Yes, from my experience a “regular” 9.5 can have minor(!) print lines/scratches. As is with all companies, you will find worse examples and some examples that have 0 scratches/printlines.
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So I just put a CGC and PSA submission together. The intention was to send some newer promos to CGC and a PSA submission of 200 cards that were mainly japanese promos with a good shot of getting psa 10s. But After watching qwachansy’s PSA return, I gotta say I’m a little nervous… They were literally nickel and dimining him fees on every single card and it was a bunch of common legendary reverses and things that I’d never in a million years them to upcharge for (it’s one thing if it’s a zard or ray or actual expensive card). Anyone else getting returns and getting dinged left and right? If 200 cards got dinged that would be substantial. Not sure any card is safe these days.
PSA has spent a lot of time and money on their upcharge system, and you can be sure that thing is firing on all cylinders when it comes to bulk/economy subs. It’s honestly surprising they still offer bulk at this point, but I’m guessing it’s because they’ve improved their upcharge system to the point where it offsets some of the underdeclared issues.
I would guess that CGC does not have the infrastructure set up to programmatically get a reliable market value for the majority of their cards like PSA does, which is why you hear about upcharge requests far less often with CGC. I doubt it’s because CGC is trying to be less strict about their declared value system. With CGC’s most recent pricing structure, they are unabashedly requesting 3% of the fair market value of the post-grade card up front just for grading it, which is what PSA has been aiming for these last couple years but have been less bold about saying it. Without this automatic flagging system, CGC is not going to be able to be as vigilant as PSA can be when it comes to upcharges.
At this point, no one really knows what submitting bulk at PSA today is going to look like when it comes to upcharges 9-15 months from now, because they are so far behind with bulk submissions. 8 months or whatever ago when qwachansey submitted these cards (I’m guessing these are bulk, but this probably applies to an old economy sub as well), he probably wouldn’t have been dinged with as many upcharges as he was now. PSA’s upcharge flagging system has only gotten better and more vigilant over time, so there’s no good reason to think it will somehow become more lax in the future.
With the amount of time it takes them to grade bulk, it’s almost gauranteed that everything within a bulk submission (minimum of 200 cards) will price above $199 by the time the cards have gone through the grading process. At that point, it’s basically like false advertisement on a $9 or 10 per card grade fee. Maybe if they spent less time on their upcharge system and more time on actually grading, they wouldn’t be in the time lag they are currently in.
You don’t hear about upcharge requests with CGC because their fees are capped at $30 anyway. You could literally send in a $300,000 card without getting fleeced on premiums.
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CGC just increased their prices, so the max cost would be $75 + addons: www.cgccomics.com/submit/services-fees/cgc-grading/
Which is not bad at all, compared to some of PSA’s outrageous tiers, and the basically unlimited charges that premium cards can be subjected to with the upcharge system.
I may have been mistaken about CGC’s highest tier level requiring 3% of the fair market value, but it looks like they charge that for comics. I don’t think it’s any stretch of the imagination to think that, if or when they become sufficiently popular enough, they would charge the same for trading cards.
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Is the upcharge higher than the cost of going up on the gradingcost?
If they take you in submitted a card with value of 400$ Or 600$ in 10$ bulk, what will the price then be?
They will charge it at the appropriate tier, but your turn-around time will be that of the tier you submitted in.
i.e. Submit a $9999 1st Charizard in bulk ($10/card), you’ll wait 8-12 months for it, they get around to grading it, notice what it is, then send an upcharge invoice for walk-through level service ($500). In the end, you were better off picking the $500 submission option and getting the turnaround in 1ish business day. Also the value could increase in 8-12 months, so instead of biting the bullet and paying $500 now in 8-12 months that same card could be worth $24,999 and then you get hit with a $1000 (premium level) invoice instead.
Long story short, submit at the appropriate level right off the bat
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So not any punishment, just what you was suppose to pay, but since you tried to trick then, you risk an surcharge higher, as the card might go up. Sounds fair to me then.
Right, no extra punishment but you’ll end up waiting a lot longer to get your card back and end up paying the same in the end.
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A Charizard is a unique example where almost no vintage zard is <$199. So if you choose bulk, you know what you’re setting yourself up for.
In most cases though it is an unfair punishment. If your card is worth <$199 when you submit it and for many months after until suddenly it’s worth $1000, then you pay an upcharge, but get the speed of bulk. If you paid for express at the time of submission, you’re overpaying for it since the card was still < $199 the whole time of express grading. Makes no sense to not send bulk unless you can predict prices or only speed matters for you and not cost. It’s not even often a case of tricking the system for most people. It’s PSA literally rewarding themselves for being slow. They have every incentive to go slow, especially in a bull market.
They either need to upcharge based on time of submission value or create some sort of variable ratio. Like if your card is $10 for bulk, but increases in value so it’s upcharge to $50 cost in regular tier, they need to charge a percentage based on length of time in their system or compared to whether the value of the card was over the tier at time of submission. Paying full price for a tier that you didn’t get any of the speed of service of only benefits PSA.
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That’s the scheme my friend. I don’t think PSA really cares and they know the longer they take the longer it will benefit them financially. It also deters people from trying to slip things past their system which may have worked more frequently in years past. I must have 2000 cards in the value service awaiting grading. I definitely feel like I’m going to be arguing with them over some up charges when they finally process the orders. Might be another year or so though.
Any validity to this? If so time to force some subs in.
Graded gem stopping all submissions temporarily in anticipation of pricing increases plays to this as well. Guess we’ll find out tomorrow. It would make sense for them to make changes to pricing. I just hope they also make operational changes to improve their turn around times.
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Im sick of the PSA website, I am sick of constantly clicking on pictures of boats to move to the next page
Price increase on bulk to $20
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Dang, express price double. Glad I send few cards before price change.
Glad I shipped my 50+ card order to Ludkins this week. They received the order on Thursday… I wonder if they’re going to charge me the new PSA rate 
First three tiers of grading prices have doubled. I was not expecting a price hike this large. Might start considering CGC more and more now lol.
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At the same time they have double the maximum declared value, so this will help all those with upcharge problem, because 499$ is easyer to stay below then 199
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What an insane increase.
Their “impacted turnaround times” were not even that significant for Regular and Express, so the idea that this is being done solely to drive down demand for those service levels to catch up doesn’t seem likely.
Surely they realize they’re adding fuel to the inflationary fire that’s been burning hotter and hotter over the past year. Reduced slab throughput causes prices to grow higher which justifies submitting at higher service levels. Even higher prices means being able to request larger upcharge fees for the increased amount of bulk/value that’s being completed.
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I highly doubt this increased declared value will apply retroactively to previous bulk submissions (with max declared value of $99).
Effectively, they’ve removed bulk submissions - the minimum submission level is now what Economy was 6-8 months ago. It’ll be interesting to see how this affects 3rd party submission companies. For sure there will be less interest at $35/card minimum than the $13 or whatever it used to be. I wouldn’t be surprised if PSA cuts out the middlemen altogether eventually.
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