Can we have a honest conversation about psa
 

i have been with PSA, I would say pretty much since the beginning. We as collectors enjoyed the registry and getting cards graded. Then PSA was sold and orders, which I have several still way over a year, were put on the back
burner and are probably being graded by new people hired for practice.
We can not be shown the door anymore then we have. PSA was a place for collectors and now its for investors. Why a company would turn its back on the people that brought you where the company is when you bought it is something I don't understand. If it's one thing I know, its PSA owners company and they can run it any way they want too.
What I wonder about, is why PSA cards are selling in 8,9,10 in mass
on ebay for next to nothing, when grading starts at $50, it makes so sense.
Will I renew my membership when I get my low graded cards guarenteed.
No way.
By PSA

PSA is just a business and the name of the business is money.

Gordon Gekko : It's all about bucks, kid. The rest is conversation.

Seth Davis: I didn't want to be an innovator any more, i just wanted to make the quick and easy buck, i just wanted in. The Notorious BIG said it best: "Either you're slingin' crack-rock, or you've got a wicked jump-shot." Nobody wants to work for it anymore. There's no honor in taking that after school job at Mickey Dee's, honor's in the dollar, kid.

Of course Gordon Gecko also insisted that greed is good. Collectors might not agree.

It is SGC exclusively for me. As strictly a collector, resale between SGC and PSA is not a consideration. A prefer vintage in tuxedos as well.

If prices come down to about 25/card, set collecting get back to normal. At 50, for 'exclusive events' it's too much for the market to bear IMO. I dont think alienating the vintage set collectors will benefit psa in the long run. Hoping the bean counters realize this

PSA is doing the right thing right now and they need to get rid of the backlog. The 85/15 split for backlog/new submissions is actually a great idea. In 5 months from now, when PSA kicks the backlog, grading will cheaper than most people can comprehend in 2023.

Right now PSA/CSG/SGC/BGS are grading 1.2 million cards a month. However, people are only submitting 400,000 cards a month. 800,000 of those cards are PSA/BGS backlogs. SGC/CSG have no backlogs right now and they are at $30/$20 respectively. Even cheaper when you can go SGC at $23 through a bulk submitter or $12 bulk through CSG.

By 2023, the big four grading companies will be grading 1.5 million cards a month or even more. BGS is ready to expand big time and PSA is opening a second location. Unless we see a second 2021 market boom in cards, grading will be ridiculously cheap with amazing turnaround times in 2023. I am not grading until prices go down. I am not a flipper, just a collector. So I am super excited about the future of the hobby for people who like grading as an opinion and a nice way to present our cards.

All valid points. They need to improve consistency and transparency. The rest is gravy (ummmm.......gravy). :rolleyes:

PSA in the early 1990's saw a business opportunity in the hobby - no different than the folks who invented toploaders and plastic pages 15 or more years earlier. It was no surprise, and honestly could have happened even sooner. David Hall just moved the coin grading business model that he had come up with years before over to the burgeoning sports card hobby. I would agree with those that say it's all about the Benjamins and little if anything else, especially at this point. Do you REALLY need a PSA or an SGC to speculate on the authenticity, tamper-status, condition or condition nuances of your vintage card if you have been collecting and loving these things for 35 or 40 years? Well maybe you do, and I get the universal standard thing, but really? I don't. I laugh at anyone who thinks that the TPG's literally have any chance of knowing more about the cards you love in a 20-second-per evaluation than you do if you have been collecting for that long.

As for the complaints, who cares? PSA standards have waxed and waned - for decades. PSA's turn times and customer service quality have waxed and waned - for decades. The veritable laundry list of complaints against them have waxed and waned - for decades - in fact on this count, since they fraudulently slabbed their first card with the trimmed Gretzky Wagner.

Those who continue to buy into TPG's and prop them up - whatever their reason - to turn profits, or because they like the look or protection, or want to leave something easier to move in the marketplace for their descendants - these folks will always face the question of whether or not the BS and customer service issues are worth it. From my perspective, those questions and posts like this will likely never go away. It just depends on how much you are willing to put up with.

Disclaimer - I LOVE a properly graded SGC or PSA card in a nice looking slab. Don't get me wrong, it's a cool thing. But I left behind any notions of the infallibility of these type of companies a long time ago. Grading is subjective and always will be. The idea that it's not is a lemon they have sold to some of the collecting public and their bread and butter. Collect what you love. Buy the card not the grade. Buy the raw card and not the flawed slab. Do or do not do any of these things, whatever. In short - do whatever floats your boat! :D

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Where are all the graders coming from who are grading/are going to grade all these cards? Unless and until AI really figures this out, not anyone off the street can really grade and authenticate well and consistently. At some point you might as well just open a self service line.

Grading a card on a 1-10 scale is not that difficult and people can be trained relatively quickly. However, we will see huge discrepancies from even from the same grading company order to order. This is already happening. I have been seeing orders from knowledgeable people that submit high quality modern cards. One order gets a 70% gem rate and another order gets a 20% gem rate. It used to be that the grading from PSA/SGC/BGS was done by a few graders and they were much more consistent. Now it is boom or bust and it depends on which graders from the pool of 100 plus you get.

I am completely done with grading cards past 1985 Topps in baseball and 1988 Fleer in basketball. Looking at COMC I can find beautiful copies of Tim Duncan raw cards for $3. Having a graded PSA 9 or 10 is just silly.

I typically grade all my PC and know what the card should be graded. 95% of the time for the cards I collect I am within the low/high estimate of the grade. They do a decent job with lower grades IMO. The 9 and 10 grades are pure BS 50% of the time. They are flipping coins in most instances.

The premiums put on cards from the junk wax era to present are insane and I am out of that game. I am taking all my graded cards from the junk wax era and putting them into lower graded slabs or raw. I bought three beautiful Tim Raines 1981 Topps rookies from COMC and they are all PSA 8 or higher quality. They cost me $1 to $1.25. I have only been back in the hobby for 2 years and grading cards myself has taught me that there are so many amazing raw cards still available from the 1980's on.

I agree- there are millions of slabbed cards that aren't worth 10 cents. I collect cards, not slabs so it doesn't matter much to me. I only have a handful of graded cards, all vintage, because they were less expensive than raw in a similar grade.

What's going to happen to those millions of hot PSA 10 rookies when the player goes bust? Those cards where 2/3 of the graded are PSA 10? Maybe they'll be in the same place as the 1,000 count lots of Gregg Jefferies and Todd Van Poppel rookies that were going to make everyone rich.

I've been collecting over 40 years. Pretty sure I know how to grade my cards, and I'm positive that I don't care about the difference between a 9 and a 10. There has to be a quota where if someone is giving too many (or too few) 10's they get talked to.

A job as a grader, especially at entry-level, has got to be terrible. It's like an assembly line where you get cards rolling by 1-2 per minute, 8 hours a day, 5 days a week, and you have to make a judgment on every one of them. What does PSA pay a new grader? These aren't veterans in the hobby, these are young people who think this is a way to make a living on cards. The pay can't be great for such mind-numbing work.

The girlfriend yells at you for leaving towels on the floor, the cards you grade are getting 7's and 8's today. If your kid does something like make the honor roll, the cards you grade are getting 9's and 10's today. Just human nature. With hi-res scans all you're doing is gambling that you get the lenient grader. It basically like opening wax, you're gambling on a good outcome.

So true. Doesn't have to be bust--at the ridiculous prices they reach so fast all the player has to do is not be the new Mickey Mantle and the cards will fall. Or just break down early. Mike Trout hasn't played more than 140 games in a season since 2016. He is only 30 but already showing signs of breaking down.

While what you are saying isn't dead wrong, Trout is one of the worst examples to make a point in terms of players breaking down at that age. He's likely already a HOF'er by virtue of the stats he has garnered so far. If he plays until he's 40 with the same stats he's got now - he could be close to 700 home runs and who knows what his OPS and other numbers will be by then. But even if he trails off - very likely he still gets to 500 homers. Short of a Pete Rose or O.J. Simpson type situation off the field, I think he remains the marquee player of his era. Agree with you on falling if someone is not the next Mick - but if anyone is in this era - it's Trout.

I think the '11 US Trout is an anomaly anyway though just in terms of ultra modern hot rookies. Nobody else has done that, but of course Topps has gone even more SP and SSP and variation crazy in the last decade. But like why isn't the Juan Soto RC tearing it up the way the US Trout did?

No way he ends up with 700 or even 600 homeruns. He will be much closer to the 500 mark. I agree with even 500 homers and the advanced metrics we use, he is the iconic player of his generation. 7 years of winning the MVP or coming in second can't be overlooked. I think his career stats will look very much like Mantle's. He will be way short of the 3000 career hits, his batting average will fall under the .300 mark, and it will always be the "what if" he stayed healthy. However, just like Mantle he will have that collectability. The name Mike Trout right now means the best player in baseball. Stats be damned. Mickey Mantle broke down and he is more valued over Hank Aaron who accumulated ridiculous stats.

I would agree it's an extreme long shot for him to reach those HR totals, just saying as of right now it's possible. Rare is the player like a Henry Aaron who can just continue busting out 30, 40 homers a year in his late 30's. Aaron just kept on going at that stage of his career where even like a Mays began to trail off earlier. Always kind of makes me cringe when people say things like "Well, he's a HOF'er now..." about anyone because of course who knows what can happen. My point was simply if anyone has it in the bag today, it's Trout. I'm sitting here looking at a '71 Topps Bench, on the back it says "A future Hall of Famer at 23." One of the instances where they were totally right of course, but you've got to imagine those kind of calls are wrong way more often than they are right.

Statistically Pujols should have it "in the bag" , has all time numbers and should be way ahead of Trout in card prices per performance, but no. I think hype drives the market more than anything. Aaron Judges career numbers by age 30 are horrible, but he is collected as a future HOFer. Not saying Trout is hype, but his career numbers aren't really much (so far) compared to guys like Pujols and other all time greats.

Pujols is definitely undervalued. But is it really different than say, comparing the popularity of a Mantle to an underrated contemporary like Frank Robinson? Same with Trout, IMO.

Mantle isn't hype either, but due to circumstances like time and hobby popularity he's out of proportion anymore to many if not most of his contemporaries.

Mantle definitely is very far ahead of his contemporaries, but I wonder how much his off field exploits play into his popularity in the hobby. Its like everyone from his era has a story to tell. Still a monster in his prime peak years but the guy was like Ruth, everyone knew him.

Mantle was larger than life, and for areas of the country who didn't have a MLB team in the 50's and 60's, he was their guy by default in addition to those in the baseball capital of the world in NY. When these same baby boomers took the card hobby retail in the early 1980's - Mantle was still their guy and thusly the most popular card in any set by default. Nothing has changed since. Ruth may be the greatest player in MLB history, but Mantle is the absolute undisputed king of the hobby.

Agreed, but I truly think a healthy Mantle would overtake Ruth as greatest player ever. Mantles knee was destroyed in his rookie year. I don't think he had even 1 "healthy" season.