This could have some merit to it. I might get soured by the experience of waiting 1-2 years for a bulk order at PSA while my 2nd bulk order comes back in 3-4 months at CGC. Thus I had a better experience with CGC and become their repeat customer. Now CGC/BGS will get bigger backlogs unless they figure out a different solution to PSA.
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PSA stonks soon (orc grunting voice)
I believe this has been updated since they implemented CTD:
"Q: Is PSA using FIFO? What are the details of PSAâs FIFO process?
A: PSA is committed to adhering to FIFO (First-in, First-Out) operating standards for each of our service levels. Significant progress has been made and will continue to be made. Our commitment to publishing Complete Through Dates is an illustration of our commitment to FIFO."
www.psacard.com/resources/faq#ctd
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PSA is a black hole. But maybe its just dealer tiers that are different.
The only point for PSA is that they will need less room for storage. Grading will not go faster or slower. If you would have submitted now or in 3 months, you are still behind the line.
CGC and BGS will get even more backed up which is unfortunate for them and for the ones who grade with them.
Middleman services are being screwed? They also will not be able to grade and lose 3 months worth of revenue and will get absolutely swamped once PSA opens back up.
Just hope you are the first to get your package there, because they will get absolutely swamped when grading goes up again. They got a few million cards in three days. It will probably be worse once they open back up. I wist them good luck after july 1st.
This is good news overall as its a temporary fix to a temporary problem that had to be made. If your in it for the long term you dont care about these blips over a 3+ year time horizon.
I dont know why some people are saying this wont speed up our cards coming back/ getting graded? Yes clearly the staff members who are dealing with sorting of inbound parcels/ preparing for grading/sorting/deliveries and all the initial stages arent going to be the same people grading. However they are highly likely to be the same individuals that either are or can move straight into dealing with the cards post grading stage with outbound parcels and labelling. This alone probably trims days off the time of a card to get graded.
Also, what this does to the market is completely different then when they closed last year, they stopped everything, not just the ability to submit cards. This does not mean all PSA card prices are going to surge upwards all of a sudden, if anything we may see some temporary stabilisation prices as the slight uptick in demand for PSA cards as a result of now not wanting to send cards for grading (because you cant) will be offset by the flood of PSA backlog we will start seeing every day now too.
UK middleman services I have been using (GradedGem) still havent had May returns back, we are backlogged on a completely different level so will be interesting to see what happens in the next 6-12 months.
I can see raw card prices dropping on the modern stuff as much of this demand was built up on the justification of buying to grade and flip.
This may save a lot of naive and unexperienced flippers/collectors from grading cards that shouldnt of been graded when we get the flood back and cards they were preparing to send now are worth 75% less in 3 months time.
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I guess it does suck but thatâs the risk of making a business off someone elses business
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Iâd be interested to know how theyâre dealing with the inevitable masses of submissions hitting their doorstep despite the suspension announcement. I guess thereâll be still be plenty of people with the mindset of âwhatever, Iâll just send them in and theyâll get around to my submission when they open back upâ. The backlog to the backlog! Would PSA commit to storage liability? Give customer option of return shipping at customerâs expense, or just simply turn away further packages?
You canât choose any of the suspended services on their website. They are not an option anymore. Now you can only pick Super Express and above.
If someone has already completed their submissions prior to this announcement and managed to print out the PSA submission forms then they will still accept them.
This doesnât solve the problem of turn around times, it does alleviate some âpressureâ & give customers some âfeel goodsâ. The grading process remains the same, and with physical limitations balancing accuracy and efficiency. I donât see a drastic positive impact by this implementation.
If all 800 employees were grading at 1 minute per card (the whole process) that is 380K cards per day.
would love to know how many cards they do grade per day/average time per card if anyone does have that information.
The main talking points of the thread seem to be MM & other grading companies (OGC)
MM: seemingly get the short end of the stick; with option 1: waiting option 2: alternative grading company
OGC: are forced into a sink or swim situation; which is great for PSA if they sink & great for the community if they swim.
At the end of the day, in 3 months time or 6 months time PSA is going to get a LARGE submission that puts them in the same situation. Unless they make fundamental changes to the process and/or continuous scaling to demand which isnât really feasible due to the nature of the service they are providing.
What Iâd do if I was in charge of PSA for a day;
-
Change Tier system; making only three tiers Regular, Express, Walk Through
1a. Price Adjustment Regular $100, Express $350, Walk Through $1,000
1b. With âValue/Bulkâ Quarterly/Yearly specials with a limited amount of cards per-person -
Additional Locations; separating TCG & Sports into two different locations as the primary focus.
2a. Consideration of buying out smaller grading companies for facilities/talent. -
Audit; the grading process from start to finish
What would YOU do? & Do you think this decision by PSA makes a difference in the grand scheme of things without additional changes?
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In my eyes I canât see how PSA can open again 01.06 without a HUGE price increase, otherwise they will recive 500k cards an HOUR
The implications this is going to have on the rest of the market is insane. Itâs like killing the animal at the top of the food chain and trying to predict how the ecosystem is going to look.
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It´s more like the animal at the top of the food chain is suddenly hiding and now everybody is wondering what they can do and what is too much 
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The problem with this is the fact there will be 2 months of cards mounting up waiting to be submitted when they open(they said staggered re-opening I know). It is good they are trying to catch up, especially since I have cards with them ;D! However I have a bunch of cards ready to send, this will continue to grow as the months go by. I am not even a small fish on small fishâ fishâŚbut If I have 500+ cards and several thousand others have more then they are going to get slammed again. Overall I do think this will be a good thing in the short term, mainly for those people with subs sent early last year.
I wonder how theyâll be able to use this time, if at all. Best case scenario they can put measures in place to increase their capacity/turnaround times when they re-open. Worst case scenario itâs all hands on deck and even Joe Orlando is in the storage room scanning packages.
Imagine anyone still using the word âscalingâ or talking about increasing capacity in any of their responses to this. Lol.
PSA has a great problem in that the market has an insatiable demand for their product. So ridiculous that something they were charging $7.50 for a year ago they literally are charging $300 for just to prevent their backlog from growing further. A tiered approach is the best way to reopen and honestly they should throw fixed pricing out the window. One would assume that at $300 per card the demand would be smaller than their supply (grading capacity). Over the next few weeks theyâll be able to confirm or deny this. Keep opening lower tiers one by one until they get to a point where their new order entries for that day meet or exceed their daily capacity (a number that they should have a grasp on and may be slightly lower for higher value cards than it is for bulk admittedly). The literal DAY that they have new order entries exceeding their capacity for grading they need to cease opening up lower tiers and adjust pricing on the currently open tiers and then wait again for a week or two to see how the market reacts. They just need to have finely tuned pricing to allow demand and supply to remain in equilibrium.
One thing that never ceases to amaze me is PSA acts as if they canât see these submissions coming until they hit their warehouses. Lol. People are submitting things online and they can see day by day the order entries. Unless there are special arrangements with certain middlemen who literally just send them pallets blindly without any notice, but I doubt that would be the case.
Increasing turnaround times was always a shortsighted âkick the can down the roadâ response and CGC is headed down this same exact path. Iâd guess they share some amount of resources with CSG their new Sports branch so expect the same to come from them. I recently sent them ~1,000 cards and I fully expect them to not come back for a year. I fully plan to get 2-3k more cards ready this weekend to lock in sub $10 pricing. Extraordinary times require extraordinary measures and IMO every grading service should just set hard ceilings on what they deem acceptable for turnaround times and then charge whatever the market will bear to hold that turnaround time static. Complete wild ass guess but I could see PSA needing to charge something like 6-12 months $50-75, 3-6 months $200-$250, 1-3 months $400 and up from there. Months or years down the line once people stop being insane and overvaluing plastic they could return pricing to reasonable levels.
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RE: PSA and FIFO being quoted from their FAQ - This is a lie. lol. Like, a biiiiiiiiig one. This might be the only thing we can still prove with our data. Unless they have a definition loose enough to include 4 months of variance, this is just factually untrue.
RE: The love/concern for Ludkins - This changes very little for the US service at least. The prices changes already resulted in a substantial shift in submissions to CGC, especially from smaller submitters. Our volume overall only went down marginally in March (first two weeks were the brunt of it while people adjusted to new terms/climate). So I wouldnât sweat that. Also, and this is a big one, there is literally no difference between submitting your order to PSA on bulk now and submitting your order to PSA on bulk when they reopen. Same exact place in the queue. Theyâre probably overbooked for at least a year even if they manage to expand at a faster rate in the process.
RE: Disdain for Competitors - It is really weird to me that people are so constantly opposed to any attempts to compete in this industry. If a third-party competitor is able to create demand for their products, let them. As GMA proves, being around a long time doesnât mean anything. We always like to joke about how poorly graders are paid. If you donât want any competitive hiring environment to exist, how is that going to fix itself? Itâs wild to me that people would invest in a hobby 100 years old and with more longevity left than we can see past and be like, âThese companies that popped up in the 90s are PERFECT and I will NEVER consider ANYTHING else.â Let competition exist. Give others a fair shake. If a company grows and does a good job, maybe your favorite company of choice can even buy them outright and add the talent pool to their own reserves. That is normal market movement. You know how screwed you all would be if we treated buying/selling cards the same way? When did you guys get in, 2016? lol. Every aspect of the entire hobby world is aggressively decentralized. Grading is going to have options, too.
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Steveâs message implied that they received millions of cards in three days. Who cares if they knew a week prior that that many cards were being submitted on their website? How would you prepare for that a week out?
the general public just hears psa closed
if this was a rational market everything would be different
@gottaketchumall I agree with most of what you say. My âincrease capacityâ etc. comment was alluding to whether or not day to day operations there will calm down enough to allow them to do anything to expand their âgrowth planning and capacity expansionâ. Maybe they wonât change anything, but you might imagine there are lots of small details that got pushed aside because of the daily avalanche. I donât think itâs unreasonable to think management might have more time to pursue that now than they did previously.
That said, I donât think thatâs how the problem gets completely solved, and further price increases probably will be necessary, but I donât think they want to have to wait until âpeople stop being insane and overvaluing plasticâ until they can go back to more reasonable prices, because that would essentially mean giving up the bulk market until then (even when BGS/CGC follow suit, which they will for sure have to).
Or, like I said, maybe this still doesnât mean theyâll be able to change anything in the immediate future and itâs solely a chance to eat into the backlog.
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