Quote:
Originally Posted by rand1com
Maybe auction houses and their largest customers but not the common collector. They know if they open it up to all at $50 now they will be inundated.
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I think you would be surprised. Interest is definitely going away for the $50 grading. People are joining queues late and still getting 20 plus card submissions. It is basically open right now.
I deal with experimental data for a living and I can tell you that my predictions of 4 months is not a guess. I have taken the data given and made a pretty solid prediction. I will let you know exactly how I come up with my answer.
Right now, the backlog is at 4.5 million cards, probably less than that. PSA has a podcast where they have been updating this information. Last month the graded 1 million cards. PSA said at a recent conference that 85% of the cards graded are from the backlog. At a minimum every month, that will be 850,000 cards graded from the backlog each month if they don't increase capacity. The backlog will be done in 5 months.
However, they will be opening up extra services in 4 months. Even though it will take them 5 months to clear the backlog, they will need cards to have ready once it is gone. In 4 months from now, I am very confident that we will see at least queues for $25 grading.
What is the demand right now for $50 grading if they opened it up? It is more than 150,000 cards for sure. However, PSA is using queues to cap this number for turnaround times. During the next 4 months $50 grading will be opened up at some point. You can already see on the forums that a lot of people are done with $50 grading and also asking people if they want to submit through them because they are not using their allotment.
In October,
this year, PSA will have the capacity to receive 1 to 1.2 million cards per month and not have a backlog. Do you think there is demand for 1.2 million cards a month at $50 per card? The answer is absolutely not. Plus you have to consider the other grading companies. If SGC needs cards, they will have to drop prices. CSG has large capacity as well. BGS is almost done with their backlog as well. By October this year, we will be over 1.5 million cards capacity to be graded with the big 4 without any backlog.
I can say this with 100% certainty. $25 grading will be here by August or October at the latest. (Edit - This Year!)