And with that, I am out of the grading game.
 

I'm cheap, I said it. I got into grading for the protection and pedigree aspect. My collection has more "Authentic" and 1's than anything else, so the spike in grading fees has pinched me out of things as it is, but with PSA now saying that their economy grading at $30 a card, (20 card minimum), nothing older than 1996, I am officially out. I sent in an order 15 months ago, (in quality check 2 now, woohoo?!) at $20 a card, and hated myself in the morning for doing that. I also got talked into sending in an order at $50 a card, my wife hated me in the morning after that one, but with high dollar cards going in I could justify it, sorta?!

Grading cards is now an expensive game, more expensive that the cards in some cases which seems counterintuitive, and I feel like PSA is leading the charge for playing the "look how much better we make your card" game. They are leaning in hard on the perceived value of their service, and I think it catches up with them sooner rather than later with the emergence of other graders that are starting to get a footing in the market. In my mind, all the talk of expanding services, more graders, new facilities was a PR move. I know they are expanding, but it looks more like a move to appease shareholders than customers. If they would have expanded their system, made one office solely for modern, one for vintage and kept their prices less than $20, they would rule the world of grading. But it seems like everyone else in the realm, they have been drinking their own Kool-Aid and are consumed with the self importance of the service and a high demand (*cough cough* capitalism).

I had resigned to the fact that I would now not be grading any more of my kitschy cards with no one grading for less than $20 a card, and with this last announcement I am officially out. The cost of grading out paces values of a lot of my cards, so it is back to old school ways of protecting the cards. I wonder if the inevitable "bubble burst" that everyone is predicting hits the grading services first? When demand cools as bulk submissions go down, profits will dip, and by that time I would imagine that the "hair on fire" approach to getting all cards graded will also cool. Once again, it seems, at least in my cheap mind that big business has built a system to maximize money in the current climate, turning a blind eye to building a system that would set them up for now and the long haul. We will have to wait and see.

The demand won't cool because people are greedy and want to make more money. Money is always the answer...
I think my last submission was 5+ yrs ago. I would only submit under an extraordinary circumstance.... Maybe if I sell a card like this one as it might raise it's value...but then I am going to CSG. I trust them more than the others at this point. PSA would be a close second.
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https://luckeycards.com/cobborange.jpg

Don't sell that card, it is perfect as it is. I agree with CSG, they seem to be a better bet than anyone else now, but I am late to the "why grade it" party, so I guess that makes me cheap, and a slow learner. This has been a very eye opening Saturday morning for me.

This is not the cheapest PSA will get. They're just throttling down slowly so they don't get slammed with 10 million cards to start a new backlog. They're attempting to determine yield based on what they allow to be graded.

It's kind of like college admissions. You have space for 10,000 freshmen in dormitories in the fall. You only accept 10,000 students, and only 3,000 show up to campus, because the other 7,000 go to other colleges. You accept 50,000 and 17,000 show up. You have to predict your yield rate so that you have the right numbers in the future.

They are grading about 1 million cards a month now. So they're trying to figure out the formula to properly get sent 1 million cards a month long term, knowing that there are all kinds of years, values, stars/commons, etc that are sitting in bins waiting until it makes sense for the owners to send in for grading. They can't reopen $20 until they've exhausted demand at $30.

If you want to grade with PSA, just keep waiting.

I have to wonder, other than t206 Wagner, 33 Goudey Ruth, and 52 Topps Mantle buyers who are incredibly wealthy, at the top of the pyramid at this time, who is buying cards in this economy? Certainly not many married people trying to survive. Only someone who is very wealthy is able to play this game. Joe Average can't, and be able to live too. And I think that a high percentage of regulars on this forum are just that, very wealthy. Not griping, not jealous, or any of that. Just perception. Thus the hobby for these folks is selling, buying and trading very expensive cards that most people simply cannot afford.

Very perceptive and thought-provoking post. PSA and SGC have become victims of their own success and, at the same time, become arrogant and indifferent to customer service. I applaud your decision.

Prices will drop as they finish off the demand and have excess capacity. the NJ facility is coming online soon and that will increase capacity even more. They appear to be adopting demand-based pricing, like an airline or a LV casino hotel. TPGs are businesses; they aim to make money. You'd have to be an idiot to price your services at $10 when you can readily get $30. I am seriously contemplating paying $100 a card (:eek:) to have a half dozen raw cards done at PSA. They've gone through the roof and I want to cash out; it just makes sense to spend $100 per to lock in the potential profit.

As for the nature of the game, expensive card collecting, like art collecting, is a wealthy person's hobby now. I am in on some of it only because I got the cards decades ago. I could not afford today to buy what I have, which is one reason I won't part with it easily. Also why I got into boxing and other sports and even non-sports about 20 years ago: priced out of the baseball cards I wanted to collect. Except for Pele cards and a few scattered cards in other sports (Jack Johnson boxing cards), that stuff is still very reasonable.

I truly believe this $30 for 1996 and newer is a test run to see how many cards they can get. If it works, keep it. If it doesn’t, expand the year range.

Psa wants no part of what happened two years ago (the great flood). They don’t want massive amounts of cards coming in. Hell, I don’t think they want low dollar cards coming in. It seems they are focusing on modern and will continue in the future.

James I full agree with your sentiment. To me we are in a Two Totally Different Card Market World’s. Blue Collar Middle Class Collector Guys and White Collar Investor/Collector Guys. The latter has all the control thus TPG’s cater to them. It’s very smart on PSA to not lower their pricing at this time the demand is till there at much higher levels still. $50 and $100 and up.

Let's not forget that making it only for cards from 1996 and newer means the actual grading aspect of the process will be as simple as possible.

I obviously have no data to back this up, but my guess would be that way over 90% of the cards submitted will come back 8s, 9s and 10s. Modern card collectors would remove any 'money' cards from packs and immediately put them right into toploaders, keeping them untouched and pristine for the ages. Wear? What wear? We don't need no stinkin' wear!!!

It's free money for the grading behemoth. Just put every card in a PSA 10 slab and be done with it. Ka-ching!!!

PSA doesn't want to go too low, then every base RC from every offering will be coming in. That will shut them down again. So idk if you ever see sub $20 prices in the future.

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Thanks Johnny, totally agree. And apologies for getting off topic.

Your Welcome :-) no need to apologize you make very good points sir.

I have a slew of personal collection cards that would be a financial loss to grade them at $10, much less $30, but besides that none of them are post-1996.

I have a PSA collection of HOF/stars from 50s-2001 and another PSA collection of Cubs rookies/notables.

It's not "worth it" to grade a Kevin Tapani non-rookie in a Cubs uniform even at the oldschool bulk rate sub-$10, and it's far from that now. Nonetheless, I'm out there looking one.

There a lot of people like me out there with similar and totally different PSA collections that now have holes which are not easily filled. It has me wondering about the future of "rare" slabs which are not rare cards, but cards which haven't been graded much. I've seen unusual bidding for niche desired cards which haven't been graded much, but as set builders with holes in their collection start to compete for limited slabs, things could get silly.

The Covid shutdowns brought new collectors into (and back into) the hobby. These new hobbyists increased grading demand, which obviously caused higher grading fees. They also had “free” stimulus money to spend, and they did, further adding to the fire.

Covid shutdowns are now over, and some people have left the hobby. Those that stayed don’t spend as much on the hobby, because other entertainment forms are viable again. This was the first shoe to drop.

The second shoe is that we have across the board inflation that is reducing disposable income. Moreover, investment portfolio values are dropping. I don’t care what that Net54 poll indicated, psychology shows that people fee richer and spend more when their portfolios are up.

We are headed into a recession, and possibly are already in one. All these factors will decrease the grading demand, and the grading fees will eventually follow. Card collecting/grading is a hobby - not a necessity. Something will give. I predict grading and card budgets are where people will make cuts.

I don’t know when the grading fees will normalize, but I don’t think we are there yet. Just sit tight and the fees will eventually become reasonable again.

Despite all the gloom and doom posts, card shows are more attended than ever and lots and lots of dollars are being spent by old and new collectors alike. Ditto with online auctions. These are collectors spending small amounts to large amounts and everywhere in between.

In times when the stock market declines people often take expendable money and put it to work into various hard assets and collectables: art, coins, etc and now higher ticket cards.

In tough economic times I don’t want hard assets I want something that is stable with easy liquidity. It’s my view that cards aren’t as easily liquidated as some may think.

It’s in my opinion that the past several years of QT and zero interest rates is what brought many investors to put a portion of their monies for investments into high grade vintage stars.

My 100% unverified, unscientific take after going through several business cycles as a collector is that the card market lags the overall economy by 9-12 months. I expect the National will be a zoo and auctions will go strong until at least the end of the year. Meanwhile, we've already had a 'soft landing' on a wide variety of cards. Vintage baseball just happens to be in the tumbler right now.

The right cards are very liquid...
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The right ones are but the right ones are the hardest ones to let go !!!!

I can't believe someone hasn't produced packs with the cards already slabbed and graded when you open the pack .

That was done around 2000 for football cards

Just found 1 on ebay

https://i.ebayimg.com/images/g/kHYAA...VO/s-l1600.jpg

They have in the past. Topps and Leaf have both released boxes containing already graded cards. It's not very common, but it probably will come back stronger under Fanatics owning Topps.
Plus, Fanatics is going to move a lot more of their product by breakers who will submit your cards to CSG automatically to be stored in a vault or auctioned off once graded.

Weirdly I have never seen a blue SGC label before.

I think the blue denotes an autographed card.

Thanks John, we will see what happens. I have long felt that the first person to create a slab for the everyday collector could run the table now. Customizable labels, slabs set up for popular card sizes, smart design to allow for protection while easily cracked, so not graded, but protected. There you go gents, take the idea and run.

Already out there.

https://www.ebay.com/itm/23448878985...0AAOSwiJJiRbGb

To me they're just very expensive toploaders or snap tites.

Yeah, that design could be refined, and the labels could be a little more aesthetically pleasing.

Holders like that have been available since the 90s. This picture is from Hager’s 1993 guide.

I apparently need to get my head out of the sand. I also came up with an idea for a wireless phone...some would call it mobile. Could be big.

LOL. I often get the same feeling. It sometimes seems like all the original ideas have been taken...

This is basically me. I always liked screwdowns and now I like slabs. I buy blanks, make labels, and slab cards I feel like slabbing. Value added without the grading? No. But that sentimental fair condition McGwire that's been in my binder since I was 10? Nice to have it in a format that displays well.

I often get the same feeling. It sometimes seems like all the original ideas have been taken...

If grading isn't your thing, you shouldn't care on whit that other people feel differently. Seems like most of the people who rail about card grading claim not to even use it. Which is odd. If it's not your bag, it's not your bag.

I have both raw and graded. While the grading model has sort of collapsed onto itself because of a backlog of many millions of largely modern shiny cards, I'm not morally offended by the idea. I'm sure most hobbies have some equivalent where some third party passes judgment on the authenticity and perceived quality of different items. Are they infallible? Of course not. Is it necessary to enjoy an item? Of course not. I'm also sure as long as people have been collecting items for 1000s of years, there is always a part of the collector world that aspires to have the "best" of "nearly best" example of something as judged by others. Some dude in Ancient Egypt was probably setting up outside the pyramids grading wooden funeral figures on a scale of 1 to 10.

Here is what it is because I could be one of them or my take on it in my perspective, you have the collectible market going crazy during shut downs, so former collectors go to their stash and look thru their cards. They look on ebay say holy crap look at that price, let me get it graded. Now, no one like that cares as much about the grading fee when the raw card they bought for 1-1000 dollars is now worth 500-100,000. So you get all these cards that were just sitting around that people would normally just sell raw if they want to get rid of being graded because the profit on them will still be so great.

I'm neither rich, nor do I grade. But I'm about to possibly take a multi year hiatus as I contemplate a PhD to max out my earning potential. My wife looked me in the face and asked "you'll stop buying cards, right?" And then I thought, jeez, I don't need a PhD! lol

If I'm lucky, I'll be able to return to the market when it's in the trough.

I said on Twitter it was a 30 year wait from the last junk wax era to reap rewards. So when I'm 65 and ready to retire I should be able to sell off my collection and sit pretty.

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I’ll be the first to own up to the reality, I don’t think I can afford to get back into the vintage hobby (happily married, children, out growing our current home). I personally was blown away by prices the last few years and am very grateful for what I still own. I’ve been fishing believe it or not, it’s the cheapest hobby still to date!