^this. Great service has to be paid for. I wouldn´t mind paying 50 bucks a card to be graded, you just don´t have to grade your bulk sm or unl 8-9 cards. Sense of entitlement is unreal when it comes to grading.
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Every disrupting company has been told “you can’t do it.” Look at Uber and air Bnb. They both had to fight legislators in every state they went to.
Not saying it wouldn’t be difficult. But to anyone that wants to start a new business, don’t let someone discourage you because they say it will be hard.
I think I’ve heard you say in the past smpratte that everyone told you not to make pokemon your business. They thought it was silly and childish. Now you are at the top of the collecting world because you pushed through.
I have noticed a trend on this forum to shoot down opposing viewpoints. Be wary of group think !
Edit: computers generally make services less expensive. Don’t know why it would be any different for card grading.
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@admiral77, While that is solid general motivational advice, it’s doesn’t address the inherent problems of starting a grading company.
Uber and air bnb tap into necessary services. You always need transit and housing. While grading has value, it isn’t completely necessary and will always be niche. There are also required exceptional variables for grading services. Not only financing and structure, but who is involved.
With all that said, I always keep an open mind to opportunity. If someone wanted to take the financial risk I would be open to working with them. I am only highlighting I have looked into the concept and its brutal. Basically its much easier to criticize on social media and pretend we could do it better than actually doing it better. 
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Computers make things cheaper in the long run, but the startup cost would increase. You have to build software and hire people to build and maintain/tweak that software which is not cheap, especially since we’re talking about essentially computer vision and ML image processing here.
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There will be a mass of new problems for new methods. Eventually people will miss the subjectivity of the grader.
What about an existing company being bought out and re-managed? What if Amazon decided one day they wanted to incorporate that in to their realm of ‘everything from a to z’ and sunk a bunch of money in to making it better and more efficient while maintaining their deal with UPS to ship cheaper? hmmmmm.
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Instead of saying we need to blow up Beckett or PSA, it’s easier to fix it. It’s no small feat to open ANOTHER third-party grader. We need responsible people from within the companies who are willing to change the culture of business there. We need to let them see their quality and consistency = profitability. We want this to be a win-win.
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Since I’m expected to be old school, this may come as a surprise. I think it may be time for using scanners/computers for a more consistent grading program. I figure since they have iris reader technology this would be possible too. A longtime friend of mine who worked with John Daugman told me the technology is already there, nearly in place. I’d conclude this is not as big of a deal than most think here. Existing company’s are simply dragging their feet…until they need to hit projections. PSA hasn’t changed a single thing technically, in relation to grading, in 25 years. It may be time now.
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Not sure how anyone can come to this conclusion? Yes, there has been some incompetence but where in the last 25 years is the proof of any outright deceit? I’ll repeat what I’ve told you all before, the employees don’t care about grading results. None of them. And I’m talking about everyone all the way up to Joe Orlando who I’ve been friends with for nearly 20 years. He would never let such a thing go on. I’m confident in saying that.
Now is the system perfect? Well…we get what we pay for. As Scott said, a better system would cost more and that cost would increase Grading fees.
This 100%
The problem too is the data for training a deep learning model just doesn’t really exist. But now that PSA is taking a scan of all regular+ orders and PWCC has super high resolution images of all their items, we are moving closer to ML card grading models becoming a reality. IMO machine grading can solve many issues but definitely not all of them.
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AI is used to identify tumors in MRI scans that trained specialists overlook. There are AI systems in existence today that can recognize all kinds of patterns through deep learning. Right now, they could easily identify any card given enough scans and when fed the “human” grade, they could give accurate predictions for future scans when given any card pretty fast.
Tbh I would be surprised if PSA didn’t throw around the idea to replace bulk grading of cards that have hundreds of copies with such a system. Time is money and, in my unprofessional opinion, I’d be surprised if AI bulk grading were more expensive over the long term than real employees grading 30 Blacephalon GXs a week.
That ignores public acceptance needed and any loss of credibility or reputation, of course.
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I would be in to help with creating a new grading service, but I would want to reinvent the wheel a bit.
Essentially, I would want to eliminate the risk association with authenticating and the grade element. I’m open to keeping the grade element.
All that would need to be done is make a research platform for the card instead of an flat out authentication. You place a card into a slab that has a very number or other identification method. The code then takes the consumer/collector/seller to a webpage or app. There detailed analysis is found on the card and is compared to what the card should look like straight from the factory.
If the card is suspected of trimming it’s dimensions are mentioned, and is expected dimensions from a factory cut are listed beside it. It’s coloring is compared, centering, and defects are highlighted. In the end everything can be graded, anything that makes it suspected to be fraudulent is mentioned. Any damage that was found is shown.
This eliminates the need to authenticate because you’re leaving all judgment to the consumer, it eliminates the need for a grade because all defects found are mentioned, it essentially eliminates risk.
If grades and authenticity scales were implemented it would easy, just label the item as a percentage compared to how it should be from the factory. The only risk left would be in shipping and handling the cards.
The only thing left would be the marketing, which honestly most of the hard marketing is done. People already have a need for grading and with the scandals this is the time where people need a new option.
Absolutely! If someone like Amazon who eats risk and spits out innovation decided to buy out PSA, that would be a possibility! Currently both grading companies are too cheap. PSA’s starting pay for new graders is less than $15 an hour… I wish I were exaggerating.
They simply don’t understand the value of having an in house expert. Its why CEO’s completely turn around businesses; its all about knowledge and perspective. PSA tremendously lacks that with Pokemon. In fact I am the majority of their Pokemon publications, and have never received any payment from PSA. They just don’t pay for quality. Until that changes, there isn’t a way to improve.
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@smpratte,15.00+ is about right for entry level. The graders I’ve known though progressed upwards to the 75k a year range.
@garyis2000, Earlier in the year an E4 member interviewed with PSA and shooting for $15 per hour, and PSA wouldn’t go that high. The person who applied was the most qualified by a long shot, and PSA wouldn’t even go to $15. Meanwhile Amazon pays no less than $15 for unskilled labor.
Yes, like I said. Appx 30k to start.
Amazon only pays $15 because of political pressure…
The irony is that in order to pay more to the employees, the cost of grading cards will go up. And I’m guessing most of the customers don’t want that to happen.
It’s inevitable it happens. Having people waiting for a special then sending hundreds in via bulk at $8 a card is not sustainable if they want to improve their reputation.
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Something that just came to mind, I remember paying 3.25 at some point in the mid to late 90s. Around 2007 or 2008 if I recall the timing right, we had a 4.50 special.
It’s safe to say the bulk price has appx doubled in the last decade+ so more increases are to be expected anyway.
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I’m surprised they’ve kept it as low as they have for so long. It also doesn’t surprise me that people expect consistent, top-tier results while not being willing to open up their wallet.