PSA backlog

[steve B]

Originally Posted by Lorewalker

The whole concept of these large group submissions is one I feel PSA should not encourage. By doing so I would think they are providing or at least implying assurances that the authorized dealer will safeguard participants' cards. So it begs the question if they have any liability or responsibility in this instance.

My bigger issue with it is that it creates an "unfair" competitive edge for the person or business who simply has the capacity to create these massive ongoing submissions. PSA was going to get the business from the individuals who make up these group subs anyway. These submitters now get much faster turnaround and they get a price per card that is significantly less. There is nothing stopping me from participating and sharing that edge but I like being able to control my own valuables to the extent that I can. I always worry something like this could happen or that cards gets switched out or there are delays on making the submission, etc. These subs are much different than two hobbyists piggybacking on an order. If my 200 card sub gets to PSA the same day one of these group subs of 5,000 cards gets there my sub is going to be there for months well after the 5,000 card sub has been returned.

It's worse for submitters, but much better for PSA.

Years ago I had a very large international company that became a customer for a few months.

They were among the first to abandon just in time delivery on all their parts and supplies and go to an integrated supply model.
Largely because the US plant at least had something like 400 suppliers, and they studied costs of buying anything.
Get 3 quotes
Pick the best one
Get the purchase approved
Issue the purchase order

Apparently the average cost of just issuing the PO was around $400 in the late 90's.
So they first got rid of the places they'd bought a handful of items from. Then the middle size suppliers, and made deals with a handful of large suppliers to buy everything in a category from them at a set markup. Open books on both sides. At the tens if not hundreds of millions it made perfect sense to issue two Purchase orders a year to six different suppliers. (Their small package shipping alone was in the $40Million range.)

I got on the list despite being small because the head of purchasing was tired of buying a specialized item where he had to tell the seller what page it was on in their own catalog. I knew both our numbers and the big suppliers pretty much from memory. So I saved him a LOT of time.

More remarkably, they paid in 10 days when most huge corporations were holding the money for 90 days because they could.