Price is going up 2/10

[uminnesota]

https://x.com/StevenGuajardo/status/2021026609009250616

Worker at GameStop just let me know that their prices for sending cards off to PSA is going up by $5 a card starting tomorrow. That is just wild!

$24.99 for TCG and $25.99 for non TCG.

[thenightman]

And I was just about to send in a submission for the first time. I guess that means PSA will be raising their price too.

[SweetSlabsBro]

Good! Having a Collectors Club membership finally goes back to meaning something w/o any specials.

[Cracktoast]

IMO unless it's a monthly special, Bulk Orders should always be priced higher, especially with the backlog they have. It's the only way to slow it down or simply say cards under a certain dollar amount won't be graded. The grading companies at this point need to put a premium on Quality over Quantity. In the beginning, they could get by with it but times have changed.

[rnocards]

Originally Posted by SweetSlabsBro

Good! Having a Collectors Club membership finally goes back to meaning something w/o any specials.

Collectors club prices will go up as well. Everything goes up across the board. PSA is in "monopoly" mode. They will do whatever they want.

[rnocards]

Sad part about all this, is that while PSA grading prices go up, their slabs in the market for anything modern, other than a Gem Mint 10, is suffering. Vintage is stable across all grades, but modern and ultramodern slabs are getting really tough value-wise if you don't get that 10.

[thenightman]

PSA’s website has value bulk at $24.99, GameStop is at $25.99.

Everything in this hobby sucks.

[letsgocapitals]

If they're running at 4 month turnarounds, it makes sense to raise the price to slow the demand, yes? Not a popular hobby take I'm sure.

[thenightman]

Originally Posted by letsgocapitals

If they're running at 4 month turnarounds, it makes sense to raise the price to slow the demand, yes? Not a popular hobby take I'm sure.

How about meet demand? Company makes $20ish a slab and gets near 2 million subs a month. You can't meet demand making $40 million a month?

[prospectorgems]

Just dumb. Never heard a company that wants to slow down their money flow by consistently raising prices and slowing down production time. That's fine, just saves me loads of money sending anything lower end in now. That extra $4 can make a world of difference on lower end cards.

Maybe PSA should work on grading more consistently and then people would probably not have a problem with rising prices. Not going to grade at $25 per (before shipping expenses) to get a bunch of lower grades just because they are trying to get through orders as fast as possible.

[Jaypers]

Five service levels have increased in price and three levels in turnaround times, plus the two bulk levels have been combined into one.

https://www.psacard.com/info/submission-updates

[letsgocapitals]

Originally Posted by thenightman

How about meet demand? Company makes $20ish a slab and gets near 2 million subs a month. You can't meet demand making $40 million a month?

True too. Thought AI was supposed to speed it all up???

[22emmittfan]

Take over sgc, take over Beckett. No competition left can set pricing to whatever they want now as nothing to compete against

Will cgc finally take next step?

[BoSoxFan1999]

I created a 22-card value bulk sub last week....guess I should send it in now at the old price of $21.99/card.

[bojesphob]

Originally Posted by prospectorgems

Just dumb. Never heard a company that wants to slow down their money flow by consistently raising prices and slowing down production time. That's fine, just saves me loads of money sending anything lower end in now. That extra $4 can make a world of difference on lower end cards.

Maybe PSA should work on grading more consistently and then people would probably not have a problem with rising prices. Not going to grade at $25 per (before shipping expenses) to get a bunch of lower grades just because they are trying to get through orders as fast as possible.

I mean, this is a tenant of capitalism - supply and demand. Demand is high, supply isn't keeping up, so prices are adjusted to slow the demand until it comes down. Unfortunately, subs are still going up it seems, after a slight decline at the end of the year, so I wouldn't expect prices to come down due to low demand (which is the only way they'll ever come down). I would say expect a couple more price increases over the next year or two if subs continue to grow.

Now, artificially increasing demand by buying and phasing out competitors to increase prices is a bit underhanded, but that's another rant.

And, I'll note that it's interesting that no one mentioned that the grading estimates were increased by another business week.

[thenightman]

I remember the old saying, “Cheap, fast, and good. You can only get 2 out of 3.”

With PSA you get 0 out of 3. Long wait times, high prices, and inconsistent results. I love this for us, lol.

[notoriousrmb]

Want to see why this is happening? Look at Reddit grading threads, all this new money in the hobby and everyone thinks if a card is numbered, it needs a slab and they can retire.

I get sending in something fun for your PC, not always about dollar value. But post after post of "should I grade this?" of some third tier player /99 doesn't need a slab.

If PSA were smart, they would just hire another 100 graders and let people keep sending in junk.

[raiderguy10]

I personally think they should have just raised the TCG bulk price to match the non TCG pricing. I never understood why TCG was cheaper, and that was their biggest market.

Making the pricing match was overdue. Raising the sports price by $3 a card for members definitely hurts.

[raiderguy10]

Originally Posted by notoriousrmb

If PSA were smart, they would just hire another 100 graders and let people keep sending in junk.

They should just invest in AI and get rid of subjective grading altogether. Cut staff, cut prices, and increase profit.

[MavsRChamps]

Originally Posted by letsgocapitals

If they're running at 4 month turnarounds, it makes sense to raise the price to slow the demand, yes? Not a popular hobby take I'm sure.

Or Idk - Grade more cards? Hire more people? Pay them better? The supply of cards is only going up.

In their letter they put "Today, PSA grades approximately 90,000 cards per day globally".

Say a grader grades for 5 hours in a day. The conservative estimation is he can grade 60 cards an hour (more I know, but I'm underestimating). That's 300 cards a day. Meaning roughly PSA has 250-300 people grade cards globally. That may sound like a lot but keep in mind this is a MULTI BILLION dollar company. There is no reason whatsoever they can not increase that # a ton, AND pay them $75K+ per year so they keep their job and want to work there. Instead, PSA acts like they have no say in their workforce and it is comical at this point. Heck say they have 1000 people grade cards instead (3X currently, and again I UNDERESTIMATED cards graded per day pretty sure), and pay them $100K a year. That would equal $100 Million a year. A miniscule amount still. According to Google, collector's universe had a "significantly higher valuation of $4.3 billion as of March 2022" - That was 4 years ago. It's prob 2/3 times that now. 100 million is 1% of $10 Billion (an underestimation). So even when you UNDERESTIMATE basically all the #'s, paying employees more, hiring more people would still cost less than 1% of what the company is worth. Times # by 5 if you wish to include research & Id people, Q check people, and shipping people and it is still a miniscule amount. The math isn't adding up. PSA is raising prices simply because there is corruption going on within PSA and the higher ups are pocketing MILLIONS of dollar, instead of putting the $ into the workforce and the people who actually do the grunt of the work (graders).

Supply of cards is just going up, more people are into side hustles and grading as a result, more card shops are opening up, etc etc. & PSA doesn't have the capacity to meet this demand without raising prices every few months? Laughable.

[hammerva]

The best part of this is that they raised prices AND increased the estimated wait time

They know that most PSA users are just marks who will agree to them regardless of the changes. Frankly they could raise it to $40 a card and I am sure half the people on here will tell you what a bargain it is

[brev87]

Raising prices isn't to slow down traffic, it's to take advantage of the influx of grading requests. They're looking at it like that's missed profit we could've had. And don't think for a minute that they're going decrease pricing once demand goes down.

[Jaypers]

Originally Posted by hammerva

The best part of this is that they raised prices AND increased the estimated wait time

They know that most PSA users are just marks who will agree to them regardless of the changes. Frankly they could raise it to $40 a card and I am sure half the people on here will tell you what a bargain it is

This was the last straw for me. My membership expires in April, and it's staying that way.

[Bosoxfan5990]

Originally Posted by thenightman

I remember the old saying, “Cheap, fast, and good. You can only get 2 out of 3.”

With PSA you get 0 out of 3. Long wait times, high prices, and inconsistent results. I love this for us, lol.

[Bosoxfan5990]

I'll let everyone else grade for me and buy the 9s they're breaking even on.