The future of bulk grading at PSA
 

Last week, Nat Turner was interviewed on the Card Talk podcast. They talked about grading fees and when bulk services might come back. Nat gave his expected non-answers to some degree, but he was a bit less dodgy about it than he normally is, in my opinion. You can feel his enthusiasm for wanting to get bulk services back on the table for set collectors. He specifically mentioned offering them at the $10 service level again. He said it won't be in 2021 (obviously), or even in Q1 of 2022, but he did say they are making great progress on the backlog and that he expects to be able to offer it again as soon as they catch up.

However, he didn't go into to detail about what that would look like, but if I'm reading between the lines correctly, I believe PSA will offer cheap (possibly even $10 /ea) bulk services again at some point in 2022. But I believe those services will only be offered through the set registry, and will only be available for specific sets at specific times. So you will probably have to have a set already in the works (or begin uploading one) in order to submit other cards from that set in bulk. It'll probably be similar to how the quarterly specials were done in the past (1950s baseball, 1980s basketball, etc.) except now it will be restricted to the registry. PSA sent me a survey this week about which basketball insert sets I'd be most interested in adding to the registry (this has Nat's name written all over it). I think this is a great way for them to reintroduce cheap bulk grading services to the people who "need" them most. It takes care of their most loyal set collector customers without having to reopen the floodgates for every "collector" living in their parents' basement with 275 Zion Williamson "rookie cards" waiting to be sent in, all hoping for a 10, but breaking even with mostly 9s.

I don’t think that’s what they’ll do. Under this idea nobody would be able to start new sets. Seems foolish as a long term idea. I also heard nothing from Nat that would indicate you need to have a set in the registry to submit bulk.this may be how it initially gets reintroduced but no way is that the long term solution.

Yeah I am not sure where snowman comes up with some of his posts but I would agree with you. I think they bring it back at some point and will limit the number of cards per month per account.

That will never happen

We all hope it happens but do not believe it will.

With their business model, the high demand of grading cards, and low margins at lower bulk pricing their is no incentive to bring it back unless they can find a low cost profitable way to do it or to raise the prices which is possible but might not be reasonable for many of the more common cards

I'd like to see the bulk option come back. Even at $10 per card, but I sure miss the $6 days. At $10 a card, this is the only way I can justify having my ungraded T206's graded or crossed over. I'd like to see an $8 reholder per card for adding T206 card back info to the label. Grading would not be necessary on these, but just getting the back description correct is only needed. I believe knocking $2 off each card would be a fair trade off. Especially since it benefits their registry, which is sometimes the only reason some of us have for getting the cards graded in the first place. I don't like the need to have a current set in the registry to qualify for the bulk price. There should still be a bulk price, but maybe a bonus savings for registry set addition. All I can do is hope someone from PSA is seeing this thread and paying attention to the end users needs. I also think it's time for them to go against their word on never adding T205 back info and start doing it and showing the T205 set more love. There's a few vintage sets that could use a grading description overhaul and should be considered when the next holder/insert change happens. Such as adding another line of text and slightly adjusting the print size to allow for the change, but if done right, and slightly narrowing the print, and maybe changing the hologram location to one of the sides, more info can be added. The final change I'd make is, get rid of the clear plastic holder. I'd experiment with solid black plastic, with clear plastic in the card and label area, where it's snapped into place and sonically sealed, similar to the sealing of the two sides. No black cardboard inserts. Plus the clear plastic used in the area of the cards, have it an UV protective plastic. You don't need UV protection where there is no card. Imagine all of that during their next major upgrade rollout. Well, back to my day dreaming I guess.

with all the new personnel PSA (and BGS) have hired there is little doubt when all is settled they will resume some more normal priced based grading fees.

While we don't know what they will be, there will be some otherwise many of their new employees will be looking for work and most companies don't hire people just to let them go a year later

Rich

If you would have asked me a week ago, I would have said, "no way they ever come back below $25-30ish per card". But Nat didn't mince words in this interview when he talked about getting them back down to $10 ea for the registry. He seems pretty adamant about it. Perhaps he'll get enough pushback on this to where it doesn't materialize, I don't know, but if Nat gets his way, there will be options again in 2022 to have cards (which ones, I don't know) graded through the registry for $10 ea. I'm just repeating what he said.

The part where I'm "reading between the lines" is that I'm guessing this will be the only way to get cards graded at that price, and that I'm speculating that it will only be offered for select sets (hence I referenced the basketball insert sets registry survey I took part in). I just think it makes the most sense too from a strategic standpoint. We'll see what happens though. But I'd be very surprised to see them reopen ultra-modern bulk services for anything less than $25 per card for the foreseeable future.

I can definitely see the logic in your conjecture. Keep the registry moving, but slow down the rampant speculation. Makes sense to me.

Without delving into your frequent departures from reality, nobody asked you this week either. Though I appreciate the sentiment. Thanks for posting Nats thoughts.

Huge partnership opportunity for PSA to partner with card companies and insert discounts/free submissions via redemption. For breakers it would actually increase the 'return/appeal' on certain unopened products while allowing PSA to adjust their lower-priced submission volume over time.

I am always open to a side bet with anyone who thinks they've found an episode of me "departing from reality". If you ever feel like gambling against my predictions, please send me a PM.

Why would they do this? They already have more work than they can handle.

They have more work than they can handle now because of massive back-orders. As they continue to expand capacity they’ll want a way to throttle the inflow and that’s tough to do with drops in pricing - Nat said this himself. Better to sell cheaper, controllable allocation to the card companies and keep your consumer-facing prices higher. That way you can increase or decrease that redemption allocation without having to continually change pricing.