PSA has eliminated their "Monthly Specials"

[bnorth]

Originally Posted by mantlefan

Dr. Franks think alike!!

Robotic grading would solve a lot of their problems.

Scan for centering, corners, print dots, color, trimming, paper loss etc... and eliminate the human element. The startup costs would be significant, but bringing consistency to grading would be groundbreaking. Grading tens of thousands of cards a day would eliminate the wait times and bring TPG's into the 21st Century.

The only problem is they would lose a ton of business. Now they get to grade the same card more than once because of their inconsistency. A computer system that gives the cards the exact same grade every time would cost them a ton of cash in the long run. That is my take on the situation.

[Leon]

Yeah, sounds like the magic pill to turn water into gas. Can you imagine how much an oil company would pay to not have that be a problem for them. Billions, I would say. We just need to design robots.

Originally Posted by bnorth

The only problem is they would lose a ton of business. Now they get to grade the same card more than once because of their inconsistency. A computer system that gives the cards the exact same grade every time would cost them a ton of cash in the long run. That is my take on the situation.

[whitehse]

Originally Posted by bnorth

The only problem is they would lose a ton of business. Now they get to grade the same card more than once because of their inconsistency. A computer system that gives the cards the exact same grade every time would cost them a ton of cash in the long run. That is my take on the situation.

Honestly, I dont think they would lose tons of business but rather their business would improve as many fence sitters like me, who refuse to give up our cards for an indefinite period of time, perhaps even up to a full year would submit to them if their service improved. I have tried SGC and no matter how badly I wanted them to succeed, I have my doubts if they will ever find a foothold in this hobby that even approaches PSA's level.

As to your comment about cutting down on the crack and resubmit process, I believe there will still be those out there who no matter how the cards are being graded.

Speeding up the efficiency and accuracy of the grading process would find PSA with even more submissions than they ever imagined they could have.

[bnorth]

Originally Posted by whitehse

Honestly, I dont think they would lose tons of business but rather their business would improve as many fence sitters like me, who refuse to give up our cards for an indefinite period of time, perhaps even up to a full year would submit to them if their service improved. I have tried SGC and no matter how badly I wanted them to succeed, I have my doubts if they will ever find a foothold in this hobby that even approaches PSA's level.

As to your comment about cutting down on the crack and resubmit process, I believe there will still be those out there who no matter how the cards are being graded.

Speeding up the efficiency and accuracy of the grading process would find PSA with even more submissions than they ever imagined they could have.

Maybe I should have worded my post better. My whole post was just about the business they would lose from the crack and resubmit game. Between this forum and BO I have seen hundreds of posts about doing it. I have also seen advertising from businesses/people that specialize in it.

When someone does get a computer program that will give the same grade to the same card every time they will lose that whole section of submitters.

I personally would welcome the change to computer grading.

[rjackson44]

Agree with frank 100pct

[frankbmd]

Originally Posted by whitehse

Honestly, I dont think they would lose tons of business but rather their business would improve as many fence sitters like me, who refuse to give up our cards for an indefinite period of time, perhaps even up to a full year would submit to them if their service improved. I have tried SGC and no matter how badly I wanted them to succeed, I have my doubts if they will ever find a foothold in this hobby that even approaches PSA's level.

As to your comment about cutting down on the crack and resubmit process, I believe there will still be those out there who no matter how the cards are being graded.

Speeding up the efficiency and accuracy of the grading process would find PSA with even more submissions than they ever imagined they could have.

Originally Posted by bnorth

Maybe I should have worded my post better. My whole post was just about the business they would lose from the crack and resubmit game. Between this forum and BO I have seen hundreds of posts about doing it. I have also seen advertising from businesses/people that specialize in it.

When someone does get a computer program that will give the same grade to the same card every time they will lose that whole section of submitters.

I personally would welcome the change to computer grading.

Please do not misconstrue my remarks either. I do not wish for PSA's unfettered success at the expense of SGC, Beckett, GEM or PRO. If the TPG business becomes more of a monopoly, how can customer service be expected to improve. They already have a stranglehold on the Registry crowd, despite oft cited inconsistency and customer service that leaves much to be desired. If the Registry was amenable to an antitrust action to loosen their stranglehold, perhaps we could enter an age of true competition in the TPG market with jousting robots competing for market share.

[tribefan]

Psa switched the monthly specials to quarterly specials beginning January 2019.

[Ronnie73]

Originally Posted by frankbmd

Please do not misconstrue my remarks either. I do not wish for PSA's unfettered success at the expense of SGC, Beckett, GEM or PRO. If the TPG business becomes more of a monopoly, how can customer service be expected to improve. They already have a stranglehold on the Registry crowd, despite oft cited inconsistency and customer service that leaves much to be desired. If the Registry was amenable to an antitrust action to loosen their stranglehold, perhaps we could enter an age of true competition in the TPG market with jousting robots competing for market share.

Personally I think Frank is right on the money with these points. Competition is always good for the "Good" business. As far as SGC's Registry, I feel it's a mess and should be scrapped and restarted correctly. SGC should hire the true set experts to make checklists and rates the cards & variations in the set. I'm not saying PSA is perfect with their Registry but feel it's better than SGC's. I've even told PSA I'd spend time helping with their T205 and T206 portion of the sets for free. Got no response and still no updates on the requests I've sent them for over a year now.

[swarmee]

SGC's set registry is going to get even worse before it gets better, because they've told one of the board members here that his pre-2018 flips with the original submission number-card submitted certification are no longer acceptable in the future SGC set registry. It was already awful, now it's lost almost all utility unless they can merge both databases.
SGC's plan to computer grade and then provide scans of all cards they grade in the future could be a game changer, but if they can't integrate 20+ years of previously graded cards into it (unless their owners reholder all of them?), sounds like a waste.