Do TPGs have any liability at all?
 

Other than the obvious of potentially losing you as a customer, what is a TPGs incentive to not damage your card? I'm not seeing a whole lot, but I could certainly be missing something. You declare the value, but that's so they can charge you appropriately and has nothing to do with any kind of insurance policy on their end. Seems like I've seen instances of cards being damaged and they just grade it with the damage and their excuse is, "oh well, mistakes happen". Am I missing something, or does this fall squarely on the owner to have outside insurance on the card? And if so, will the policy pay out if it was damaged while not in your possession?

It is my understanding that declaration of value is for more than just what they should charge you for grading, but in fact if the card is lost in the mail or damaged that is the replacement value for what they will give you, at least this is the case for PSA.

Also, PSA has stated that based on the grade that your card is assigned if there is ever an issue with that card that they will buy it back for what you paid for it. For example PSA has offered to buy the PSA 8 Honus Wagner from Kendrick for the $2.8mm he paid due to the controversy surrounding the card being trimmed, but he did not want to get his money back because he wanted to keep the card.

Do you have a source or article describing the PSA 8 Wagner buyback offer?

Yeah, but I'm not talking about either one of these scenarios. I'm talking about you send a raw card that's ex-mt, and in the process of handling it, they ding it and (now appropriately) slab it as a 3. Do they have any liability there, or are you just SOL?

Google... and I suppose you could call Joe Orlando and ask him if they really offered to buy it back (or Kendrick and get his side of whether it's true).... but it is clearly stated by PSA as their policy that they will buy back any card of theirs that is incorrectly slabbed for what you paid for it.

Probably SOL... I guess you would have to prove the card was in better condition than when you received it back and that the TPG damaged it.

But.... there is always the chance they admit they damaged it....but that's a big chance.... I would hope for them to be honest though.

I got some swamp land in Florida for sale for those who think that story is 100% true.

Nice... I will give you what you paid for it;)

PSA did call me the time they damaged one of my cards during the process. It didn't affect the value of the card, so I didn't get paid anything. They just wanted to let me know about it. But I've seen other threads here at Net54 saying that PSA reimbursed them for damage on their premises, and some that said that PSA ignored the damage and slabbed the card anyways.