Lol there’s still aug, Sept and Oct out there too, including from lots of people in this thread myself included. Complete clown show
If anyone ever submits with a middleman again after this fiasco or googles for Pokemon middleman and stumbles upon this thread, well they sorta deserve the wait they’re going to get.
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I actually thought about making a video about the topic but it’s so inherently negative and straight forward that there isn’t much to discuss. Also there have been rumors from reliable sources of psa removing middlemen or employees of middlemen who work with competitors. There is just an insane amount of smoke around all of this that hasn’t been cleared. It feels like strategic corporate response to avoid accountability. Ironically the actual billion dollar corporation is more direct with communication.
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Sounds like a bonus Patreon video outside of the Q&A and MMR!
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Surely within the next two weeks every single outstanding submission will be returned and in customer hands like the email stated. Surely… 
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Honestly this is my opinion but i think there lying about every CGC order being returned as well ao not just the psa orders.
I know a middleman in Canada that is very reputable for PSA subs his CGC jan bulk sub isnt back ( it had metal celebrations cards so possibly the delay)
But also his June sub is not back either im like 90% sure he was sending the cgc stuff thru Ludkins but not saying that to customers. Would explan why his subs havent moved when cgc themselves have been super fast turning around subs.
If you want something done right, do it yourself
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Yes. Everyone should start their own grading company.
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TLDR: never use a middleman again! I’m waiting on 2 subs from ludkins now but doubt I’ll ever see them at this point. Fortunately not vintage stuff.
I think you will relatively soon (relative to waiting for the last 1.5-2 years). The timeframe is still not guaranteed, but sounds like PSA has committed to returning orders soon/now. People have started to get their Ludkins returns this week. My guess is they have all orders back by Halloween, Thanksgiving at the absolute latest.
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Yeah, I’m not ready to throw my hands up and say I’ll never see my cards again. I have 6 submissions outstanding, all vintage, and a variety of TCGs/languages.
Worst, and I mean worst case, we have to pay PSA the grading fees that Ludkins was supposed to pay but failed to. These costs would probably be relatively low considering they were 2020 vendor prices - maybe $7 a card or so for bulk? If we did have to pay ourselves we would probably be able to seek recourse from Ludkins for failure to honor a contract/render services (not that there would be much meat to pick off those bones).
What I would guess would be more likely is PSA would work with Ludkins to get these cards returned and then seek payment/damages from Ludkins over a longer period. Potentially never fully recouping 100% of what they had expected to earn from these services but still putting them in a better spot than they are in now.
Even in the event that PSA is holding these cards graded pending payment from Ludkins, and that payment is never made, PSA still wouldn’t own our cards. They might not be directly liable for the failure of Ludkins to provide service, but it would be a massive headache for them if they didn’t get those cards back to their owners somehow.
Our cards being in PSA’s possession is a headache that no party involved wants. As long as they have the cards, PSA is on the hook for storage, operational, and insurance costs/liability - not to mention any pressure this puts on their brand/PR. My assumption is that ops managers and execs want nothing more than to free up that space so they can get back to using it to serve the immense number of direct customers they have.
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that said I am for sure never using a middleman service again. PSA Has improved its submission process a ton and hopefully, other companies follow suit.
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I’ve been following this thread closely for a while and I am just really hoping to see some good news, or at least some tangible signs of movement.
Ludkins has already returned over 1200 cards to me that I submitted in late 2020. However, the last time I received a return was in May.
I am still waiting on over 600 cards that I submitted through Ludkins to PSA between Jan-Feb 2021.
Tons of these are childhood cards. Many others are sentimental cards I obtained when I first came back to the hobby as an adult.
It is horrifying to think about losing these. It seems unlikely, but all any of us can do is continue to wait in the dark it seems.
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There is no way the submitted cards are lost, I mean the worst case scenario is a Marx cards situation where they go bankrupt and even there the submitters received their cards back directly from PSA, it might only go through a legal process and take some time.
With that said it is not okay to leave your customers, that trusted you with their cards, completely in the dark and ghost them for months. It takes 5 minutes to write an E-mail and update everybody on the current situation and even if no cards were graded since the last update you can still show a sign of life. For the future I will definitely avoid any person that was involved with Ludkins.
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@smpratte What you said might be true, but given that between gg/LK uk/LK us had about 3-4 million dollars of unpaid “finished work”. PSA may have reasons to demote middlemen like you said. But what good do they have leaving completed work hanging in their warehouse.
Say PSA’s rolling inventory is about 2-5 million cards. Then the 3 MM was occupying close to 10%+ of that space if it keeps being stuck there
Based on gemrate (2 weeks ago, so last week’s report). There was a unusual big bulge of TCG category added on the pop report. while we didn’t have a firm conclusion but it may be the release of some of our outstanding batches as I believe most of the 2020/21 orders are Pokemon cards.
Lastly I saw 3 other authorized dealers mentioned they had outstanding orders from pre shutdown, but all had less than 10 outstanding orders. While I cannot completely speak on their situation but at least they did not have 100s of outstanding like the big 3 here.
Happy that my Oct 2020 submission from GG finally returned. And now with PSA UK being an option, I no longer need to use a middle man again!
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Sweet baby jezus, I just got an email that my Nov 2020 sub to Ludkins UK has been returned and are ready to be shipped!!
Upcharges weren’t that bad, meaning either my grades suck, or they only upcharge Charizords>
Don’t care, happy to have my cards back soon!
(Yeahhh it didn’t take 2 years, oh god)
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Bless UP
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I just got a small upcharge for a Polaris submission back in July, so that order is almost done after a couple months. Here I am still waiting on cards from Jan/Feb 2021 with Ludkins though…
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