The future of bulk grading at PSA

[Snowman]

Last week, Nat Turner was interviewed on the Card Talk podcast. They talked about grading fees and when bulk services might come back. Nat gave his expected non-answers to some degree, but he was a bit less dodgy about it than he normally is, in my opinion. You can feel his enthusiasm for wanting to get bulk services back on the table for set collectors. He specifically mentioned offering them at the $10 service level again. He said it won't be in 2021 (obviously), or even in Q1 of 2022, but he did say they are making great progress on the backlog and that he expects to be able to offer it again as soon as they catch up.

However, he didn't go into to detail about what that would look like, but if I'm reading between the lines correctly, I believe PSA will offer cheap (possibly even $10 /ea) bulk services again at some point in 2022. But I believe those services will only be offered through the set registry, and will only be available for specific sets at specific times. So you will probably have to have a set already in the works (or begin uploading one) in order to submit other cards from that set in bulk. It'll probably be similar to how the quarterly specials were done in the past (1950s baseball, 1980s basketball, etc.) except now it will be restricted to the registry. PSA sent me a survey this week about which basketball insert sets I'd be most interested in adding to the registry (this has Nat's name written all over it). I think this is a great way for them to reintroduce cheap bulk grading services to the people who "need" them most. It takes care of their most loyal set collector customers without having to reopen the floodgates for every "collector" living in their parents' basement with 275 Zion Williamson "rookie cards" waiting to be sent in, all hoping for a 10, but breaking even with mostly 9s.