Does PSA lose your submissions due to memberships?

[albrshbr]

I was a member of PSA for a bit, but have allowed it to lapse. The membership fee has most defintely stopped me from submitting cards for grading. Yes, they give you a few free submissions for cards valued under $500, but I'm working on Buffalo Bills teams sets all PSA graded, and there are really no cards that are worth much more than $10. The grading specials let me get these graded for $5 each, so I'm getting $30 in vouchers for my $100 a year?

The SMR was OK, I never used the price guide, but every once in a while there was a decent article in it. I really liked the coffee table book, but I got a free copy anyways for letting them use one of my cards.

I was going to rejoin when they had a membership fee of $59/year but no free submissions, then they no longer offered that option.

Maybe someday I'll join again. I've got some 1970's OPC hockey that should grade decently, and I could probably make a couple of $$ on them. Add that to some of my 1970's/80's Bills commons for my Registry and MAYBE I could justify the membership fee just to finish some things up. In the meantime, I've got some post-war baseball HOF rookies that I'll send to SGC, I really don't plan on selling any of them anytime soon anyways.

Originally Posted by albrshbr

Yes, they give you a few free submissions for cards valued under $500, but I'm working on Buffalo Bills teams sets all PSA graded, and there are really no cards that are worth much more than $10. The grading specials let me get these graded for $5 each, so I'm getting $30 in vouchers for my $100 a year?

I'm getting confused - you say you get "a few" free submissions (the cheapest membership currently provides 6 for $110, or $18.33 per card) for cards valued under $500 BUT yours are valued at around $10? Doesn't that mean the plan works well for you? Why the "but"? And are you saying PSA also offers some $5 grading specials to its members, which would bring down the average submission cost? I'm not sure why you'd value the original membership vouchers at only $5 if that's only a special sale price for submissions incremental to the original purchase.

I plan on subscribing in a week or two, and going with the $189 membership with 15 free submissions. I have about 15 cards I'd like to grade, and that works out to about $12.50 each, which seems reasonable to me. I don't care much about the other "freebies", and I don't even really look at it as a membership. I'm just buying 15 submissions, and I'm okay with the price.

[glchen]

Originally Posted by Karl Mattson

I'm getting confused - you say you get "a few" free submissions (the cheapest membership currently provides 6 for $110, or $18.33 per card) for cards valued under $500 BUT yours are valued at around $10? Doesn't that mean the plan works well for you? Why the "but"? And are you saying PSA also offers some $5 grading specials to its members, which would bring down the average submission cost? I'm not sure why you'd value the original membership vouchers at only $5 if that's only a special sale price for submissions incremental to the original purchase.

I plan on subscribing in a week or two, and going with the $189 membership with 15 free submissions. I have about 15 cards I'd like to grade, and that works out to about $12.50 each, which seems reasonable to me. I don't care much about the other "freebies", and I don't even really look at it as a membership. I'm just buying 15 submissions, and I'm okay with the price.

The reason is the prices. At PSA, the "sale" prices for cards with a declared value under $100 (and after 1960) is $4.50 per card. SGC is fairly similar. That means that if you went with SGC, it would only cost you ~$67.50 to grade 15 cards. And if you use your Platinum voucher, you pay $189, so you would basically be paying > $100 more than you had to. The best use of the voucher is for cards with a declared value > $250 and less than $500. The < $250 special at PSA is $10/card, so 15 cards would bring you up to $150. The < $500 special is $14/card, which would bring it to $210, so this is the best price point to use the voucher for. However, as the previous poster said, if all you want to submit are cards that are < $100, it doesn't make too much sense to pay for the membership fee for the voucher.

[milkit1]

Im sold. eff PSA Im going with SGC