In the past, I used to send my cards off with Ludkins Collectables and Graded Gem. Now it seems none of them are in operation anymore. Ludkins Collectables are now allegedly “PSA UK” but there doesn’t seem to be much sign of life on their end. Their online contact forms are broken (people on social media say it’s been like this for weeks) and they read social media messages but don’t respond to them (even though they only require a simple yes or no answer). Plus they haven’t posted anything on social media since July 1st.
Are there any other reliable middle men left in the UK? Is it difficult going to PSA direct? Has British person had much luck with this in the past?
I thought Ludkins UK was supposed to be directly through PSA? That way you could contact PSA directly if you had any questions, where before you could only contact the middle man. Is this not the case?
It’s all a bit convoluted and much more complex than it was previously. Now you have to email PSA UK and tell them that you intend to send cards off. Then you have to go on PSA USA and create an account and a submission. Then PSA UK (who don’t answer messages) are supposed to get in contact with you and ask for payment. Then you have to send them off (in the correct order and with a printed submission list etc).
However, it’s impossible to take advantage of their “October Special” when they don’t have any customer service what so ever. Based on what I’ve read on FB and Instagram, I’m not the only one who can’t get hold of them.
I went direct for the $15 special for the first time. I was checking out PSA UK as I assumed the ‘official partnership’ would mean they’d be more on the ball with being on socials, CS etc. But like you say it seems like they’ve fallen off the face of the earth. That being said, a friend of mine did go through PSA UK recently and he said its been fine (so far).
Going direct is cheaper as PSA UK don’t have the deal prices right now. Considering you essentially have to do the same steps of making an account, filling out the submission form, packing them up & shipping them out… I think going direct makes sense. You have to do a few extra steps when cards are returning, such as emailing fedex to let them know you have a return coming etc.
This video by @haggiscollects does a great job of explaining the shipping/customs process (albeit to cgc, but just watch another video to figure out how to do the PSA steps)
Thanks mate, I’ll have a look into it.
I’m really struggling to find a reliable middleman, I was hoping in Ludkins aka PSA UK but their lack of answers is scaring me. Atm I’m just accumulating cards that I’ll send when things get stable. I thought that Ludkins was hoing to set up a proper PSA Uk website soon
Yes, its $129 a year I believe. You make it back pretty quickly though by getting better prices on everything. Plus I think you need the membership to go via PSA UK anyway?
For example heres my costs for a 50 card order - you can see that going direct saves quite a bit of money, and this is just 1 sub.
PSA US have an $18 (£15.70) bulk offer on at the moment, whilst PSA UK have a £16.75 bulk offer on until the end of October (that you can’t actually use because their staff don’t acknowledge customers). So there isn’t that much of a price difference atm.
If PSA UK worked, then I’d have to send off around 112 cards per year just to break even on the US submissions with their membership fee. Not sure if the UK charges a fee as they’re still kind of middlemen?! Nothing in their literature about a fee anyway.
To be honest though, I’ve only got about 30 cards to send off (at that price) and another 50-odd if the price ever returns back down to £10 per card. I think I’ll have to wait until PSA UK get their sht
together or another respectable middle man comes along.
I wanted to sneak another few cards in at the special pricing, I might try using this service and see what happens. It is a bit strange that they don’t reply but it also doesn’t mention anything about them replying to the initial email, so maybe that’s just how they do things for whatever reason
It’s the same restrictions PSA has as if you submitted directly to them.
To save you some time, I logged into my PSA account and created a new $15 order and it does allow carddass and topsun to be submitted under the $15 tier.
