Options
Submitting to PSA thru 4 Sharp Corners…
mintonlypls
Posts: 2,837 ✭✭✭✭✭
Before PSA temporarily stopped accepting submissions (6/2/2026), I submitted a 1957 Frank Robinson Rookie PSA-8 thru 4 SC to be reholdered at the end of May 2026. Yesterday, I received word that the card has been re-holdered….and is on its way to me after just 45 days! Very pleased with the turnaround time….
mint_only_pls
3
Comments
Good to have friends in high places. Please post a pic when Frank comes home.
Is that service still possible via 4CS?
It's the singer not the song - Peter Townshend (1972)
Not even a minute do I buy the whole buh buh buh I'm a man-child japery - Me (2025)
Yes...4 SC still has PSA submission service thru them.
pretty hard not to believe these two entities are INDEPENDENT of one another.
A company that does bulk submissions to do a margin capture is hard to believe for an accountant. That’s a red flag.
I dated a girl in college who had a flag of the Soviet Union on her dorm wall.
Now that was a big red flag.
Curious about the rare, mysterious and beautiful 1951 Wheaties Premium Photos?
https://forums.collectors.com/discussion/987963/1951-wheaties-premium-photos-set-registry#latest
if i were auditing either one, independence would or could be a serious consideration. number of submissions, low cost of submissions, inordinate amount of 10's received, now they are consultants/marketers for them.
these type of relationships between companies are rare.
Why don’t you just say what you want to say instead of alluding to it. You think PSA is engaged in fraud with 4sharpcorners. What evidence do you have? Why would they care about 4SC anymore? How many cards are they grading compared to total volume?
PSA/4SC has been a long term partnership that has benefitted both parties involved as well as the collecting community for many years. Speculating about their relationship is nothing more than puffing hot air. But, since we know the source of the hot air, it comes as no surprise. The originator of this conspiracy theory has been pressing the button on it repeatedly.
They’re actually not rare. And I’m not busting your chops, here.
It’s called a volume discount and they are fairly common business relationships. It is a symbiotic relationship in that it is good for both businesses.
I imagine anyone willing to guarantee the amount of cards NESC/4SC does would be eligible for a similar rate, though the times and market conditions have changed so the deal might not be quite as good.
Someone who buys a 12 pack of Coke isn’t going to get the same price Costco does for their 12 packs.
😉
Curious about the rare, mysterious and beautiful 1951 Wheaties Premium Photos?
https://forums.collectors.com/discussion/987963/1951-wheaties-premium-photos-set-registry#latest
If you think they are in cahoots, then I think you meant:
pretty hard to believe these two entities are INDEPENDENT of one another.
(Now I am busting your chops but just for grammar, not your opinion 😁)
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 don’t think most collectors realize how insignificant 4SCs business is to Collectors Universe. If we look at cards listed by PSA on EBay - which is pretty much any card now that they grade that is going to be sold. PSA has reasonable consignment fees and they do all the work for you to list your card.
PSA has 342,000 EBay listings of which 169,000 are sports so less than half. In the last 30 days they graded 2.3MM cards. 4SC has no sway, influence or importance to PSA today. PSA has no time to segregate and give preferential treatment to anyone. They are too big for any customer to be important to them.
By the way of these 342,000 cards vintage baseball is 12,000. NOTHING related to vintage baseball cards matters to PSA now.
Yes things were different in the past but submitting through 4SC today is not going to get any better grades than submitting yourself.
^ How many are TCG ?
It's the singer not the song - Peter Townshend (1972)
Not even a minute do I buy the whole buh buh buh I'm a man-child japery - Me (2025)
The newer card grading has dwarfed 2000 and back and maybe more than that. I don't look for PSA to lower card prices for a long time. $80 is the break even point where maybe submissions get lower but the price keeps PSA rolling.
As far as "collusion/Independence" goes, there are probably several other 4SC corners involved especially with new issues like Magic and Pokemon cards exploding.
Here is an example of POP's -- the last 3 - 4 months approximately 500 SGC 10 cards have been sold. In that same time period around 12,000 PSA 10's have been sold. SGC has graded around 20 million cards in his life span. PSA around 120 million. so a 6 -1 ratio. In the sports context, a significant number has been sold by 4SC, according to GROK:
They have sold thousands of PSA 10 cards in the last few months (roughly March–July 2026), based on their activity level.
Approximately 50,000+ active sports card sellers on eBay currently, with a core of several thousand serious/consistent ones.
Thus 4SC alone, out of 50,000 or more sports card sellers on EBAY sells approximately 20% of all PSA 10's for the last 3 -4 months.
Statistically -- The probability of a random seller matching 4SC's PSA 10 volume is extremely low (<0.5–1%).
Now I realize that they are consignment sellers (at least that is what is advertised and I'm sure they handle some). But a lot of there PSA 10's come from the 1980's and early 90's. I was sending in cards for $4.25 a piece at one time to PSA and I would rarely if ever be sending in 1987 Topps or 1986 Topps Baseball in 2010 range. Just a waste of money. However, someone was sending them in, in huge quantities, even when PSA 10's of these types of cards were selling for $10 a piece.
Heck until recently, 1987 Topps Nolan Ryan were selling for $30 just a couple years ago. But there were 750 PSA 10's by 2010. ANd we all know the probability of one of us sending in 100 1987 Topps nolan ryan cards and getting 10's. We would maybe get 2 or 3 and the others would be unsaleable. just a wast of money.
you're using the wrong pivot when you try to imply that 4SC is 1-fifty-thousandth of the volume to discredit them having (assuming it's true) twenty-percent of the volume of tens. grok isn't checking those numbers so you should show the source where they came from and stop trying to misrepresent how numbers work.
The big takeaway is that if anyone is a vintage (me) collector then you're getting absolutely no love anymore from PSA. The numbers just don't support them caring about the vintage market at all. It's too few people, too few cards and all niche. At this point it's an afterthought.
I hate to see it but I get it. They have to chase where the market is going and vintage is definitely NOT it.
percent of graded cards that get a 10 by issue year. (a sampling of ~1 million)
The bump for Cracker Jack 1915 is significant! Numbers dont get that high again until nearly 1970! One of the reasons the 14's are valued in multiples higher
It's the singer not the song - Peter Townshend (1972)
Not even a minute do I buy the whole buh buh buh I'm a man-child japery - Me (2025)
Sorry the number of psa 10's sold on ebay the last 3 or 4 months, however long ebay keeps them up.
$$$ wise a waste of their time. I agree.
Not all 10's my bad. just the ones sold on EBAY that you can see currently.
can you circle back to what your assertion is? There are a few significant trends going on right now so I want to understand your theory here and what data you're using to back it up. It's not the world's easiest data synthesis.
4SC has sold 20 percent of the PSA 10s sold on eBay in the past 3 months?
approximately, according to AI. I didn't go back and count each one. 12,000 total PSA 10's and they sold about 2,000. According to AI on any given 3 -4 month range of sales on EBAY, they sale a couple thousand PSA 10's.
Those numbers don't mean anything without any context. What point are you trying to make?
Same ol’ same ol’. Jealousy most likely.
not jealous at all. i gave you the AI stats and probabilities -- the chances that all of those are just happen chance is 0.
by the way grok AI is what gave me the stats. they could be off, but probably aren't off a lot.
You still haven’t produced any form of compelling statistic that supports whatever assertion you’re not willing to make.
Suffice to say the persistence of commentary regarding 4SC for the same washed up claim has become a bore. They get sh!tloads of 10s because they submit sh!tloads of cards. As already mentioned, they are a top supplier to the hobby. I sincerely doubt PSA would want anything less than the honey they get from their long term pleasant arrangement. I certainly appreciate the existence of the company as I’ve fetched a few good deals from them recently.
It’s okay to be jealous of the big romping monster. I’m jealous of them, too.
Someone asked to post my 1957 Frank Robinson Rookie PSA-8 in its new holder when I have it back. It arrived today (7/20).
Bravo. Beauty of a card.
Wow what a gorgeous Robinson. Puts mine to shame!!
Exactly. 4SC volume is huge compared to Joe Blow but in the grand scheme of things they really aren't that significant at all.
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.
If 4SC has the same gem rate as everyone else, and they have sh*tloads of 10s because they submit sh”loads of cards, wouldn’t that that mean they also likely have many multiple thousands of 7s, 8s and 9s that didn’t gem?
Haha proportionally speaking prolly right but sometimes "Liars figure and figures lie"
Pretty sure 4SC submits with minimum grade option.
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.
Agree, Grote. Which, at scale, would give the impression of them getting only high graded cards.
Add their low buy rate and the inconsistency of grading and you’d expect them to have a good amount of overgraded cards. The conspiracy theories in 4SC never made sense to me, always seen it as a function of massive volume.
If I was going to play into the conspiracy theory stuff and present their case for them I would point to something like this.
157077059
That cert and many that follow are from what I expect is a 4SC submission (they have sold or have for sale many cards in this sequence). There is a Bob Grich 83T which is a PSA 9 in that whole sea of PSA 10s so if they were doing min grades it would be individual!
But with the 83T Grich that would make sense as it is a POP 1. In all those cards the grades do look accurate. They probably have some pretty solid in-house screening as well and an awareness of pop reports.
YEah that's the one I always use. I send mine in and PSA sends them right back not holdered. LOL!!!
Vader hits on the right point. For every 10 we get it takes us many many 9's, 8's and 7's. And they aren't free to us. BUT if they were Free to 4SC, that would make sense as to why they would waste their time sending in 1987 topps cards 10 years ago or longer. Me and you wouldn't waste our time or money trying for a 10 worth $20 at the time.
and if all above aboard -- massive costs. 80opc -- back in 2010 you wouldn't have sent in 500 Eddie Murray 1986 Topps cards in hopes of getting a 10 or 2. The costs would have been $600 to get a few 10's worth $20 a piece. And all the other 9's 8's etc would have been worthless.
Now if PSA only charges 4sc for the 10's, then maybe it works. $6 to grade a card they got for practically nothing and then they sell it for $20. PSA then just sent all the cards back to 4sc who in turned sold them in lots of 100 and either broke even or made a dollar or 2.
Nice get..sounds a little fishy, right?
I don't know what their costs are and whether they have some volume deal with PSA. While their volume doesn't meet the criteria for "fraud" to be appealing it probably does give them service options I don't have. I also suspect they can do a better job at card inspection than PSA can themselves. It doesn't seem as fishy as you might want it to seem. Which cards were over-graded?
I think he was trying to imply that it's not.
Take it a step further, maybe the cards they "send" them already really have a grade. Maybe that's how they knew the Grich needed to be a 9 and not a 10? Even at half price $14 per card for value, how many 1983 Topps commons do you send in to get 7's 8's and 9's on? Can you sell 1983 Rick Rhoden's psa 8's? or 1983 bruce benedict 8's or 9's? seems like a very huge risk of money to do so.
But if what I send gets the grades that I need (want), then it makes it more of sure thing. Me and you even at $10 wouldn't waste our money sending in 1983 Topps commons even we just opened up a vending case.
To break even on a Psa 8 of rhoden type cards we would need to get at least $16.50 per card counting all the fees and our original costs just to break even at $10 per card grading.
They are selling them for $99 and up in PSA 10 83 commons. So I think the recipe is that they review them before sending them in.
They aren't free...Large submitters pay a fee per card for unholdered cards that don't meet MG, too. They also are a lot smarter about submitting cards then you or the average submitter is. You are looking for some kind of conspiracy where there is none.
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.
Doesn't have to be a conspiracy, A tenant of good business is to keep you largest clients/customers happy.
As for reputational impact going all the way back to cert #1 there is an issue https://www.psacard.com/cert/00000001/psa,
USA public record, as it was admitted in Court that it was trimmed yet more than 10 years later PSA has made no changes.
Bottom line there is no empirical proof on either side of this coin, but it's in realm of plausible there are or have been shenanigans
It's the singer not the song - Peter Townshend (1972)
Not even a minute do I buy the whole buh buh buh I'm a man-child japery - Me (2025)
sensible post.
It is a good question why #00000001 is still a NM-MT 8.