I’m waiting to hear if PSA’s claim of 40 business days or whatnot to register includes packages whose barcode indicates express orders inside. That would be obscene to wait that long just for an express order to be registered.
PSA has been savage with the turn around times. I sent off for the pokemon special in the summer of 2020 and they got put in a month later and haven’t moved since. Has anyone got grades back from that special?
I think he’s probably referring to the ~$20 per card express submission through Graded Gem.
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Kpod I can tell you for certain that they will still open the box earlier and log the express out of it sooner. I did just this in September. The express was removed and graded and shipped back to me within a couple weeks. The eco order is still ungraded with them.
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I don’t care what anybody says differently. PSA has done NOTHING to improve turnaround times. If they had, there wouldn’t still be orders in there from last May.
Does that make sense?
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Agreed, it’s scary reading all these threads. Just getting back into collecting and have a few hundred cards I’d like to send off but have a cross country move coming up in June. Don’t feel super comfortable with PSA having my cards and the potential snafu’s that can cause down the line so inclined to wait 
Has your opinion on their use of the “sprinkle” system changed? A few years back you coined the term and were very happy with it.
I know some people whose 7.50 special orders from later in May than mine have been completed already so they still aren’t using FIFO. Same goes for express orders seemingly skipping others in the non existent queue.
Imagine how much less frustration there would be if they just had a banner on their homepage that showed the arrival date by submission level for which cards were currently being graded.
E.g.
Express is now grading orders received on “12/5/2020”. Youd know you were next if yours was received on the 6th. If yours was received 20 days later you could get a kind of a feeling when 10 days later they had moved 8 days along into the queue.
It would definitely be bad optics when each passing day they didn’t move a day through the queue as is obviously the case when a backlog grows. The only solution is higher prices. Just imagine though the amount of money they’d save in customer service just taking calls on where is my order and when will it be graded.
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ZandG stated in a video that it’s not actually express. I was wondering about this for a long time, but apparently the middleman services that are express are not actually express. Those are economy. You aren’t getting a $75 service for $25+. That’s the reason why they are taking up to 15 weeks to register. I’ve seen advertisements for other middleman groups on IG that are offering higher tiers of service. The price and names don’t seem to match up to PSA’s service level and prices. I figured they were getting a discount, but that’s not true. For higher level services you are paying for a level or 2 below the actual level.
Most of us that are sending Regular or express are getting the cards back in 4-8 weeks (receiving to shipping). Middleman “express” is more like economy, which is basically a bulk for more expensive cards. I’m sure it moves a little faster, but not anywhere close to non-middleman service level of the same name.
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@gottaketchumall, I think I know what the sprinkle system so can you tell me if I have it correct?
It’s where you have lower level services combined with a few higher level services in an attempt to get your
lower levels in faster?
If that’s the case, then my sprinkle system stopped working early this year.
I figure the sprinkle system I mentioned above works only if you exchange bulk for regular
and the faster levels are $125 to $200 levels.
Nope, still waiting for mine since May and June. Not even in the grading stage yet lol.