They are far behind and maybe never will open in Europe or uk because sports cards has never been that big in Europe and UK?
Will they open here just for Pokémon cards?
It was not my intention to imply this (I am “the person”), my point was to emphasize the lack of loopholes and applicable tax-havens, unlike other territories outside of Europe. More vault/trade-oriented than the grading service itself really, but grading certainly have its own issues.
Fully agreed, but above a certain threshold (like the businesses we’re hoping for here), filing and reporting within the boundaries of the law becomes the norm, on behalf of the customer if not the companies themselves.
No that would make no difference. UK is not part of the EU anymore.
PSA on the mainland of EU (any member is fine) that would make a difference.
I have been around now for about 22 years and as long as EBAY has a website for each country, not connecting them and show your offers on all of their platforms you have no other options as to use the USA one.
But on top of that another problem kicks in. Grading your cards at the end is simply way more expensive. (count money conversion/VAT/shipping)
While as a business you have to charge your buyers VAT. NO matter what. NO matter which country you ship to.
There is NO zero VAT, unless you sell your items for the same price as you bought them. Not to smart because you don’t earn anything in that case.
Yes you can distract the VAT you paid when your submission was returned, but at the end your items are ALWAYS more expensive as the USA ones.
Yes. You pay the VAT of your EU country.
Id assume though that the increased volume of orders would compensate. So many pokemon people (at least here in Spain) do not have access (or at least have no idea) how to submit safely to PSA. They use other companies like EU grading, which isnt at all recognised internationally. I think they have a huge market here, and would likely adjust their pricing also to compensate for additional fees.
Speaking as a professional graded card seller who was based in the UK until last year and is now base in Europe, I don’t see a logic for PSA to open offices in Europe for as long as the temporary export rules remain in place.
Both from the UK before and from Portugal now (making the distinction because after Brexit UK and EU regulations differ in some aspects), I am able to buy cards locally, temporarily export them for grading and get them back to UK/Europe graded without being taxed. I of course paid VAT when buying them raw, but that can be offset as it is paid by the final consumer.
Now more to the OP’s point as to why Europe warrants no attention from PSA, PWCC, etc. As far as these companies are concerned, enough people in Europe (be it end users or intermediaries) are willing and knowledgeable enough to submit to PSA or to PWCC’s vault in the US without particular hindrance.
Now put yourself in these companies’ shoes for a second, imagine you’re the CEO, and you see a huge influx of volume from Europe to your US based headquarters that is driving a decent chunk of change, and covering a decent percentage of the European market. You’ll come to two conclusions:
- People over there are either so adept at navigating customs or the customs process between the EU and the US is so frictionless that demand keeps increasing.
- What is the point of opening a facility in Europe, spending money in infrastructure and risking compromising your standards by trying to maintain the same level of efficiency and the same grading/storage criteria across a continent, when your US based infrastructure will do just fine?
As collectors we tend to see things through the lens of our own personal bias, but in fact what EU collectors as a whole signalled to these companies, especially PSA, is that we’re willing to use their services even if there isn’t a local facility, so building one just for the few people that are not competent enough to to this on their own/use a middleman is completely unjustified from an economical standpoint.
As a last note, I have no way of knowing this, but what percentage of EU/UK submissions does the op think were and still are in that never ending backlog? I’d take a guess that it isn’t anything shy of 15%, and that’s me being conservative.
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As the one who first brought up VAT I feel compelled to mention that the reason I brought it up and very much stand by that point is that, in large part due to the things you mention which I very much agree with, there would have to be economic incentive on the part of the consumer to drive the market share required to draw these companies to Europe. As it stands, there would be little to nothing to gain for non-domestic consumers at the very least (unless I’m missing something major) to utilize pretty much any european serivce.
I don’t care if I’m submitting to Surrey or Newport Beach, unless I’m going to try and smuggle my 25% double extortion fee by plane or through the Chunnel (which I won’t) the proximity profits me nothing but a few quid in shipping and maybe 36 hours of shipping time at most. And the potential quality issues, God, can you imagine? As if US minimum wage isn’t bad enough.
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It’s not really wise to assume that those who make up your current market are your only market.
I’m sure the grading companies benefited loads during the pandemic from more casual US collectors.
Of course the bubble may have burst, but they should always think ahead.
Maybe the VAT or import taxes or whatever rules there are has made that a non-starter.
I doubt the European markets are that big anyway? Print runs must be a lot smaller for French, German, Spanish and whatever else they’ve got. For some reason they get less packs in equivalent products than the US too.
If PSA, CGC or BGS would open an EU-based branch, I wonder whether they could assure the grading quality is exactly the same as in the US. It would be awful if the grades from EU branch would be stricter or less strict than from the US.
I agree on the issue that sports cards have never been that popular in Europe compared to the US. But I guess many other trading card games such as Pokemon, Yugioh and Magic are very big here. I would guess there is definitely a market for a European branch. Local startups tried to fill that gap and some of them have a pretty good reputation, such as the German grading company GSG. The issue is, however, that they never reach the value of a PSA-graded card. Sure, many people say “buy the card and not the grade”. But in terms of an investment, I don’t think any EU grading companies are worth using. For the collector community it would definitely be helpful to have a local branch relieving the EU collectors from the hustle with customs/import taxes.
I mean its not like they would open a branch consisting of only brand new graders. They would certainly send a few expats from their main office to maintain the same quality. And with machine grading becoming more and more of a reality I expect the differences in grading to be minimal. Honestly, I won’t touch these local grading companies with a 10-foot pole, at that point there is no difference in keeping a card raw in a toploader.
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Yu-Gi-Oh is quite big here but last time I checked the pop report for European vintage PSA Yu-Gi-Oh cards is around one or 2 or don’t exist for each card! And still go for less than American version without the E at the end. They is just no demand for it. I think not alot of people in UK and Europe knew about PSA and grading untill Pokémon blew up again
That’s true! Before all this hype, all people I knew were collecting raw cards here in Europe. And I got to know collectors in both Germany and UK. Only after the hype started, and I got back to the hobby recently, everyone (including myself) is collecting graded cards 
I wonder why PSA never invested in a European drop-off locations in Europe the same way they did for Japan. It would have been a much easier expansion than a full on grading location. I’m guessing there would still be the logistical issue of dealing with multiple countries.
Cause grading is an American thing and Europe does it raw.
At the risk of repeating myself, the answer is quite obvious in my opinion: They don’t need to.
Europeans are fluent in English, can grasp the submission process with ease and face little to no friction on having their cards shipped out to the US and returned back to Europe.
Japan is the exact opposite. Most people don’t speak English, their customs and commercial systems are not compatible with Western systems in the slightest, and given their interest in collecting, they’re a largely untapped market for grading, not just in terms of TCGs, but also Baseball.
To me it’s no surprise PSA chose to actually bridge a gap where it existed (Japan) in order to capitalize on an untapped market, rather than lowering the barrier of entry in a market (Europe) that is already efficient at using their services.
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is taxes and fees the tldr answer?
The keyword here is “professional”. A LOT of people do not know how to submit themselves, or do not have the time to properly research it. You do, as its a source of income.
Yes, there are middlemen. But these are being cut out slowly after many recent scandals.
Take Spain as an example, there are thousands of people submitting to European Grading - but if they had the same opportunity to submit to PSA, BGS etc within EU, a vast majority would do just that. Same story with France, and PCA.
Remember, its still very early days from the recent huge surge in demand for graded cards - so if I were to put money on it, I’d bet they are at the very least considering it, once they get over the still-sizeable backlog from 2020/2021.
The grading training would be the same. Bit of an odd statement to consider if the quality would change lol. People in Europe have the same set of eyeballs as people in the USA. Might even a bit better 
That has some truth into it but last 2 years there was huge potential in Europe. Its no surprise that many jumped on the upportunity to start a grading company themselves because many, many, maaany new collectors didn’t want to ship their cards all the way to USA with all risks considered aswell as the time frame.
I am still not sure what to think of it as it kinda feels like those ‘companies’ take advantage of those people thinking that putting a plastic slab around a card with a certain grade magically makes the card more valuable. Most will only learn that it doesn’t when they try to sell all those cards barely making their money back.
I still hope one of the big companies will expand to europe but I highly doubt it will ever happen. Like you said, there is no need as they are already drowning in cards. Once they open lowest tier again they will get bombed with cards again