Psa - regular submission are back
 

I received this email from psa today:

PSA continues to devote over 80% of our resources to processing the backlog. Due to continuous capacity expansion, we are now able to bring back the ‘Regular’ Service Level. Regular is for cards valued at $1499 or less and will be processed in less than 90 days door-to-door at a price of $100 per card. With the return of Regular, PSA is taking another step towards bringing back lower priced service levels in 2022.

A few thoughts:

1. I wonder if they did this because they were not getting a healthy amount of submissions at the $150 level.
2. 90 days total or 90 business days?
3. Is the lottery system they were talking about now out?
4. Will regular permanently be $100?
5. I was recent reading the backstory of Nat Turner. He has been with psa for over a year. In the past, he has bought companies and then sold them a few years later. How long does he stay at psa?

What a “privilege”
 

Got the email as well.

So for $100.00 per card, not including shipping and insurance both ways, I can wait nervously for three months hoping they process my order as expected? I got to tell you, I’m not interested!

Many collectors are caring less about the numerical grade. Its easy to find a quality screw down or holder to display a card in.

Nat bought PSA at the beginning of 2021.

The market sets the price; not the company. I suspect the market yawned when PSA announced the $150.00 a card grading fee rate, and PSA did not receive its projected submission numbers. Hence, the already lowered price to $100.00. PSA still has a long way to go in further price drops before I submit cards.

Maybe PSA will eventually run a vintage special. Modern basketball and Pokémon cards are the problem. I think I saw that one of Zion’s rookie cards is the card PSA has graded the most. Think about that - In just 3 years, Zion is already the most graded card when PSA has graded cards since the early 1990’s? This shows the tsunami of modern basketball that swamped PSA.

When the modern basketball and Pokémon card bubble bursts we will see further price drops.

How bout you give back our Swingin 60's sub after more than a year...

In a market in which it has monopoly power, PSA has a lot of control over price. You should check your numbers before asserting they didn't meet expectations at $150. Their submissions are staggering. Their balancing act now, in my opinion, is to reduce price enough not to completely alienate some people, without adding too much to a still massive backlog.

I don't remember seeing anything about PSA dropping their minimum grade option, but I don't see it on the online submission form now. Does anyone know if PSA did away with this? As someone who uses it frequently, I sure hope not.

Q: What happened to minimum grade?

A: As part of PSA’s continuous efforts to improve the PSA backlog, the minimum grade option has been suspended for all card, dual, ticket and pack authentication and grading services. We will make an announcement when the minimum grade option returns.

Thanks Peter, I corrected my post.

Thanks, Peter. Glad to see that it's not gone for good, but this does seem strange to me. When a card doesn't meet the MG, it doesn't get slabbed. That's LESS work for PSA. I don't see how disabling this option is in any way a way to help clear the backlog :confused:. Oh well.

I wondered the same when I read that. Maybe it involves more paperwork or something.

Don't know about the first four questions, but my guess on #5 is when the multiples on EBITDA are what he wants them to be.

Isn't Nat Turner pretty much like Edward, Richard Gere's character in "Petty Woman", who buys/invests in companies to grow and then make money off them, except Nat isn't ever going to do things like build great big ships?

Unless he's having too much fun.

LOL Then let's hope he has fun. I really don't know much about him personally, but understand he enjoys the hobby and is somewhat of a collector himself. Also know he's a member here, and on other boards, so he could be reading this as well. But I believe when it comes to an investment like he and others along with him have made, he's going to be a businessman first, and a hobby collector a little further down the totem pole. Couldn't (and wouldn't) blame him for takin' care of business (props to BTO).

Any news on when Beckett will be resuming Standard or Economy grading and how long their backlog currently is? I have some oversized items that I would like to send to Beckett someday when things are back to "normal."

It's been a minute.....it's still floating around in R+I.

I am holding out hope they will return to some specials where it costs $8 or so to get a card graded. The window will probably limiting. Think, cards from the 40's. with yellow backgrounds, whose players first name ends in the letter Y. When that happens, I will sort through my 10,847 raw card to see how many fit the bill.

To me $100 is a good step by PSA. I think Regular will be back down to $50 a card by middle to end of this year. As for lower specials that will come as well. IMO The market will dictate what PSA does, the Market is owned by PSA :-)

PSA has a wide and deep Moat, it has not shallowed or narrowed one bit.

The competition, SGC/BGS, missed the boat again.

Agreed. PSA got overrun with modern basketball and Pokemon. Cards were being graded that simply had no business being graded. People thought they were printing money. Now look where we are.

A lot of people who submitted all those cards you mentioned are gonna be stuck with a lot of junk that isn't worth what they paid for grading.

Hopefully this will be a lesson to them not to submit S cards, people are stupid though, history always seems to repeats itself.

submitting to PSA
 

Johnny630- PSA's competition "missed the boat again"? Umm, no... I'm
sending a submission to SGC in the near future. It's $30 a card with a 40-50
day return. Let's try some of that sticky math... that's less than a third of
PSA's cost (!) with product returned in HALF the time- and the grades have
a much better chance of actually being correct! Doesn't seem like that's
"missing the boat" to me. Trent King

Yet the SGC card will be lucky to recoup 60% of what it's PSA counterpart gets. That's the infuriating part with me. I'll never forget the time I auctioned off a high grade SGC common in a '9'. I don't think it eclipsed $10. Meanwhile, it's PSA counterpart sold for $150 or so. That has stuck with me all this time.

Trent for every one of you sending to SGC there are 5,000 or more sending to PSA.

Oh and when you go to Trade or Sell your SGC graded cards you will get a third or more less then for a PSA Slabbed card.

Shampoo, rinse, repeat.

Can the consensus on this never ending discussion between SGC and PSA be that there are people in SGCs camp and people in PSAs camp and both are correct in why they prefer one verses the other?

Both have their warts and we all choose as an individual which warts we are comfortable with.

Can't it just be left at that?

Cheers,

Butch Turner

If only, right?! Maybe it's my bias but I see far more people slamming PSA on boards and in groups than I do SGC.

I have no way of knowing, but I'd bet (if I actually did bet) that the drop from $150 to $100 for regular service will continue to drop as they catch up. No idea where it ends, of course.

I'm just glad I don't do much in the way of submissions anymore!

Sigh,

Yeah, if only.

Cheers,

B. T.

This is true for the post war market, but it does not apply to pre war.

SGC has always held their own in regards to comparable value in the pre war market.

Psa
 

Butch- yes, there are clearly people who favor PSA or SGC. Unfortunately,
that wasn't the point, and some commenters can't keep it straight. The
original point concerned PSA's 1) new cost and 2) promised turn around
time. It had NOTHING to do with dollars recouped in sales, nothing. So,
when someone says other grading companies "missed the boat", and it's
provably false, that's when I chose to speak up. That statement is flat out
wrong- not an opinion, fact. There are people who are awfully concerned
with values, which is their lookout since they have to hope that PSA actually
pays attention and gets the grade right; however, the original post had
nothing to do with sales. That's my point- SGC hasn't "missed the boat", it's
actually far outstripping PSA in terms of cost and turnaround time. Values
arenon sequitur in the conversation and the "rule of holes" applies- when
you find yourself in one, stop digging:)

Trent King

Trent,

Maybe you should go back and read my post, then your reply to my post.

Things do not seem to line up with what you replied verses what I said.

My comment was not directed towards you or anyone else directly in this thread. It was directed at the never ending discussion of PSA verses SGC and nothing more.

Cheers,

Butch Turner

Psa
 

Butch- I actually agreed with your post, and your remarks clearly weren't
the ones I referenced. Trent King

Roger that and thank you for the reply.

Cheers,

B. T.

Hear Hear!

Although on the plus side at this point getting the cards back will feel just as good as receiving a new purchase from the BST or auction.

$100
 

At $100/ card. If a grader takes 30 secconds to grade each card the consumer is paying approx. $12,000/hr. for the service of someone to look at card and give it a grade.

But I think they average more than 30 seconds. Maybe 35.

I predict that PSA will drop the Regular Service price down again rather quickly. $100 per card for 3 month turnaround is ridiculous, and I doubt the $50 difference from Express pricing opens the floodgates for Pokemon and 2020s Panini commons that they are surely concerned about.

3 months....lol
 

"3 month turnaround is ridiculous"

What is even more ridiculous is they have never guaranteed any type of turnaround time so "3 months" could mean 1 year lol

I agree, it's all ridiculous!

Peace, Mike

If prices weren't so crazy for cards in a PSA 10 (or highest graded if that is not a 10), there would not be any motivation to submit nearly worthless cards in hopes of hitting the grading lottery. Submitting modern cards to PSA is akin to buying a lottery ticket.

The prices people are wiling to pay for PSA 10s don't make any sense to me, but that is what encourages submitting so much junk.

There was a thread on BO that I read not too long ago. It was asking what criteria should be used for determining if a card should be sent into PSA for the $150 service level. All responses were from modern dudes. There was no consensus but the threshold for value was very low.

My sense is that the $100 will get shut down after the post office refuses to deliver their mail again due to volume. With 7.5 million cards in backlog, still, it makes NO sense to open things up at $100 per card.

+1

When was that, 2010?

It has been awhile. It was enough to sour me. The gap hasn't improved.

I've just been sucking up the 150, or selling cards raw. I likely have a few upgrades for my sets, but cant even justify $20 a card

What is the business model?
 

Could someone help me understand what PSA is doing? At $100 per card, aren't they killing their own set registry? Who is going to work on putting together (or continuing to pursue) graded sets? Maybe this is not so much an issue for pre-WWII collectors as for more modern sets. It would seem, though, that you could could have your Aaron and Banks rookies graded, but you're never going to spend $100 to have a "common" card graded unless you're pretty sure it's an 8 or a 9. Then, when it comes back a 5 or a 6, you're SOL and out your c-note.

Are they telling us they only want to grade cards worth north of $1500? Are they thinking, "If I charge ten times what I used to charge for my service, I only have to do one-tenth the work to make the same money"? I'm sure I'm missing something here, but I honestly don't get it. Are they just targeting high-end collectors as their future customer base?

Yes, they are killing the registry. I see a lot of posts claiming that the registry is still the key to PSA's success, but the truth is that they've abandoned it with these prices, as they've decided that they don't need it to succeed. And they don't, not for now. I've posted many times over the past year about how these prices will kill graded set collecting if they don't drop dramatically. I'm thinking that PSA thinks that this is OK, and that they no longer need the registry. But I wonder what their new army of graders and infrastructure is going to be grading when this current bubble finally pops. When they get back to $10/card grading in an effort to bring the registry back to life, there may very well be few if any graded set collectors left.

Set builders haven't been PSA's bread and butter for a long time. Think that ship sailed 5-7 years ago.

anyone get into the $50 special last week?

I have a 1940 complete Mutoscope raw set that I would LIKE to get graded. Obviously, that kills someone like me. And I'm not the only one.

100 percent agree. The registry is not a priority.

Exactly if it was we would be right back where we were eight months ago them completely backlogged and shut down. I don’t want that. The registry I believe is alive and well there is plenty of product to buy out there for your registry sets already graded. It will be back in 10 or $15 a card just be patient the market always seems to work things out as always PSA is the market.

If you’re slowly starting to open up after being shut down by too many orders, of course you start slow and at higher price points. $100 regular is not the end game, but it’s a step on the path.

If they just opened up $12 bulk subs, they’d be shut down again in 48 hours.

I do wonder if we’ll see some temporary weirdness with 2022 RC’s selling for crazy (well, crazier) prices in PSA cases since it cost $100+ to get them graded.