VERY VERY disgusted with PSA--you won't believe it!!

[Exhibitman]

Originally Posted by lharri3600

my question (unanswered by the way) was if that's the case, why offer that service?

MONEY. It is ALL about money. Grading did not start up because of the pervasiveness of card doctors--the first card PSA ever graded was not only doctored, it was it known to be doctored by at least one of the graders who looked at it for PSA--it started up because someone had an idea for making money on the fears of collectors and stoked that fire with a strong advertising campaign aimed at collectors. The half-grade did not arise from collectors clamoring for it--high-end examples of the card in a grade were long term gripes about PSA--it arose when PSA's management decided it could make MONEY on the resubmits. Why else would the rules not downgrade a card, only bump it? Not for accuracy, certainly. But as a marketing tool for the resubmission service what better campaign could you have than to guarantee that for a modest fee the card owner might make out like a bandit or would at worst end up precisely where he was before?

Look, it is all about perceptions. TPG doesn't change the cards themselves, it merely changes the perceptions of the buyers and sellers. It's BS, but the more ridiculous it gets the more the target audience buys into it, and the more they buy into it the more money the TPG service makes. And no matter how stinky the popourri the people who want to believe keep spending. Years ago I wrote an article for VCBC proving that the SMR was nothing more than a tout sheet for the service that simply made up prices on cards PSA had never graded and falsely showed them to be moving up when the PSA-graded cards didn't even exist. The collective response was "yes, but" because everyone who counted (dealers) loved the ability to make money marketing the idea that PSA cards were an investment that handed out great returns. They used the SMR to price cards and sell cards, and the fantasy became real over time as buyers fell for the conceit and deals were made on cards with the SMR's phoney-baloney pricing as an initial baseline. Now, after a decade, PSA can cite real examples of sales and the whole thing becomes a self-perpetuating thing, just like the initial insert card venture fed on itself and became the silly three-figure packs of today.

I'm no purist; I play all the games too. I buy raw cards and submit for high grades, cross over cards, crack and resend cards, and occasionally submit already graded cards for review. It is all about the Benjamins for me. I think the whole thing is stupid but just like stocks it doesn't really matter what I think of the true quality is as long as it can be sold to the next sucker down the line. How else besides TPG could I take a raw card that cost me five bucks and turn it into a $350 product?