PSA by the numbers (Jan 2022)

[Peter_Spaeth]

Originally Posted by chadeast

The backlog IS the data. It is odd that PSA is tracking and reporting month-to-month variations like this, seemingly implying that these numbers mean something, as if there is a correlation to the current market when there is none. If they wanted to actually provide useful data, they'd have to break out the numbers only for cards submitted in the last few months.

Or just provide monthly submission data, which I don't believe they do.

[BobC]

It may just be that despite the backlog, they wanted to show their production/output is up, so that people didn't think they weren't trying to address the situation at all. But showing submission data wouldn't necessarily be helpful or overly relevant since they shut down a large part of their submissions last year, and are still operating on a restricted/reduced submission scale now. What would be relevant is to see what monthly submissions and subsequent grading output is once they are back to whatever their fully open and normalized submission status will finally be, and their long-term pricing going forward has been determined and put in place.

[scooter729]

Also interesting to see the surge in soccer. Soccer cards were an extremely small area of collecting just 7-8 years ago, and I have watched the surge in value of superstars, just like in our 4 main sports.

Pele, Maradona, Messi, etc. cards have reached astronomical prices, including a Pele rookie which just surpassed $1M! (This one hits too close to home for me - too soon to talk about it....) It really seemed to take off in parallel with basketball last year, but hasn't seen a dip in the same manner. And prices on eBay continue to show very strong results for soccer - I would expect the % of their business coming from soccer to continue to grow as these stats are shown in future months.

[drcy]

Read the related recent discussion on the PSA Board:

https://forums.collectors.com/discus...-for-the-hobby