PSA card mysteriously damaged in mail.
 

Shipping with USPS opens you up for about anything to happen to whatever you mail. I ship single graded cards by placing the card in a bag, then wrapping it in bubble wrap, next placing cardboard around the bubble warp and finally inserting it into a bubble mailer.

I have shipped many 100s of single graded cards in this format and have NEVER experienced any damage to a single card.

I received a message from a buyer that the graded card they received has a crack in the case. Received a picture of the card and packaging and while there is clearly a crack on the case, the package has NO damage whatsoever.

My first theory is that the USPS exposed the shipment to some obscenely cold temperatures during shipment and this cold caused the case to become just brittle enough that a slight bump (not enough to damage the package) caused the crack to occur.

Either way, I will file a damage claim with the USPS.

Has anyone else experienced a mysterious crack (well packed, no damage to shipping supplies) on their graded card when shipping or receiving?

Extreme stress, aka throwing a very heavy package on top of yours while the bubble mailer is lodged at an angle. I made a quick drawing of how I believe things (normally get bent, but also likely damaged in other ways, like slabs cracking). When a bubble mailer lands in a sorting bin at an angle and is stuck there it is way more susceptible to being crushed or bent because there is nowhere for the weight to brace i.e the package below normally, It's just thin air.

Here is the masterful drawing I made of a postal worker throwing an 80 pound box on top of a 4 oz bubble mailer that's lodged in the bin. Blue line is your item.

https://uploads.tapatalk-cdn.com/202...20431a5d1c.jpg

Hey! I think I know that Postal Worker!

You know my mail carrier? :)

I have had a lot of really weird stuff happen to me in the USPS system. Absolute weirdest was I bought an insanely silly rare Nolan Ryan card. The bubble mailer looked like it got run over by a fleet of trucks. The top loader was broken in half and by some miracle the card itself was not damaged in any way.

Thank you for the masterful artwork, I appreciate it. My first thought was exactly what your image showed. But, the fact that the cardboard around the bubble wrap was intact/undamaged made me wonder. Either way, I will await the USPS's response to my damage claim.

Of course, there's the possibility the buyer did something to the slabbed card after they opened the package.

That was my first thought. Intact packaging plus cracked slab often equals recipient who did something innocent-but-clumsy or inanely stupid.

If this was the case, in other words, if deception was afoot, I would think the recipient would put some damage on the package to make his story more believable. That's my first thought.

I guess that makes sense. I was thinking the intact packaging would make it look like the seller was "clearly at fault" or something like that.