If you’ve ever been on discord you’ll know the veterans here get made fun of just as much as anyone else. It’s all in good fun, don’t take things so personally, here on E4 and in life in general, it’ll make for a smoother ride.
3 Likes
Most of my May submissions have all started the grading process recently. Actually two out of thirteen have been completed and only three others haven’t started the grading process. I wasn’t expecting anything back for around six months, so I’m actually pretty happy how things are going.
1 Like
You are a member of the Elite Fourum. Every day you visit the top site in the world for Pokémon card collectors. This is where the creme of the crop congregate.
Like all members of e4, you casually enjoy and partake in smpratte’s videos. You feel he is underappreciated and decide to throw him $50 a month on Patreon to support his work. How nice of you. Over time you interact and get to know smpratte (you call him Scott now) better and better. You Skype with him periodically. He begins to learn your face, who you are, your background, a little about your family and friends. He seems very interested in you. Perhaps too interested.
The conversations you have with Scott slowly become more frequent. He’s a nice guy and you can tell he’s really passionate about Pokémon. Since you’ve started supporting him on Patreon, you’ve reduced the amount you spend on your collection. You really only collect English cards but Scott is always trying to get you into the exclusive Japanese cards. Masaki promos, Natta Wake cards, old trophy cards; Scott tries to list all the cards he can at you to try and get you interested in some Japanese cards. You tell him you don’t want any of his Japanese exclusive cards because you can’t read the text.
Over time, Scott becomes more agressive about getting you to buy one of his Japanese cards. He screams at you during your Skype call and hangs up. A few minutes later he calls back. The video stream shows him with an eerily emotionless countenance. He offers you one of his Illustrator cards for $20. You are confused, but this is an offer no one should turn down. You send him the money through PayPal along with the shipping address and give him your thanks. Right before ending the call, you could swear he muttered something about how he was more thankful than you were.
The Illustrator is such a valuable card that you decide to fly straight to Scott’s place to pick it up in person. He’s told you where he lives during one of your conversations and you figured you could suprise him by meeting him face-to-face for the first time.
When you get to the door, you notice the front door of his house was ajar, as if someone was in a rush to leave. Odd. You slowly creak the door open and say “Hello?”. Seems like no one is home, so you decide to make yourself comfortable until Scott gets back. You don’t want someone else breaking in while the door is unlocked
You accidentally stumble into his room. He’s got a corner set up for his next video. Neat. You notice his computer has been left on. A QR code for an airplane boarding pass is on the screen. He also has hundreds of browser windows open, all in private browsing mode. Curiosity overtakes you and you click on one of the windows. It opens to an e4 thread “#smpratteyoloswagfamcuz”. You chuckle to yourself remembering how silly that thread was. Just as you were about to look away, you noticed a peculiarity. The page was signed in as the user “ray”.
You think it’s kind of unethical that Scott would take advantage of his admin privileges and sign into other users accounts. You click on another window. This one is signed in as Milhouse. Another as 'M. Another acebren, ssjc, MasonKampe. Fazool, sizzlinshibe, swolepoke, hypernova, xzini, stephneechan, fourthstartcg, e2d2, elftan… pretty much everyone. Except you. You step back from the monitor and feel a bit faint. You accidentally fall over and knock a folder sitting on the desk to the floor. Sheets of paper fly everyhere.
You pick up a page. It is covered with crude, hastily hand-written text. It reads:
“Profile: pokemonsyndicate
Traits: likes the sunglasses emoji, collects only BGS, confuses other users with made-up words in long blocks of text.
…”
Nine pages followed this one mapping various words such as “raritans” and words ending in “b” to real words.
You grab another page.
“Profile: cullers
Traits: is almost always correct but can often come off as blunt and harsh
…”
Another.
“Profile: PkmnFlyingMaster
Traits: periodically writes stupid long-winded dramas
…”
Flipping through the pages you notice that you are also missing a profile. You begin to feel sick. You start looking for the restroom and you accidentally enter a room where the walls are covered with paper. Each sheet contained what appeared to be a script. One page had a dialog between forum members about a fake 1st edition stamp Charizard. The last line read “finally, smpratte comes in and heroically locks the thread and calms the community”. Every page seemed to be a script for an e4 thread you have read.
You notice your name appears on some of the scripts… but every time you appear the rest of the script is crossed out, crinkled and splotted with large amounts of red ink. Is that ink? You feel uneasy. You want to go home now.
You are about to leave but you suddenly hear some muffling from the basement. You gather up whatever courage you have left and slowly creep down the dark set of stairs. When you get to the bottom, you see two people gagged and tied to chairs next to some empty buckets. The room reeks like rotting fish. You also notice two computers set up in the room. Both are playing Scott’s videos on an endless loop.
You recognize the two people as churlocker and DJGigabyte from Scott’s podcast. You untie their gags and they thank you profusely. They explain that Scott has kept them as prisoners and would only temporarily release them to read a script for the podcast. They have been surviving off buckets of fishheads for years. You tell them who you are and their eyes widen. “He’s coming for you. He wants you gone.”
Stricken with fear, you flee the basement leaving the two still tied to the chair. It all begins to click. Scott is ray. Scott is pokemonsyndicate. Scott is everyone. There is no elite group of Pokemon collectors. It’s just you and Scott. The forum was a giant role playing game for Scott and you kept fucking it up. He only sold you that Illustrator for your address and he was coming.
Breathing heavily, you finally get to the front door. A dark figure wielding a large knife is standing in the doorway.
The last words you hear are “hi everyone, this is s-m-pratte.”
28 Likes
I love this forum
1 Like
I think perhaps you ostracize yourself friend. If I come into a new job that is mostly based on knowledge from experience making myself out to be some kind of hot shot that has this all down already and knows what he is doing; chances are I’m going to make myself look like an ass. Which is all good and well and happens all the time; just insecure people overcompensating, it happens. But if I don’t just stop there but start telling all these OG coworkers not only have they been going about their jobs wrongly all this time but I’m going to psychoanalyze all of you who I now deem a mentally deficient hivemind so you should heed all of the deep think thoughts you should all be attempting to engage with me in; as my exceedingly large brain nears explosion, perhaps that is not the most socially effective method of engagement. Ostracizing ones self through this behavior and then claiming to be bullied when not well received by an open forum simply means you aren’t engaging the forum properly in the first place. If you want your opinions heard, lets start with a single point of interest, make it a friendly dialogue and go from there. Sincerely wish you best of luck in your future endeavors.
This would necessitate FIFO to make any sense which would be awesome.
1 Like
PSA crippling because no FIRST IN FIRST OUT service for decades. Let’s all embrace new new Blue Lord of Grading, behold our saviour; CGC!
4 Likes
Another new member gone because they weren’t jive to the groupthink that E4 is so well known for.
Overall kind of a bummer that PSA service continually decreases while prices increase. Not surprising if you’ve been following them though.
Those that like PSA will continue to pay, submit and wait accordingly. PSA premium will continue to increase because of it.
BGS, CGC and others will continue to take advantage of the gap and the market need for a cheaper and quicker alternative. Haters will continue to hate and naysayers will naysay.
It is a luxury item that has grown in popularity tremendously over the last few years, so really it’s not the end of the world.
3 Likes
I had heard rumors that prices were going to be increased today, but not that an entire service level would be suspended. Ugh, and I really needed to submit quite a few cards at the economy level. Very lame 
1 Like
Submit at bulk and play some upcharge roulette
6 Likes
so what im getting from this thread and the PSA email is that there is no “bulk” submission per se its now listed as “value” and the cost for each card would be 10-15 since pokemon is modern to ultra modern. that’s quite a jump from the normal 8$ per card 
I just received my bulk submission (from May) yesterday . . . 185 cards, all 1st edition WOTC (even got some 10’s).
3 Likes
Indeed it would, but it will most likely be just the same process with added transparency. PSA will probably still give customers a Complete-Through Date that is 6-8 months in the future and grade some earlier and others by the end date.
What this new format achieves though which seems quite attractive to me is the following:
Businesses that grade and sell cards will be able to manage stocks and cash flow more efficiently.
Collectors who submit directly get a clear expectation and will not be left wondering whether a submission staying at grading stage for a month is a glitch.
Collectors who submit via 3rd party services will not need to constantly contact them for updates.
Even without a specific date, in terms of customer anxiety, there is a big difference in advertising a service level as being completed whithin ‘100 days’ as opposed to ‘100+ days’ so the fact that they are planning on going beyond that and commit to completion by a specific date is quite positive change.
In the end PSA’s efforts may fail miserably, but given the size of the company, it is impressive how agile they are at implementing change. It will probably take a year or two of uninterrupted hiring/training/operationalising for grading times to go back to acceptable levels, but the fact that PSA is expanding at the same time that a decent portion of the community moves towards CGC is likely to create a perfect storm that will hopefully stabilize the industry as a whole.
1 Like
Just curious how long it was in grading for? I’ve had 2 bulk in grading for about 10 business days and my excitement is building.
2 Likes
That kid got meme’d up. Better come correct on this forum.
Pokemon is under TCG so it is $10 per card. Ultra modern is only sports
1 Like
What are you even talking about? Are you just listing every phenomenon you came across in your first year or what? Stockholm, Stanford and Milgram are Totally not applicable in this context and just really farfetched…
1 Like
Not bulk, but my economy has been in grading for 2 months now.
2 Likes
does cards like topps or carddass count as TCG? i dont think it falls under that category but if it does that would be good news to me as i like collecting off tcg cards 