Fate of my PSA collection

[craigc]

@Pbali

@craigc

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.

Not bulk, but my economy has been in grading for 2 months now.

oof, Maybe I shouldn’t be excited yet. Not worried I didn’t expect the cards back until late this year or next year.

[mcorey777]

@gottaketchumall

@kaldoverde

@casual , I think you either skipped that part of the statement or I am too much of a glass half-full guy, but as someone who submits mostly bulk, estimated Turnaround Times being retired in favor of Complete-Through Dates sounds like an awesome change to me. Provided they manage to comply with them, that is.

This would necessitate FIFO to make any sense which would be awesome.

If this was a food company all their food would go bad by not rotating product. FIFO (First in first out) system was made for a reason, and not just in the food industry. If it was a car shop or anywhere else people would cancel orders out of frustration after so much time.

Where PSA benefits is no matter how much you complain or get mad it doesn’t matter. They have your cards hostage. No opportunity to cancel your order. Your bound by their rules.

From what I’m hearing it hasn’t always been like this and use to be a lot easier pre 2020.

If it was like this in the beginning and there was other competent competitor’s grading cards I’m sure PSA would not be the leading grading company.

Just my thoughts and as you know I buy PSA graded cards. But I’m buying the card in mint condition the case it’s in doesn’t matter.

If you happen to grade the exact cards im collecting with CGC I’d buy those too happily

[KingPokemon]

@casual

@Deleted

Hopefully you new collectors see what happens when you dare to question/oppose legacy opinions here. Grown men ganging up on and literally bullying someone like it’s 1999 in the lunch room again. Gotta love humans and our tribe mentality to ostracize, silence and remove those that oppose the groupthink.

My point on Cult Like Behavior was proven. I’m disappointed in you Smpratte. You’re above this and you know it. Good luck in this echo chamber, keyboard warriors.

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.”

Scott is me too,

[KingPokemon]

The only way this could all make sense if finding out that Stone was given a piece of CGC.

[kaldoverde]

@mcorey777, they actually address that on their website and based on their own statement it is not that they don’t use FIFO, they just don’t make that commitment with the customer in case orders can’t be processed using FIFO. They state the reasons for an order not to be processed using FIFO at the bottom of the following page:

www.psacard.com/communication

These can very well be seen as an excuse rather than actual fact, but some do make sense. I mean, if an order requires more time to process/research that shouldn’t hold back the processing of other orders.

Regarding things being easier pre 2020, I have been grading with them since 2017 and they were always behind schedule on bulk so that particular level has had backlog issues for quite some time. Other service levels did work as expected though.

[quuador]

@casual

@Deleted

Hopefully you new collectors see what happens when you dare to question/oppose legacy opinions here. Grown men ganging up on and literally bullying someone like it’s 1999 in the lunch room again. Gotta love humans and our tribe mentality to ostracize, silence and remove those that oppose the groupthink.

My point on Cult Like Behavior was proven. I’m disappointed in you Smpratte. You’re above this and you know it. Good luck in this echo chamber, keyboard warriors.

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.”

Next time you might want to add a source, since this is a copy paste from @pkmnflyingmaster’s story here: www.elitefourum.com/t/smpratteyoloswagfamcuz/18302/8 (a deserving winner of the Efour 10th Anniversary Funniest Post award).
Pokesynd also left the forum a while ago.

Greetz,
Quuador

[cedar]

Pre-covid PSA is at its usual backlog. Sees a possible pandemic approaching and decides it’s a good time to do a $7.50 bulk special.

A few months later and they are up to their ears in backlog so they decide to raise the bulk price to $10.

Anyone else feel this is ironic?

[pokeaddict84]

My bulk special of 105 cards graded exactly 90 total days submitted in May. They don’t seem that backed up to me.

[pokecollectoramy]

@pokeaddict84

My bulk special of 105 cards graded exactly 90 total days submitted in May. They don’t seem that backed up to me.

Seems very lucky. My bulk special order shipped June 23rd hasn’t moved past registered stage

[genosha]

@kaldoverde

@mcorey777 , they actually address that on their website and based on their own statement it is not that they don’t use FIFO, they just don’t make that commitment with the customer in case orders can’t be processed using FIFO. They state the reasons for an order not to be processed using FIFO at the bottom of the following page:

www.psacard.com/communication

These can very well be seen as an excuse rather than actual fact, but some do make sense. I mean, if an order requires more time to process/research that shouldn’t hold back the processing of other orders.

Regarding things being easier pre 2020, I have been grading with them since 2017 and they were always behind schedule on bulk so that particular level has had backlog issues for quite some time. Other service levels did work as expected though.

Main reason why no FIFO is because thought they could charge people to skip the line. That worked 10-20 years ago, but now everybody has the funds to skip the line, so everybody is. While people laughing at BGS having 6-10 months return times, PSA became BGS just because they kept using an outdated and ridiculous system.

[pokeaddict84]

@pokecollectoramy

@pokeaddict84

My bulk special of 105 cards graded exactly 90 total days submitted in May. They don’t seem that backed up to me.

Seems very lucky. My bulk special order shipped June 23rd hasn’t moved past registered stage

Mine was sitting in research phase for over 50 days. It went from Grading to shipped in 11.

[kpod]

@pokeaddict84

My bulk special of 105 cards graded exactly 90 total days submitted in May. They don’t seem that backed up to me.

There was a small window when they first announced their Poke Mania special, that if you got there order there within a week or two of them announcing it your order was processed faster than normal.

[kaldoverde]

@cedar

Pre-covid PSA is at its usual backlog. Sees a possible pandemic approaching and decides it’s a good time to do a $7.50 bulk special.

A few months later and they are up to their ears in backlog so they decide to raise the bulk price to $10.

Anyone else feel this is ironic?

Totally agree. They actually released the Quarterly Special not long after acknowledging they had a backlog of 1 million cards, which made very little sense in my opinion. I’m not sure if they thought COVID would cause a decline in submissions and decided to go with that special to adjust for that possibility, but it clearly backfired.

[gengaranimal]

44 card June 12 bulk sub has been in grading for about 2 weeks now.

hoping their statement to move to more real time tracking of movement is true.

[seriouslysilly]

@PokemonClassics

I just received my bulk submission (from May) yesterday . . . 185 cards, all 1st edition WOTC (even got some 10’s).

Awesome! Congrats on the return.I have a bulk submission as well (130 cards) that are on their way (from June).Also WOTC cards with good grades so definitely no complaints

[0ean]

PSA wasting business.

Opportunity for another card grading company to take over.

[GemMint10]

Guess i need to save up a little longer, have now just over 200 cards to grade with more being added weekly to the pile

My fault really for not submitting during the $7.50 special.

[zorloth]

@0ean

PSA wasting business.

Opportunity for another card grading company to take over.

Seriously. It can only be a function of incredible mismanagement that PSA is, rather than scaling with demand, actually turning away business. And by scaling with demand I mean actually hiring enough people to process orders within a reasonable time frame. There are countless potential customers who have refrained from submitting to PSA because of the length of the turnaround times.

By the looks of it, PSA is actively seeking new hires. But the pay is abysmal. It looks like they start graders at $30k a year…in SoCal. Super high cost of living – not exactly some rural location in the Midwest. It’s so, so shortsighted to be offering such a low salary. No wonder they aren’t able to keep up with demand. It seems like they should have the cash flow to expand. I mean, they’re effectively being paid 6-8 months in advance of the actual service they’re providing. If they even so much as tentatively committed to reducing turnaround times to 1-2 months, they would see a gigantic influx in submissions. That increase in liquidity should more than enable them to scale. I’m likely simplifying things somewhat, but PSA is clearly not being run competently.

[cardgames12345]

At least you have choices in USA in Europe only PSA middle people to send it to like Ludkins or Graded Gem as far as I can tell. It all looks to confusing to do it myself so I need a dealer as they say

[KingPokemon]

@zorloth

@0ean

PSA wasting business.

Opportunity for another card grading company to take over.

Seriously. It can only be a function of incredible mismanagement that PSA is, rather than scaling with demand, actually turning away business. And by scaling with demand I mean actually hiring enough people to process orders within a reasonable time frame. There are countless potential customers who have refrained from submitting to PSA because of the length of the turnaround times.

By the looks of it, PSA is actively seeking new hires. But the pay is abysmal. It looks like they start graders at $30k a year…in SoCal. Super high cost of living – not exactly some rural location in the Midwest. It’s so, so shortsighted to be offering such a low salary. No wonder they aren’t able to keep up with demand. It seems like they should have the cash flow to expand. I mean, they’re effectively being paid 6-8 months in advance of the actual service they’re providing. If they even so much as tentatively committed to reducing turnaround times to 1-2 months, they would see a gigantic influx in submissions. That increase in liquidity should more than enable them to scale. I’m likely simplifying things somewhat, but PSA is clearly not being run competently.

What do you mean by this, “ they’re effectively being paid 6-8 months in advance of the actual service they’re providing”?