The Sports Card Industry Is Having A Tech Revolution - PSA Forbes Article

[BobC]

Originally Posted by parkplace33

I noted those but also these:

On a single day in late March, the company received 660,000 cards. “We literally broke the USPS in Southern California,” Turner says. “They called us and said they couldn’t manifest the boxes. I think we rented school buses with security guards and drove to USPS to pick them up.”

Turner says he hopes to return to the normal submission process in the next few months, but all involved concede that the days of $12 service fees for low-end cards are over.

Then there’s the competition. SGC has taken advantage of PSA’s higher prices, particularly on the lower end, and smaller grading services like CSG and HGA are hoping to capitalize as well. New entrants are joining them. A year ago, Dallas Card Investors happily functioned as a bulk submitter, essentially working as a middleman between collectors and PSA. Now, says owner Bradley Crenshaw, it’s pivoting its business to become a grader itself.

I wouldn't be so quick to just summarily dismiss CSG as a small, filling in the gap, card grading company. The overall company they are part of is well known worldwide I understand for their other grading services. So, this new venture of theirs into card grading is no fly-by-night operation. Plus, as I understand it, they are going to compete with PSA in that they have a registry set up, unlike SGC, Beckett, or any of the other small, fringe grading services out there. Plus, don't forget their rather slick move in partnering with Ebay to offer their new authentication service. I can easily see CSG using that affiliation as a possible springboard to generate more business in the future. For now, all they need do is maintain and provide a consistent, accurate, timely, and reasonably priced authentication and grading service that competes with the other TPGs, especially against PSA as to timeliness and prica, and over time more and more people in the hobby will become more familiar and trusting of them. In the long run, it will behoove PSA to get their pricing and turnaround times down closer to where their competition is.

[mrreality68]

interesting read and new blood is always good