SGC Update

[sportscardpete]

on their website:

Dear SGC Collectors,

It’s been far too long since we’ve peaked our head out from behind the mountain of submissions we’re currently working through, and we know that we’re long overdue for an update. There’s certainly a lot to say and it’s difficult to decide where to begin, but we’ve got to start somewhere, so here it goes…

For many of you, SGC appeared on your hobby radar only very recently. Whether you saw a high-end Giannis graded an SGC 10/10 on Instagram or you happened to notice the strength of our modern prices while scrolling through ebay, one thing has become very clear—SGC has officially arrived, and we’re here to stay.

No one has believed in SGC more than our team and we knew from the start of this journey that if we worked hard and did things the right way, success would follow. Having said that, I would be lying to you if I told you we were expecting anything like this, this quickly. We knew we wanted it all and we knew we could get there, but we simply thought that growing our brand would be a slow and steady climb. What we’ve experienced here has been an exponential explosion of support from across the hobby.

Whether you gave us a shot with a 3 card test submission or you went all-in from the start by sending us a 2,000 card bulk order, we want to sincerely thank you for your vote of confidence. It means the world to our team to be given this opportunity by the hobby, and I can assure all of you that we have not and will not ever take it for granted.

Having said all that, it’s time to address the current situation at hand. A few months back, a seismic shift in the psychology of the modern card collector took place. In what seems like the blink of an eye, SGC went from being the vintage grading company to the up and coming juggernaut steamrolling its way into the modern space. All at once, the entire hobby sent us their cards and was excited to give SGC a try. The early days of this change (which now feel like they were years ago rather than merely a few months), were like nothing any of us had ever seen before. The submissions were growing exponentially and, with that, so were the challenges. Our company, which made its name delivering on both service and turnaround time, was now staring down the barrel of processing delays like we’d never imagined.

Our formerly much smaller operation, which did everything a certain way (that worked very well at the time), now had to revamp nearly everything about it in order to meet the very sudden and overwhelming demand. With these necessary changes taking place one-by-one, it was impossible for us to move at the pace that we wanted. Sacrificing the quality of our grading was never an option. Cutting corners is not in our DNA and I’m proud to say that our team has not only quadrupled in size, but we’re stronger and much more capable than ever as well. We continue to add key pieces each day, paving the way for our most skilled employees to climb the SGC ladder. This process builds SGC employee loyalty, and is essential to us increasing production.

As I write this, with chills down my arms, I can report that SGC has very effectively scaled our operation 4x in a matter of months. How have grades not been sacrificed, you may be wondering. Well, just ask Nick, who’s led our research team for the past year and a half. It was one of my all time favorite SGC moments to tell him that, after months of training with Scott, he was finally ready to take on the challenge of becoming an SGC grader. Talk to Andy, who has years of grading experience in the hobby and blew us all away with the results of his first grading test. At SGC, we don’t take grading or the impact that it has lightly. It is the lifeblood of our company and the most thriving segment of the hobby to date. The second grading is sacrificed (even a little bit), is the second that we have failed in doing what we’ve set out to do. I could go on for hours about our team, our accomplishments, and our passion for what we do, but I assume you are all more interested in hearing about the elephant in the room—our delayed turnaround times and an update on what you can expect from here.

To all of you who are on business day 40 of your 20 business day order, 4 days past your 5 business day estimate or in situations even worse than that, I am so sincerely sorry that we could not offer you the speed of service we would’ve liked to. For 22 years, we never experienced anything close to this kind of volume and it has caused delays far exceeding anything we expected. Please rest assured that our team will continue to grow until we’re fully caught up on our turnaround times. We’ll continue working overtime, weekends, and giving it our best shot to make sure that we are completing as many of your orders as effectively as possible.

As of today, many of you may have noticed that there have been some very drastic changes to the services we are now offering. Please know that any orders submitted prior to these changes are completely unaffected by them. The way in which we process orders is NOT changing, even in the slightest way. What is changing is that we’re improving our turnaround time transparency so that customers are fully aware of SGC’s lead times prior to submitting. Additionally, please understand that these changes are far from permanent. The goal remains getting our turnaround times back to where they were prior to the boom, back to where we’ve had them for over two decades.

After giving it a tremendous amount of thought, we’ve decided that, rather than providing a hard (and unfortunately inaccurate) estimate of when to expect your orders to be completed, we’re giving you a very fluid, but transparent, and (hopefully) accurate idea of when to expect your cards to be on their way back to you. In total, SGC will now have two card grading service options available to our collectors. The first service, that we’ve aptly named the “I Can Wait” service, is for customers who can do exactly that. Sure, everyone wants their cards to be graded and shipped back as quickly as possible, but the “I Can Wait” service provides collectors with a great way to take advantage of the most competitive pricing the hobby has to offer. Orders submitted at the “I Can Wait” level are subject to turnaround times that fluctuate with demand, so although we’ll be working like crazy to keep the times down, there may be some unforeseen delays taking place at the time of your order’s processing that were not present during the initial creation of your submission. This service will start at the same low rate of $10/card that we’ve been charging for years and the estimated turnaround time will update on our website every few days to reflect where our team is at with turnaround times.

The second option offered is the “Need Them Now” service. This service is for any order that needs to be completed in a much quicker timeframe than our “I Can Wait” service. The estimated turnaround time for orders submitted at the “Need Them Now” service level is 3-5 business days. Although this is still an estimate, customers should not expect to wait far past the 5 business day mark to see that their orders have been marked shipped and are on their way back to them. The “Need Them Now” service starts at $100/card and is available to all collectors who don’t want to have to wait to see their SGC grades. Please note that bulk rates are also remaining completely unchanged by these updated services.

I cannot express enough how unnatural it feels to make these kinds of necessary updates, but we’re doing all of this in the name of transparency. Just to reiterate, nothing within our office will be changing whatsoever. All existing orders will be processed based on their existing priority and all orders received moving forward will fall behind them.

On the topic of these updates, I would assume many collectors want to know why such changes were not implemented sooner. The short, but truthful answer is that they should have been, but there was so much building to do within our company that accurately addressing these issues was extraordinarily difficult up until this point (it’s not so easy now, either). I understand that this may not be an answer that satisfies the SGC collecting community and I take full responsibility for the mistakes I’ve made along the way, but please know that the last thing we ever want to do is make collectors feel at all misled. I understand that many of you submitted after hearing about SGC’s lightning fast turnaround times and what you were delivered was, unfortunately, the opposite. I would like to offer my sincerest apologies to you all and I hope that the massive investments we continue to make in our operation continue to pay off and mitigate these delays. We will continue to grow our team, scale our operation, and always remember what got us here—grading the cards right and treating the collectors right. Our team takes the services that we provide extremely seriously and we will not rest until there is no longer a need for an “I Can Wait” service.

We fully understand that these changes are a lot to take in and that there may be questions that many of you still have. For this reason, I will be joining Josh once again on Cardboard Chronicles this Saturday, July 25th, for an in-depth followup interview on where things stand with SGC. I’m greatly looking forward to going back to where it all started and I’m ready to face these challenges head on and out in the open for all to see. We have nothing to hide and I hope everyone who has taken the time to read this will be tuning in.

This is the craziest ride of our SGC lives and surely one of the most exciting times that the hobby has ever seen. On behalf of our entire team, thank you for believing in us and allowing us the opportunity to keep doing what we love at an even higher level. Together, we can continue to change this hobby of ours for the better. Keep collecting, keep grading, and this train will keep moving forward. I promise.

Until next time,

Peter Steinberg
President, SGC