Certification of condition without slabbing

General
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Hi all, I have an idea that I’m confident there is enough demand for. This is not a business idea (for myself, at least), but it’s just an idea that I want to throw out there.

Idea: a service that certifies the conditions of cards without slabbing them

Premise #1: there are two main constituencies of the Pokemon card market – collectors of professionally graded cards and collectors of cards that have not been professionally graded (raw cards).

Premise #2: these two constituencies have mostly fixed proportionality – if the collector base is split 50/50, for instance, I don’t foresee that shifting dramatically in either direction anytime soon.

Premise #3: The supply of professionally-graded cards only increases and the supply of raw cards only decreases.

Conclusion: there are more PSA 7/8/9 cards than there is demand for the cards as graded cards. One symptom of this is the phenomenon of ‘cracking cases.’ I’ve cracked over 100 PSA cases for my sets only because the supply of raw cards that I needed to accomplish my collecting goals wasn’t there.

In my view, there are too many PSA 7/8 cards being slabbed. There are many people like me who crack cases for binder sets, and this phenomenon has naturally grown more common over time as more raw cards have been slabbed. Of course, there is some demand for slabbed PSA 7s and 8s. But much of the demand for PSA 7s and 8s is from raw card collectors. Too many cards, then, are being slabbed.

But the condition certification that PSA provides is highly valuable – both for buyers and sellers. Having a third-party certify condition streamlines the process of sourcing cards. Any raw card collector who’s remotely picky about condition has experienced just how unreliable it is to acquire cards of the desired condition. Having a card certified by a neutral third-party makes it easier for everyone. But, as I’ve established, there are an excess of cards being slabbed. Or if there is not currently an excess, we will eventually reach the point where there will be. So there should be a third-party that certifies cards as being in a certain condition without slabbing them. This could be done, for instance, by putting the card in a sealed sleeve (sort of like the one inside BGS cases, but one that would fit in binders and top loaders) and then subtly labeled (either on the back or in one of the corners) so as not to draw attention away from the card.

This service would cut down on the time and costs that grading + slabbing requires. It could be offered at a much cheaper rate, and with much faster turnaround times. As a seller and collector, I would personally use such a service religiously. On the selling end, I grade my cards much more conservatively than most sellers, so I often feel like I am underselling my cards because of the condition descriptors I use. And on the collecting end, I’m very picky about condition and would benefit substantially from being to able to purchase cards certified in this way. Ideally, an established third-party grading company (i.e., PSA or BGS) would offer this service as an alternative. That way there’s already a level credibility that wouldn’t have to be established. But this could also be done by a new third-party group.

Anyway, this is just a fantasy of mine. I wish so much that this existed. A way to slab cards and keep the association of the grade with the card and keep them in binders. And a way to lessen the impact of the grading disparities that exist in the raw card market. Would be curious to hear others’ input on this idea, and why it’s a terrible/great idea. I truly think that the demand for this, if it doesn’t already exist, will exist in the future as more and more cards become slabbed.

1 Like
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Beckett does a raw review. I wouldn’t touch it with a ten-foot pole though.
www.blowoutforums.com/showthread.php?t=1097955

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Yes, I’m aware of this. But the turnaround times are extraordinarily long and the prices are not significantly lower than normal grading. So it lacks most of the upsides my proposed service would have :blush:.

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How would this work reliably? Anything can happen after it’s certified when it’s not slabbed in plastic.

6 Likes
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The idea (although this could obviously be worked on) is that the card is in a sleeve sealed off on all edges and with some sort of highly subtle label (perhaps on the back of the sleeve, so that it doesn’t detract from the card). I don’t believe it would be that complex to seal the sleeve in a way that would make it evident if it was tampered/resealed.

EDIT: additionally, high-res scans of both sides of the card could be viewable online if you have the serial number associated with the card – so it would be easy to tell if the card was replaced with a weaker-condition copy.

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You are assuming most cards are being slabbed, which is simply not true

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What if someone put the sleeved card in a ringed binder and got binder indents on the sleeved card? The soft sleeve couldn’t prevent that but it would still be sealed even though the grade would be lower after damage.

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Where do I make that assumption? Because I agree that most cards aren’t being slabbed. The premise was that the number of slabbed cards is increasing and the number of raw cards is decreasing.

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I don’t mean to be harsh, but this just isn’t a good idea.

The cost of putting the card in plastic is less than you think I believe. Theoretically the time of the “expert” authenticator is the most expensive part of the process. Also as someone else mentioned the slab makes sure the grade survives. If you don’t slab it in plastic the grade isn’t necessarily going to hold.

7 Likes
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This is a good point and one that I didn’t consider. There’s no way to ensure that damage doesn’t occur to the card after it’s graded. But I still believe that this would be an uncommon occurence; if you know how to store your cards, they won’t get damaged.

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I appreciate the harshness; I wouldn’t have put the idea out there if I just wanted people uncritically praising the idea :blush:.

The first point: that slabbing the card is a negligible cost. I don’t agree with this. It’s not only the cost of the materials involved, but a matter of the machinery and the cost to employ people to operate/maintain the machinery. And even if it were a small cost, I believe it would still cut down the turnaround time significantly.

The second point: that the grade has to survive. I think that this is the best critique I’ve heard so far, and there’s not an easy way to answer it. But there are ways that this critique could be at least partially addressed. The plastic sleeve could be made of a higher gauge plastic than your typical penny sleeve so as to prevent many sorts of damage. And there’s the fact that most people (especially raw card collectors) know how to preserve the condition of cards, which would make this an uncommon occurrence. But I will concede that this critique highlights a very real limitation of the idea.

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Agree with the above. Preserving the condition of the card to ensure that it doesn’t change in condition, and that it can’t be tampered with is quite important.

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I don’t think that it would be difficult to prevent tampering; there are many ways to make seals tamper-evident. But, yes, I do think the the preservation of the condition of the card is important so as to ensure the reliability of the grade moving forward.

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So I think that my idea clearly needs work. But I do think that the desired result is not unattainable. Basically, it’s clear that more lower-grade cards are being slabbed than are being collected as slabbed cards. So slabbing is an excess for many cards. But third-party certification of condition is a positive thing for the market – it eliminates the conflict of interest that sellers have when grading their own cards and makes both the buying and selling process easier. So I feel like there has to be some way to have a third party certify the condition of cards without unnecessarily expending resources to slab the card.

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just some hypothetical ideas on this. You know there are like plastic forks which are like see through. what if you take that sort of material and make a thin layer like a sheet and then you seal the card between the thin layer of plastic. As longs as the plastic keeps the brittleness and hardness of the fork you can tell if it had been tampered with because this kind of plastic cracks. not sure if possible but to use that sort of material would be an interesting idea. a mini psa case or something. I dont know the composition of plastic but i know if you make it too thin it loses its sturdiness for flexibility so maybe its not possible but if someone can figure out the right material a hard plastic case for a binder cards could be a cool thing

1 Like
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This is a very interesting approach. I think that the right way to frame the idea would be as a ‘binder slab.’ A way to have a card that is certified as being in a certain condition, while also being able to collect it as more of a ‘raw’ card.

The potential issue I see with your idea is that this case would almost certainly have to be thicker than a normal sleeve. So I don’t believe it would be safe to have a binder of normally-sleeved cards and ‘binder slabs.’ You would have to use all of one or the other.

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I could see having a loose grade sheet on the back of the card in a sealed top loader but you’d have to find enough customers to make that worthwhile. I’d personally rather slab my cards the same way as they are now. My only issue with all graded cards in general is the label which I find visually unappealing.
A binder collection is usually viewed close up and the quality of cards speak for themselves. The only value of finding a way to grade a binder collection without slabbing is for the resale value. I’ve been busy with graduate school but once I’m finished I want to look at making a custom table to display an entire slabbed set. I have made furniture before as my dad has all the tools to do so and it’s a relaxing process.

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Out of curiosity what price point do you think this would run? PSA back in Q2 took on hundreds of thousands of cards at $7.50 per and I just dont see at what price point this could carve out a niche on top of the other issues.

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I’m not sure, but I have to imagine that it could be done profitably for as little as $2-3 a card. It doesn’t take more than two minutes to assign grades to a card (or if it did I’d be surprised), and the tamper-evident sealing could be done within a matter of minutes by the grader, avoiding the need to for slabbing machinery and operators of it.

At, say, $4 a card, I would absolutely send in cards to my hypothetical service. I sell a lot of raw cards and grade more conservatively than just about every other seller. Because of this, I have a ton of return business. But, on the whole, it probably hurts my sales. If there were a way to get my raw cards formally certified as being a certain quality, and at an affordable rate with reasonable turnaround times, there are thousands of cards I’d send in. It’s kind of annoying to struggle to sell, say, a PSA 8 quality raw WotC holo for $15 when slabbed PSA 7s of the same card are selling for $40 or $50. If people knew for certain that the card was of PSA 8 quality, there’s no question that they’d pay more for it – probably just $10 or so less than a slabbed version of the card with an equal grade. So I do think the service would have a fair amount of utility for both buyers and sellers, and doesn’t strike me as especially niche. There are many raw card collectors, and many of them are picky about condition.

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I’d go so far as in saying that it would be awesome for the card to be ensleeved - encapsulated within an unltra clear sleeve sealed on all 4 edges - something akin to the sturdiness of Ultra Pro Standard Deck protectors.

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