[BeanTown]

Agreed it's the REGISTRY which makes PSA holders treated like a commodity. Thus the term buy the card, and not the holder is coined. Recently I met a die hard PSA member. He was explaining to me about their different membership levels and what you get for each level. Most Every time he gets a card in a non PSA holder or he gets a grade he feels isn't fair, he cracks it out and he resubmits it.

I asked him how many times he has done this. He said it's in the thousands and I asked him how many he did this month and he said around 200. He went on to explain how PSA used to be real easy to crack, but they have improved their holders now which makes him use his band saw in the basement. SGC are simple to crack as two quick pops on each top corner normally does the trick.

The population numbers within a couple of years will almost be impossible to trust, if not even now.

As a collector, I still have tons of cards I bought back in the 90s and early 2000s which are raw. This was before TPGs even had a holder big enough to grade larger cards like Postcards and Cabinets. If/when I decide to sell, I will most likely use whatever TPG has the best reputation and give me a chance to fetch the best final price.

Right now PSA is king of the TPGs. We are paying for their "opinion" on the grade of cardboard they say it is. It doesn't matter if SGC has better holders, better graders, a better owner, etc.... I would love to see SGC become the new industry Giant for grading. To do this they would have to have PSA self destruct which I don't see happening and SGC would really have to come up with an innovative registry system which would become the new norm.

(Hi John glad to see you posting)