On April 3rd I will have a sub hitting its 11th week at research and id. I have another sub from March 5th that is still stuck at “order arrived”
For psa its more important for them to lock up business and take away market share and worry about customer satisfaction secondary. It’s a crappy business model for a bad company. Some ppl will defend them and say “they are super successful they have X amount of market share” ext.. SO WHAT!
Comcast was/is a dominate player in TV and Internet, and they were voted WORST company in America for multiple years. success doesnt justify bad service
On the flipside
In PSAs perspective you are already sending them the card for authentication and they are already spending time opening, processing, ext. Might as well grade it to get more money/take away potential business from competitors
especially for noobs once they receive the graded and slabbed card and see how easy it is, this can lead to future business from them as the buyer gains confidence to start subbing their collection with PSA
The timing is awful though, but for a bad company with no repercussions it doesnt matter.
It’s been more reliable than buying bulk from TCGPlayer for my PSA master set. I’m more inclined to buy a card if the description mentions it going from a pack to a sleeve. It’s still a gamble, but it’s the better alternative in my experience
This is solving a problem that didn’t exist. I don’t know a single person who would prefer to send cards directly from eBay without first inspecting them.
I think the one example Nat gave, was that he found a rare MJ card, bought it and immediately sent it to PSA because he only wanted to know if it was authentic.
Otherwise, this only makes sense for ultramodern, even then I still wouldn’t use it lol.
edit: still waiting for psa to add the “alerts” feature he mentioned last year..
The specific requirement of over 2 images on the listing is interesting. If you were to upload the same image multiple times to get to 3 images does that count?
Seems like an odd requirement. I assume the idea is to reduce complaints about not being able to tell the card’s condition before grading, but 90% of listing photos on ebay won’t show everything you need to determine condition anyway.
I mean, since it’s “authenticity guaranteed” protected…to me it means a buyer is:
really trusting the pictures and condition of the listing in front of them as shown by the seller (hopefully no swapparooni taking place after the sale)
have to trust that PSA’s front-line authenticators/pre-graders “agree” with the condition of the raw card (unless these cards are automatically going straight to a grader’s table)
then entering the final rng step of going through the actual grading process (which of course can and is allowed to vary greatly despite what the initial condition of the raw card was assessed to be at i’d assume)
I don’t actually know if that’s the process for these cards but if it is, it seems needlessly convoluted…
Assuming Step 2 doesn’t actually take place and the card goes directly to a grader’s table, what happens if a card sold as “Mint” gets a PSA 7 or PSA 8? Wouldn’t that automatically make the eBay listing description inaccurate since PSA couldn’t possibly agree with the condition if it assessed the card’s final, actual grade differently? So many questions.
A 7-8 grade doesn’t make the seller description inaccurate imho.
Psa (as others grading companies) isn’t the keeper of universal truth, it’s just a private company you pay to express a (questionable) opinion that doesn’t have legal value.
That’s why a 9 can be regraded and become a 8 or a 10
I don’t disagree at all, but when one of the marketing bullet points expressly states that PSA “Verifies condition accuracy” it’s just going to be a little awkward when someone buys a raw card off eBay that is listed as “Mint,” gets authenticated and “verified” by PSA but then receives a grade that is…not “Mint.”
To me it seems like this is bound to happen. Obviously, we know grading is subjective. Obviously, people deep in the hobby or those that have been grading for years are not the target audience for this service and are highly unlikely to use it.
So who is this service for exactly if not for someone that is less familiar with the grading world (yet is somehow buying $250+ raws on eBay)??? Cause I can definitely see people newer to the hobby going through the motions of buying a card advertised as a certain condition, getting it sent to PSA and having that condition “verified,” but then receiving a grade that isn’t indicative of said “verification.” It’s pretty obvious that PSA will never guarantee the actual grade based off the condition of the raw they “verified,” so like…what exactly is the point, lol?
We definitely need more clarity because it seems like PSA is subjecting itself to upholding both the a) condition of the card in the listing and b) grading accordingly. You can see where it would be purpose defeating to buy raw cards advertised as one condition and continually receive grades that are not consistent with said advertised condition, right?
Otherwise, if PSA are targeting people that “just want to get their cards authenticated” then they shouldn’t even be mentioning condition at all and just slab every card with “AUTH” that goes through this program. Just seems a bit silly to willingly buy raw cards in a certain stated condition only to have PSA themselves tell you otherwise; it’s just an unnecessary layer of complexity.
Sorry for the long windedness but yeah, this whole thing just screams “not well thought out” to me.
