SGC Registry – Why isn’t there one?

[Bigdaddy]

So I did a little math just to see how many cards were reflected in the registry for a given set. I chose the 1956 Topps baseball set to crunch the numbers.

In total, PSA has graded 345,673 1956 Topps baseball cards. In the 1956 set registry, there are 51,644 cards from 335 folks. Lets say there are another 10% reflected in player, HOF, team, etc. sets. That would give us 56,808 cards. So roughly 16% of the 1956 cards that PSA has graded are attached to the registry.

Is 16% a big number? Big enough to make much of a $$ difference to PSA? Big enough for SGC to invest in the software development and maintenance to create it's own registry? I would bet that the average grade of those 16% of cards is higher than the average grade of the total number graded. And we know the TPGs make more $$ grading higher value cards than lower ones. The registry also incentivizes re-submissions looking for a grade bump. Hard to quantify what the $$ impact to PSA's bottom line the registry represents, but its not hard to see that it is integral to their overall business model.