lot of the older generation (that's me) appreciate Griffey and Cal and Mattingly and Brett and Schmidt. So new product comes out and think they are loving seeing those familiar cartoon faces they loved growing up. Probably a lot of that generation appreciates TCG more than the baseball players where they have to be patient and wait all that time between pitches without looking at their phone. That pitch clock wont pull all of the younger generation in.
So dont think demand is going anywhere. Pokemon can put out 3 to 4 sets a year and people can buy older stuff so just think there is a ridiculous amount of gradeable product. I think the only thing that would shake it up is if you had a junk wax type scenario where none of the new stuff seemed worth grading. Cant see that though because all of the card companies have the playbook. Manufactured scarcity. Only one of these a pack. Only 4 of these in a box. Maybe with these you open 3 boxes and did not get one. While that exists, rip rip rip bust bust bust credit card minimum payment send the good ones off to PSA to be graded.
Also, keep in mind Pokemon is TCG but TCG is larger than them. Magic The Gathering. Disney Lorcana seems to put out at least 3 sets a year too.
Serious question about the TCG since I know absolutely nothing about them, but do they create multiple variation sets like they do in sports (Archive, base, Heritage, etc...)?
No one seems interested in collecting sets anymore and most of the sports issues just to be a vehicle to get whatever variation of that year's hottest rookies. Just curious if the TCG is similar or are folks collecting sets of these?
I think there is interest in collecting older sets. Or any set where each individual card in a PSA 9 or 10 would have a value that exceeds $50 or so.
So you go back to sets in the early 2000s you'd have maybe a set of about 100. But you had the foil cards that were the prize cards. You maybe would pull one in every 4 packs. You hit the foil card and that would be your hit. That would be where your main value was. But if its old enough and scarce enough those regular cards have value as Gem Mint cards, maybe even Mint.
The way that it would work/still works is you have a set that has a theme. First you just had the first set but then it was Jungle, Fossil Team Rocket etc. I rarely knew the stories because I didn't play the game, watch the shows or movies. But my understanding on Team Rocket was what if all the bad dude and dudette trainers got hold of these Pokemon. Then you get a Dark Charizard a Dark Blastoise etc.
So its less like baseball where Craig Biggio has a 1988 card and 1989 and 1990 and every year he is active he has his card. The different themes would include different Pokemon characters. Charizard not in every set.
I think maybe in the 2010s it was less the foils that were cool cards and more these cool GX EX cards were the prizes. The art got a lot stronger and the texture changed where some of the cool cards felt like the 1993 SP baseball and football. You have cards they call the Secret Rares so the set may be 200 cards and one of them is 203/200. You may only see some of the more scarce ones in every 2 3 4 boxes. Then the ones that might go for 1000 to 3000, maybe they only show up in every 10 to 12 boxes.
I basically took an interest because when my son was young he was collecting and trading with his friends and I was like I think this is becoming a thing. Started researching it and was at the 2018 National and felt I had seen everything I wanted to buy and was probably done, had submitted everything. So how am I going to keep occupied on Sunday? Then saw a table where someone was selling Team Rocket 1st Edition packs. For $45!! Whoa that's expensive. But I figured I'm here this will be the thing for today. I'll cough up some cash and open some. Think those packs sell for 1000 today. Lesson for me not to be too cheap.
So took an interest since then. My son lost interest compared to when he was real young but still appreciates them at times. I stayed interested cause I collect cards.
Nice summary. I appreciate you dumbing it all the way down so that even I could understand it.
Glad it was helpful. Realized another way to answer do people collect TCG sets is yes, I am collecting one now. Slipped my mind cause its not Pokemon.
Disney put their first TCG set out a couple of years ago and its been pretty popular. From the beginning I felt it had potential and bought what I could get my hands on then.
The way those packs worked is you would get one cold foil card per pack. Some more scarce and harder to pull than others. So you open a box you get about 24 foil cards. In the set about 200. So decided to try to build a PSA 10 cold foil set. A couple examples.