Jay- I've come up with an example of how money is minted that I wish to share. I don't speak with many collectors, and I'm sure my story is a familiar one to those who are active in the market. I'll leave out names to protect the innocent.
A number of years ago a good friend of mine had a valuable baseball card graded a 7. He decided to resubmit it to see if he could get a bump. He sent it in again, and again, and again, and again.
The first four times it remained a 7. You would think that PSA was demonstrating some much needed consistency by recognizing the card's limitations. But lo and behold, on the fifth try he got an 8. How did this card suddenly jump a full grade? I have absolutely no idea, nor did he. And let's look at the transaction. PSA got paid five times to grade the same card. Nice work if you can get it. When was the last time you paid your plumber five times to fix the same leak? And my friend, who paid five grading fees and threw them well over $500 (rates were lower then) got back a baseball card that just added around $5000 of value.
So everyone made out like a bandit on that transaction, and absolutely nothing was created or built. All that took place is they passed the same card back and forth to each other. So that's an example of minting money out of thin area. I can't speak for PSA's bottom line, but that one transaction was quite profitable.
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