I’ve been out of the PSA grading game for a couple years and looking at the prices today blows my mind. $50 submission cost for a max declared value of $999?
I know we’ve had discussions before about declared value and what not, with responses ranging from “I just send everything bulk service, declared value be damned” to “I’ll max out my declared value at PSA 9 levels, even though I think it’s a solid 10 candidate.”
Back in my day, about two years ago, a $500 submission for ~30 cards or so felt like a lot. Combined with the recent market movement, along with PSA’s relatively new pregrading + service level upgrading check, and the service level price increases, I’m imagining something like 30 somewhat premium cards would be in the $1200-$1500 submission range.
I’d really like to hear from the people that have been submitting regularly over the past couple years to know if you’ve seen a meteoric rise in grading costs, or if you’ve been priced out of grading altogether.
Given the nature of their lifetime financial guarantee of grade and authenticity their grading fees are totally reasonable. This is supported by the fact that they have a 1,000,000+ card backlog. IMO the bulk service should be abolished and you should not be able to grade a card cheaper than $15 or so when you are sending $500+. $20 otherwise.
What is insane is that there are literally hundreds if not thousands of cards on the market today in PSA cases that were graded for $5-$10 each and have insurance backed guarantees of their full market value of 5 figures plus.
So I shouldn’t grade my base set unlimited weedle? Haha just kidding I agree for the most part. Would have a lot less cheap PSa cards out there. It’s strange when I see a $5-$10 PSa 9 of some random common card. I’m like isn’t that cheaper than grading fees?
Now I don’t recommend that for everyone but it’s true. Hundreds of orders and only bulk. I’m willing to risk it because just think of all the money I’ve saved this last 25 years. If they ever bang me for it, I’ll take it happily.
Very true and people do collect full PSa sets even Commons. But I thought it was a somewhat funny joke the sale price plus fees vs grading cost on Commons for instance. Must be losing money or barely breaking even. Even PSa 10 Commons are usually real cheap
You never get charged extra on some cards? This is the most confusing part for a newbie. How to even declare how much value when submitting or all as bulk. I have abunch of cards in the 200-900 range raw but have no idea how much it would even cost to grade. It’s a huge ? I’m sure I’ll just submit them anyways at one point but I like knowing how much I’m paying before I just send abunch of cards
Well if you submit these cards in bulk (if not it would indeed make no sense to do this) then at last check you’re paying about $8 per card to do this (at least when I did a bulk service a half-year ago that was the cost, it might be slightly more now).
If you think there’s at least a 50-50 shot a card will grade a PSA 10, then you might be paying $8 for a card that has like a 50% shot at selling for $25 and a 50% shot at selling for $10. That’s an average sale price of $17.50… So yeah, the expected profit margins can be quite small on a per card basis after you take fees into account. Which is precisely why people don’t just send in every single common card they have when they open up a booster box/pack (unless you’re talking about 1st Base or something).
You’ll get charged extra all the time. They’ll email you asking for more money after they’ve graded your card. It’s annoying as one of the benifits of the other services is they’re faster. So, basically you pay more for a weaker service all because you minterpreted the value of your card because you’re not a grader. At this point I like Gary’s method better, at least when I misinterpret the value of my card doing bulk I don’t send PSA more money when it’s a lower grade. I just sacrafice the time service when I misgrade the opposite way.
Obviously, I’m not talking about high valued cards that are over the bulk service no matter what the grade, like 1st ed charizard, they’ll catch it everytime.
A few months ago I did two PSA submissions - one being the 15 vouchers that you get when you sign up for a PSA membership and the other was a bulk order with 350+ cards.
In the 15 card voucher (which is supposed to have a max declared value of $499 per card), they picked my prices apart, charging me the $1000+ card tier for cards like PSA 10 1st edition Fossil Gengar/Dragonite which had never even sold for 4 figures until *after* I submitted my order.
But with the 350+ card order… nada. There were a ton of cards in there that were well above the $99 max declared value but they didn’t charge me extra for any of them.
Ya I’ve heard a lot of getting charged extra stories. Does this usually only apply when you get a 10. What if my Shining Charizard gets a 7 or 8. Do I still get stuck paying extra? I somewhat understand the reasons for charging extra but its like PSa is assuming I’m a flipper but in my case it’s my own collection so paying extra doesn’t exactly help me. It’s like it Push’s you to have to or want to sell to make up for fees
A thousand extra even if you got all 10s is a lot of money to some people especially on the fly when not expecting it. Plus what if these cards are truly for your own collection and not reselling like in my case. I want to submit cards but I don’t want to be blind sided with fees especially when some cards I want to send are 6-8 grades and maybe modern 10s because print quality is easy like my shiny zard. But my 1st ed shining Zard is probably 7-8 at best but I’m not a expert
Whenever someone gets time please let me know about my last question. Being do you get charged extra if a 1st edition Shining gets a 7 or 8 or only when it’s a 9 or 10? Also modern hidden fates shining zard if it gets a 9 or 10 is it extra. Sorry and thanks guys just trying to understand to know what to expect if I submit. If the cost is too high sense it’s my own collection and not for sale it might not be worth it