My PSA Damage Tale

[KingFisk]

A few months ago I posted a question on the board about having a card damaged by PSA. With the cashing of the check and the refunding of my reholder and shipping fees, I can now tell my story. I can only speak from my experience – as they say, I never had an issue before and really believed in the PSA seal of approval, for right or wrong. I don’t mean to sway anyone’s opinions of PSA, I only want to let you know what happened and how I felt about things along the way. I have probably submitted about 25 cards to PSA and as I said, never had a problem before, but this was the first time I’d ever sent cards in for reholder. I had a few old cases that were beat up, and in one case, I suspected something about the card.

I went to a PSA Public Day in late May to drop off the cards. I asked the woman there who handled my order about the one card. It was a PSA 7 1968 Nolan Ryan/Jerry Koosman - I told her I thought it might be a Milton Bradley version because of the coloring on the reverse and some other patterns I’d noticed on other Milton Bradley Ryan/Koosmans (orange-ish “1968 Rookie Stars”, for example). She told me all cards get reviewed during reholder process, so to write on the sheet that I thought it might be a Milton Bradley and they’d check.

Eventually my results appeared online – sure enough, my card was a Milton Bradley, dropped off my post-war HOF Rookies, and first-ballot rookies registry sets and became one of the relatively low population of Milton Bradley PSA 7 Ryan/Koosman rookies. I was pretty pleased, though didn’t care too much, as I was just happy with the card itself (nicely centered to my eye and I got it originally for a great price) and never really cared about the variation. I also honestly didn’t realize it was going to become ineligible for the post-war HOF Rookies registry set, which bummed me out slightly, since I was flirting with the low range of the top 20 current list. But I’m not too much into that sort of thing, so no big deal.

The card arrived a few days later and as I opened up the package, I immediately saw something was wrong. There lower left hand corner looked to be missing paper and the corner was a bit discolored and crushed on the reverse. I checked it against my old scans and sure enough, the some of the burlap pattern was gone. The card was clearly damaged, and it sent me down a two month journey of annoyance.

Without going into the gory details, here is a brief recap of what transpired. I’m going to present this as soberly as I can, though my opinion and feeling about things will come through:

1. I wrote to customer service immediately and cc’d Joe Orlando. I sent in numerous scans, pointed out the issues…and then I didn’t hear anything for two days - until I wrote a separate email to Joe Orlando directly. He forwarded my note to a customer service manager who said she’d help me when she was back from vacation.
2. I sent the card back and after two or three weeks I was given an offer of about 50% of current market value (seemingly based on SMR and my declared value at the time I submitted…the card took off in the meantime)
3. I sent a long note and a VCP download stating that their settlement price was way too low. They said they’d get back to me and I got a call a week later. We eventually settled on a much fairer number (I probably should’ve pushed for more, but I think I ended up in a good place), and I got my card back. So no real quibble there, other than the extreme lowball at first.
4. My beautiful old PSA 7 was rightly downgraded to a PSA 3. I asked if it bothered them at all that they damaged a card and reholdered it with the old grade, causing what was clearly no longer a 7 to potentially be circulated with that flip, and my customer service manager got extremely defensive and said “we’re human too. That’s why we have the grade guarantee.” I found the “we’re human” argument rather scary for a group that prides itself on being the first and last name when it comes to grading and authentication.
5. I asked repeatedly what happened to the card, or what could have happened, and the inquiry was ignored.
6. I never got a true apology, other than an eventual, sideways “we’re sorry this happened” on the phone. Not “sorry we damaged your card that you entrusted to us” or “have a year of Collector’s Club on us” or anything like that.
7. Personal observation – some of the least friendly and helpful customer service people I’ve ever dealt with. They wrecked my card but always sort of made me feel like they were doing me a favor by agreeing to hear my case. I found them standoffish, somewhat confrontational and absolutely without remorse.
8. Personal bemusement – given the high value of the card and having been a PSA collector’s club member for a few years, I was a little surprised I didn’t hear anything from Joe Orlando directly after I personally reached out to him a couple of times. I understand he’s the president, but a little “gee, we’re really sorry we did this to you card, please keep your faith in us” may have gone a long way. Instead, it was steely silence from the boss. No matter, just a little upsetting.

They are the market leader so clearly my tale of woe doesn’t matter too much to them and life in the slabbed world carries on. But wanted to share my tale with the board - I am sure this sort of thing doesn’t happen too often, but just be careful when sending your items in, as someone on staff may end up taking their hacks at the corners of your cards.

Images attached.

1. Original Card corner as a PSA 7
2. Reholdered Card as a PSA 7