I think people are getting carried away here....... the question isn't .. .is PSA near perfect or did Nat revolutionize an already superior brand............ the question is... is PSA better since Nat took over.
The easy answer to this is yes. PSA was bleeding a huge backlog before Nat took over and Covid exponentially made that worse. Although the fix was painful, he actually made the decision to halt incoming submissions and fix it through hiring/expanding/etc.
It's pretty evident that customer service is worse, but PSA's market share is higher now than when Nat took over....... so from a business standpoint, why spend money where it isn't really needed? This is a business after all, I think people fail to realize that.
Price points are higher than the Joe Orlando PSA... but card prices are also significantly higher and general inflation is higher. I am paying 2x now for some items at the grocery store than I did in 2019.......... PSA has got gaming down to 14 and sports have been as low as 16....... that's about 2x the 2018-19 window if I'm remembering correctly and the market supports those prices. Again, this is a business and PSA should be charging a price where they get the influx of cards needed to meet their internal goals based on workforce capacity. In no way should they be trying to give us a "deal" and overwork their staff. If they have the workload to do a million cards a month and 14-19 per on bulk is giving them 1 million.... you best bet your rear end they should NOT be lowering it. Doing so would be indicative of a poorly run business.
The trimming, special treatment, general gripes, etc.... That was there with previous ownership, it will be there with Nat, it will be there when he is gone........... it's unavoidable.
I've submitted cards for grading since 2014........ I would say PSA is better off today than it was for the majority of the time prior. Mid 2017 onward presented PSA with a lot of issues as the industry started to grow and they couldn't solve the issues. On a much larger scale Nat has solved a lof of issues operationally. For that alone PSA is better off
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