2023 PSA New Pricing and Declared Values

[bojesphob]

Originally Posted by Snowcat

This is just one small example of why grading base rookies is dumb 99.95% of the time.

People are still flooding PSA with new release base rookies. Save your time and $ people. The year isn't 2020

Yikes .. minimum 20 bucks a slab, and only selling for 7 bucks before COMC takes their cut. I mean, I'm grading some stuff right now that wouldnt recoup the cost to grade, but those are a part of some rainbows that I want to shoot for 10s on for the entire run, so I don't mind losing a little on those, but to do that en masse seems wasteful.

[Snowcat]

Originally Posted by bojesphob

Yikes .. minimum 20 bucks a slab, and only selling for 7 bucks before COMC takes their cut. I mean, I'm grading some stuff right now that wouldnt recoup the cost to grade, but those are a part of some rainbows that I want to shoot for 10s on for the entire run, so I don't mind losing a little on those, but to do that en masse seems wasteful.

Yeah, it's brutal. I often pick these up for a few bucks at the beginning of the season as low risk/not so high reward potentials. I've snagged slabbed 9s as low as $1

[f2tornado]

Welp. I'm not waiting until May to send something. I'll trudge through my stuff and find 50-60 cards I can stomach at $20 each. It's been about six weeks since I last went through the boxes and have been adding to them since.

[Stackfan]

Originally Posted by Raleigh504

It is hard to justify my membership. Barely sending anything in compared to last year. Was hoping for a dual grading special. Maybe next month?

Same boat... renewed last July, sent one submission in August, and haven't sent anything since. Ive got a stack of cards i could send in, but 20$ a pop (plus shipping & insurance) ; just doesn't seem worth it. Probably more worth it to send 10 cards at 25$ without a collector club membership at this point.

Guess there's little incentive for PSA to run a decent collectors club deal, if they are grading 1.5 Million cards at 20$ minimum =30 million in cards a month minimum.

[inaka]

PSA Collectors Club Annual Membership makes even less sense these days.

No specials anymore, typically a month before cards are even checked in and then (now) a 65 business day turnaround, lowest priority when they get backed up, and for that, you pay either $149/year or $199/year for the privilege to be at the bottom of PSA's "Give a F" list. No more specials really means, no need for a membership.

It's like paying to have a Costco membership to a location that is no longer really open for business. No thanks.

[bojesphob]

Originally Posted by inaka

PSA Collectors Club Annual Membership makes even less sense these days.

No specials anymore, typically a month before cards are even checked in and then (now) a 65 business day turnaround, lowest priority when they get backed up, and for that, you pay either $149/year or $199/year for the privilege to be at the bottom of PSA's "Give a F" list. No more specials really means, no need for a membership.

It's like paying to have a Costco membership to a location that is no longer really open for business. No thanks.

There's only one benefit right now to the collector's club (and the only reason I joined): save 5 dollars a card for bulk sports subs. If you are going to grade 30 or less cards this year, you're either losing money or breaking even, so not worth it. I will have around 70 cards graded by the end of the year, so 40 of them are going to be 5 dollars off at bulk pricing, so I'll save 200 dollars, which is a no brainer to me. I had thought about grading some lower dollar value stuff after the 3 subs I have at PSA now, but by the time that's all graded, and the sales from those cards can fund another sub, it would be next year before the next batch would be ready. That just doesn't make sense to me at this point. If my first small sub to SGC goes well, they may get any of the other lower end cards I want to get graded after that. And that's weird cause I'd still be supporting the same company now

[inaka]

Originally Posted by bojesphob

There's only one benefit right now to the collector's club (and the only reason I joined): save 5 dollars a card for bulk sports subs. If you are going to grade 30 or less cards this year, you're either losing money or breaking even, so not worth it. I will have around 70 cards graded by the end of the year, so 40 of them are going to be 5 dollars off at bulk pricing, so I'll save 200 dollars, which is a no brainer to me. I had thought about grading some lower dollar value stuff after the 3 subs I have at PSA now, but by the time that's all graded, and the sales from those cards can fund another sub, it would be next year before the next batch would be ready. That just doesn't make sense to me at this point. If my first small sub to SGC goes well, they may get any of the other lower end cards I want to get graded after that. And that's weird cause I'd still be supporting the same company now

The next move is that PSA will jack up the price of a Card Ladder membership to give a (false) perceived value bump to the PSA Collectors Club Premium membership as a sales incentive which includes Card ladder. (Now a $300 value!). Right. Maybe even some higher Loupe or Fanatics Live "credits" as more shiny objects to distract the Collectors Club membership having little to no value anymore without grading specials.

I put the Loupe/Fanatics Live "credits" in quotes because when I originally singed up as a PSA member, the credits were kind of fun. You can blow all credits on a single purchase of a Signature Series retired box for $75 and get something out of it. Now, there are new restrictions on those "credits", where I currently have something like $90 in Loupe credits, but new restrictions state you can only use a maximum of $20 PSA credits per transaction, making them worthless to me, since I'm not dipping into my pocket for stuff I don't really want in the first place. So those "credits" aren't really credits at all to me. More smoke and mirrors to falsely increase the perceived value of the PSA membership.

[bojesphob]

Originally Posted by inaka

The next move is that PSA will jack up the price of a Card Ladder membership to give a (false) perceived value bump to the PSA Collectors Club Premium membership as a sales incentive which includes Card ladder. (Now a $300 value!). Right. Maybe even some higher Loupe or Fanatics Live "credits" as more shiny objects to distract the Collectors Club membership having little to no value anymore without grading specials.

I put the Loupe/Fanatics Live "credits" in quotes because when I originally singed up as a PSA member, the credits were kind of fun. You can blow all credits on a single purchase of a Signature Series retired box for $75 and get something out of it. Now, there are new restrictions on those "credits", where I currently have something like $90 in Loupe credits, but new restrictions state you can only use a maximum of $20 PSA credits per transaction, making them worthless to me, since I'm not dipping into my pocket for stuff I don't really want in the first place. So those "credits" aren't really credits at all to me. More smoke and mirrors to falsely increase the perceived value of the PSA membership.

I tried Card Ladder on the trial, and didn't care for it so I canceled it before the 7 day trial was up. It's nice, to a degree, as it allows you to find a graded card by grade serial number and enter it into your collection easily enough, but none of the stuff I was looking values up for had any sales, or only one sale over the past 10 years, so the sales reports were nigh on meaningless for me.
I did like the Fanatics break credit, as I hadn't done a break in a long time and was able to get a Reds auto for my wife from it (nothing spectacular, but better than a kick in the groin). Aside from that, though, that just seems like a way to try to get those that got the membership to get addicted to breaks.

[BoKnowsCards]

PSA is so incompetent, it wouldn't surprise me if we're back to a lottery system where you can "win" five submissions at $50 a piece by the end of the year.

[oddstuff]

Will be interesting how much scaling up (to handle more volume...i.e. hire more graders/other personnel) PSA will do to address the backlog being caused by Pokemon submissions. Or...no scaling up for now, see how the price increase will reduce volume. They can certainly see what Pokemon stuff is being submitted...what they may not have a clear idea is what the buyers market is for those cards in the next 4-8 months. If the turnaround time is 4 months, that's a lot of lag time for sellers to gamble (there's the uncertainty with the economy) on to wait for cards to be graded and then flip them. By the time the cards return from grading, are they still worth the grading costs submitters paid for?

[KPOD]

Originally Posted by oddstuff

Will be interesting how much scaling up (to handle more volume...i.e. hire more graders/other personnel) PSA will do to address the backlog being caused by Pokemon submissions. Or...no scaling up for now, see how the price increase will reduce volume. They can certainly see what Pokemon stuff is being submitted...what they may not have a clear idea is what the buyers market is for those cards in the next 4-8 months. If the turnaround time is 4 months, that's a lot of lag time for sellers to gamble (there's the uncertainty with the economy) on to wait for cards to be graded and then flip them. By the time the cards return from grading, are they still worth the grading costs submitters paid for?

I think they'd rather grade fewer cards at a higher price point per card. Right now they're testing to see what price point they can raise to, before people stop submitting.

[oddstuff]

I would agree to that...work smarter and get higher value stuff only...which then makes accepting submissions at Gamestop kinda strange.

[aggie4ever]

I wonder how many cards PSA gets each month from outside the US? With the pause in those submissions, I wonder if it will help the backlog much.

[cjmccreary]

What's driving the increased backlog? I thought cards were dead. Is it flippers now trying to squeeze the last of the blood out of the turnip?

[SteigerWRX]

Originally Posted by cjmccreary

What's driving the increased backlog? I thought cards were dead. Is it flippers now trying to squeeze the last of the blood out of the turnip?

Pokémon/GameStop

[FT35]

Originally Posted by KPOD

I think they'd rather grade fewer cards at a higher price point per card. Right now they're testing to see what price point they can raise to, before people stop submitting.

This was the BGS mentality and it cost them the bulk of the grading market. When you just target the higher end stuff, you are only dealing with a small percentage of people who would sub it. PSA blew BGS off the map by offering bulk grading @$12/card for cards valued $99 and under.

IMO, it’s the lower tier that is missing for PSA. Yes, they would need to expand if they brought it back. But when you’re grading at $12, (which yes I know would never happen), people are also less likely to complain about the service when it falls short of expectations and more likely to continue using it after bad experiences. They are still benefiting from this service level even though it’s long gone because so many people made money on it that they built businesses on the model. Those businesses are now trying to stay afloat with the new PSA way and will slowly fall off. When that happens, those are lost business accounts and not lost personal accounts.

The last standing grading company will be whoever people can use to make $ because you’re bringing in the collectors AND the business sector. BGS exploded with the black label offering. People had a financial reason to chase the “big money grade” at any service level. But their grading price jack up choked out that fun and now they are insignificant. PSA is doing the same thing now—slowly choking out their faithful with a $20/card for bulk entry level. The biggest rave for them now is Pokemon—and one of the biggest reasons for that initial push to start the fire was that the Pokemon cards were cheaper to grade.

[thenightman]

PSA are putting their hands into too many pots. They haven’t even mastered end to end grading. They’re too busy thinking they’re a conglomerate of different hobby activities instead of just a grading company. As a result, the primary user of their service suffers.

[Cracktoast]

They haven't even rolled out their Comic Grading Department yet either. Personally I think the Pokemon thing will come to a head within the next year to year and a half and then that market it going to tank. It's the new cool toy on the block but people eventually get tired/bored and move on to the next big fad. I think the delay in getting product from overseas or higher prices due to tarrifs is going to hurt the Pokemon market in the coming months.

I can see a world where PSA does away with Bulk Submissions or they extend the minimum to like 30-40 cards instead of 10 or 20.

[f2tornado]

Per PSA: In addition, as of Tuesday, April 8, the price for submissions at our TCG Bulk level will increase to $18.99/card.

Meanwhile, our receiving process – the unboxing and system entry of delivered packages – is currently taking approximately 3-4 weeks for incoming Bulk tier submissions.

Must be a clusterduck over there. At this rate, we'll be lucky to get a NASCAR special next month much less anything from the other sports.

[KPOD]

Originally Posted by f2tornado

Per PSA: In addition, as of Tuesday, April 8, the price for submissions at our TCG Bulk level will increase to $18.99/card.

Meanwhile, our receiving process – the unboxing and system entry of delivered packages – is currently taking approximately 3-4 weeks for incoming Bulk tier submissions.

Must be a clusterduck over there. At this rate, we'll be lucky to get a NASCAR special next month much less anything from the other sports.

I would not expect a bulk special from PSA for a long, long time. At least not until the Pokémon hype dies down. Ingestion for all bulk goes through the same port of entry, so it does them no good to offer any sort of sports bulk deals when those same employees are already swamped by TCG submissions.

[bojesphob]

I wonder if them doing a sub to grade with eBay right now is a good thing overall, as I really couldn't see someone buying something on eBay, saying they want to have it graded, then waiting 6 months to get it back. Which will then push back regular orders even more

[inaka]

Originally Posted by bojesphob

I wonder if them doing a sub to grade with eBay right now is a good thing overall, as I really couldn't see someone buying something on eBay, saying they want to have it graded, then waiting 6 months to get it back. Which will then push back regular orders even more

Knowing PSA, they will initially give these orders the absolute top priority over all other orders to ensure people enjoy their first experience with it. I wouldn't even be surprised if they get better grades too.

Then after the newness fades, they'll have those orders fall back in line.

To me, there's something seriously wrong with a company that puts its Collectors Club members last on the priority chain and doesn't provide true specials anymore. It's practically false advertising as the specials were clearly the incentive to join PSA's Collectors Club program in the first place. At the very least, if it goes 3-4 months without any true specials, they should extend Collectors Club members 3-4 months to make up for this, but instead Collectors Club members will have the lowest priority of any bulk order, and no specials. It's a real slap in the face as a customer, and a short-sided approach that people like me won't forget.

[oddstuff]

Yes...they failed big time putting GameStop subs over club members' submissions. PSA sure is not acting as if their Club members are important to them.

[Cracktoast]

Really didn't want to make yet another PSA thread so figured I'd ask here. I would really like opinions on what service level to go with. I have 3 Ohtani base Rc's 2 that avg in PSA 10 around $150 each and 1 that only has 2 sales this year across all platforms according to 130 pt at $300 and $290.

Would you go Value $24.99 65 day turn around which means realistically 4 months (Aug/Sep) or Value Plus $39.99 20 day turn around which realistically means ( Late June/Early July) most likely.

[bojesphob]

Originally Posted by Cracktoast

Really didn't want to make yet another PSA thread so figured I'd ask here. I would really like opinions on what service level to go with. I have 3 Ohtani base Rc's 2 that avg in PSA 10 around $150 each and 1 that only has 2 sales this year across all platforms according to 130 pt at $300 and $290.

Would you go Value $24.99 65 day turn around which means realistically 4 months (Aug/Sep) or Value Plus $39.99 20 day turn around which realistically means ( Late June/Early July) most likely.

If you're selling, the value + might be better, but that means around 140 in grading costs, which will be about 1/3rd your net sales, including selling fees. 400 profit doesn't sound terrible though. I guess the question is will that value be there in 4 months when you might get it back so you can sell? If not, then you'd definitely be better off doing value + just so you don't miss out on some of that value. If the value would be the same, though, you'd make an additional 45 dollars being patient for an additional 45 business days.