I retain a childlike attachment to my cards, which I acquire slowly and purposefully, and dislike being away from them. If I can’t see them and touch them it’s like they are not real. I need that proximity. Ownership is not enough, I must have them, you know what I mean?
It’s not true to say every single card is equally important to me. I am a set collector, so that would be impossible. But once I have them I’m not keen on ever letting them go. I don’t even like to remove them from their binder pages and even briefly break the visual continuity of a completed set. If I’m going to send a card in for grading (which of course I have done, and will do again) it needs to be FAST. I miss my precious babies.
That’s fair enough. For me, once I know I own it, then I don’t really care if I have to wait to get it back because I know I don’t need to worry about getting it again. Unless of course it grades lower than I expected, then it does suck to have to wait 5 months to know that.
For people worried about the 150 day turnaround time, here’s a reason you should submit now and not wait. The special only runs through the end of July. It’s possible in August the price goes back up to $30/card. It might not be until December that it’s $18 again. That is 150 days from now anyways, you mine as well just submit it now.
I could be wrong and it’s $15/card in August with the same or less turnaround time, if PSA continues to get underwhelming amount of submissions.
@stagecoach Dude I feel your pain plus the backlog. I almost rather pay the $30 rate because we all know that will be faster then the “special” Even a few cards would hurt me. I think similar to you and hate having them out of my possession. I’m also at the point of needing a bank vault or using pwcc vault incase of a break in, fire etc. But I’ve been putting it off because I really don’t want to do it. I’ve also started to buy graded binder sheets so I can put together graded binder sets like back in my raw card days. I had to sell them tho. Had way too many played cards
Man, the vault would kill me. I can’t be away from my cards. I spent my whole youth imagining what these cards would feel like to have in my possession. Moving them to a vault would be going back to that. Sure, I technically own them, but I’d be right back to imagining them.
@stagecoach I get exactly what you mean. I had a great experience collecting as a kid. Base to fossil 1st edition. I was anxiously awaiting the next set before I stopped collecting and started hanging out with my friends more. Ended up losing that binder which I told you guys before. Then when I came back 3 years ago I created the coolest binder collection on such a cheap budget while things were actually cheap. Then the last I don’t know year and a half or so I’ve been building this huge PSA collection of all my favorites I had from my Wotc section of my binder. Honestly it’s somewhat depressing knowing if I wanted everything back in PSA 8/9 to go thru all the eras until maybe x and y would cost a ton. So I’ve stayed to collecting Wotc before even considering ex era or diamond and pearl etc. As much as I love those eras as well. I’m not exactly made of money. Shit most of my money gets dumped into collecting as it is. I already do as much as I can. But one thing I will say is I really enjoyed collecting Neo thru Skyridge because they have amazing artworks and I never got that far as a kid.
(Sorry for getting off topic guys. What stagecoach said just really hit home so I wanted to reply)
I’m of the send them off and forget them for a few months mindset. I have accumulated so many cards over the past >2 year specifically for this anticipated price reduction. 150 days is estimated turnaround. When economy opened expected tat was 90 days and regularly turned around in 30 days.
I agree the estimated 5 month turnaround is just PSA covering their butts, it could very well end up shorter. Personally I’m going to wait for cheaper prices though. I only have a couple cards I would submit at this price. If it ever falls to $10/$15 I would have WAY more. Prices might go back up in August but I’m willing to wait it out. I’m a raw set collector so I really only use grading to flip cards and get some extra spending funds, $18 a card with a 5-month “estimate” is too much money and wait time for minimal reward for the cards I have.
I’m thinking, from a business standpoint, They had a drop-off in submissions, but they hired a ton of people to get through the backlog. NOW, they have tons of people and fewer submissions so, they have to either lay them off, OR they need to get more submissions.
We can be sure that they don’t want to have a bunch of people and nothing for them to do, so before the backlog totally clears, they need to buffer the decrease in submissions, so they’ll get more at lower tiers and then allow demand to slowly come back up at the higher-middle levels(?) IDK. just a thought.
I wonder if Covid relief funds came into play at all for hiring more people, which adds another layer…
I think this was likely a big part of the decision. There was that communication they sent out a few weeks/months ago that said they were getting bottlenecked at the assembly step. They are probably almost done grading the backlog and now those graders need something to do.
Example: 10 seconds to encapsulate a card. 6 card per minute. 360 per hour. Let’s say you work 8 hours a day. They are 2880 cards per day. PSA grades approximately 45,000 per day. 45,000 / 2880 = 15.6. At least 16 machines that work every day.
The price of the machine is difficult to determine, the brand makes the difference. However, on the internet you will find prices ranging from 1000-8000$.
Interesting news indeed. Anyone her have experience sending to PSA from Europe? Do I have to get my own insurance when sending to PSA? Seems like there is insurance on the return shipment though.
Sorry if this has been asked, but I’m a bit new to grading. Is this $199 before or after graded value? I would assume ungraded since that’s what they’re insuring it for?
Doesn’t really bother me much and I sent 24 cards in the $30 value tier. I think maybe 3 or 4 of the cards I sent were declared value below this number, and if they got high grades PSA would just pump me for upcharges anyway.
Their upcharge system is trash, but what are you gonna do.
