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Originally Posted by MichelaiTorres83
Unlikely. I believe it is partof their slow demise.
I don’t believe they will be in business 10 years from now.
You are sort of doomed when buyers and dealers won’t touch a card that they have graded.
The prices reflect that and people do not want to flip them to take losses.
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SGC doesn't grade that many cards and they probably weren't grading very many auto's so it is an easy business decision to shut down a line of business that you play a very limited role in the market in and one that you might be taking significant financial risk by doing. It might not have been profitable for them anyways.
I have only dealt with SGC once and felt like the process was smooth and was really happy with how the cards looked in their holders. The problem is the collecting pool is getting smaller and smaller for their cards and there may certainly be segments where the collector base is very solid and perhaps like them more than other third party graders but the general trend is slipping.
It is my understanding at one point recently that they might grade 10,000 cards in a good month. This isn't a very large business and the revenue is probably less than 1.5 million if not lower. I think a lot of people forget how small the third party authentication business really is. PSA has a market share that amounts to total domination of a market and they really don't make that much money. Collectors Universe through June of 18 only made 6.2 million in profit for the fiscal year and around 35% of the company is represented by PSA so we are not talking huge numbers.
I think it is a very real possibility at some point SGC goes away. It might not and I think having choices is better for a market but it certainly isn't out of the realm of possibilities. What I think is more likely is they keep maintaining a very small amount of market share and someone out there is making 400k or so a year to operate it and is totally fine with it. It will certainly be interesting.
If they go out of business it is bad for the slabs in general but there are once again probably some areas where the collectors are totally comfortable with what they bought and it won't be an issue at all. I don't collect the older cards so I don't have a real opinion that counts but on newer cards it certainly wouldn't be good for them in most cases.