Originally Posted by Stampsfan
I've not posted much at all on this, but have certainly been active in reading as much as I can. Maybe that's because I have a job, and a second small business on the side (not card related).
What bothers me about going back to the seller is what happens if that seller bought the card from another seller earlier. Now is that seller supposed to go back to the last seller? And then so on? Not all sellers are the original graders.
Back to the car comparison, if you buy a used (and relatively new) car from someone, and that car has a recall, do you go back to the guy you bought it from? Of course not.
The whole premise of PSA's business model is to remove the doubt around the product they viewed.
For me right now, my buying habits have in fact simply stopped. Have been that way for about three weeks now. This makes me sick, and I'm not sure how much I want to continue at the moment. While I'm a small fish, this hurts all dealers, and I will guess am not alone at eliminating my purchases.
Further, this fall I have planned and booked a trip to New York, primarily around finally bringing a large amount of my collection into the PSA offices in NJ, or at the New York Comic Con. My wife and I are spending ten days in the city, but the destination for this vacation was predicated around getting some of my higher end stuff graded. While it may not be much to some collectors here, it is a lot for me. Included in the batch is a complete set of V145-1 hockey with a nice Morenz, Clancy, and Joliat RC's and a host of HOF'ers, some 52 Topps including Matthews and Mays, and dozens and dozens of other cards in the $100-$1000 range. It would cost me, I don't know, a couple of thousand to grade them, if not more? In any case, it is now off the radar. Not giving these guys four figures of cash for an "opinion" that cannot be backed up. I will, however, have an extra day or so in New York, and some extra cash.
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