Quote:
Originally Posted by parkplace33
I got an email today from PSA highlighting their PSA Authenticity and Grade Guarantee. From their website ( https://www.psacard.com/about/financialguarantee) :
The PSA Authenticity and Grade Guarantee (“Guarantee”) is fundamental to PSA's reputation as the leading third-party authentication and grading service. Subject to the exceptions noted below, the Guarantee ensures the accuracy of the grade assigned to each PSA-graded card. The terms and conditions detailed below govern the Guarantee. PSA reserves the right to modify or update the Guarantee at any time.
PSA guarantees that all cards submitted shall be graded in accordance with PSA’s authentication and grading standards.
Upon presentation to PSA by the current owner of a PSA authenticated and graded card (“Card”), if PSA concludes that the Card was erroneously awarded the PSA grade assigned or fails PSA’s authenticity standards, and provided that the Card had an active certification number on the cert lookup feature of the PSA website at the time it was purchased by the person submitting the Guarantee request, then PSA in its sole discretion will either:
Subject to the Maximum Amount, buy the card outright from the current owner at the current market value if the card can no longer receive a numerical grade under PSA's standards, or
Subject to the Maximum Amount, refund the difference in value between the original PSA grade and the current PSA grade if the grade is lowered or deemed to be authentic only. In this case, the card will also be returned to the customer along with the refund for the difference in value.
Believe this service has been around for a while, but I actually haven't heard of this before. I have a few questions for the board:
1. Have you ever utilized this guarantee for your PSA cards, either for counterfeit cards or overgraded cards? If so, how did the process go? How did PSA determine value?
2. Do other grading companies (SGC, Beckett) also have a similar guarantee? |
Drew,
I haven't myself ever benefited from, or tried, to avail myself of their supposed guarantee. The biggest problem/question I can see though is if there really is/are any truly valid TPG guarantees to begin with.
Read the exact and explicit language of such TPG guarantees. THEY set the grading standards and rules. THEY determine the grade giving THEIR "opinion", based on THEIR grading standards and rules, no one else's. If ever questioned, THEY review THEIR grading standards and rules and THEIR opinion as the sole arbiter/authority in determining if THEY did anything wrong under THEIR guarantee, and what, if anything, THEY will pay/give to the alleged aggrieved party. Starting to get the drift?
These TPG guarantees were most likely written (or at least reviewed and approved) by well-paid attorneys in an attempt to not ever subject the TPG companies themselves to any real outside oversight and control, and most importantly, financial responsibility. At least not if it wasn't of THEIR own choice, and THEY deciding how much, if anything, would be paid in satisfaction of any such claims.
Everybody makes mistakes, and even the TPGs realize this and know their employees will occasionally make some. But then THEY, and pretty much THEY alone, under the terms of THEIR guarantees, get to decide if there really was an error, and if so, the value of that error and what the cost is to correct it. Some errors can be so obvious and downright stupid, that even a TPG cannot in any way, shape, or form, deny it. So they, on that rare occasion, go ahead and agree to pay/settle with someone to make it right, on an amount that THEY alone determine and decide upon. All so as to make it look to the collecting community that they actually do have a valid and reasonable guarantee that they do fully stand behind and adhere to. Think of the occasional pay-out supposedly under their guarantees as a sort of advertising/marketing cost to them, that these TPGs are fully willing to pay so as to let the hobby community keep their impressions that the TPGs are honest, reliable, unbiased, and so on, and that these guarantees of theirs are actually what the members of the hobby community want to believe they are.